Google searches for '"Matthew Bumgardner" arrest' or '"Matthew Bumgardner" truecrypt' were unhelpful. It appears that this story hasn't had any media attention.
"The user received a subpoena duces tecum requiring him to type the passwords or pass phrases necessary to produce the encrypted contents of drives seized 6 months earlier. The true crypt user has attempted to comply but he is still being held in contempt."
Its a criminal case.,..which basically means if he judge requests a document that is encrypted on a hd than defendant cannot refuse or they are in contempt
In most European countries (that do not have specific crypto laws) you neither need to give the judge any information (except your name and address), nor help the prosecutor (i.e., the judge cannot order you to open a safe, but of course he can try to break the safe hismelf).
Okay - but what if the argument is literally "I can't - the keyfile is lost"
or
Ignoring the details of this case, what if the court is ordering you to decrypt something that isn't even encrypted? It's just random data? They assume it is. You assume it isn't.
I suppose in this case, the fact that the someone of authority already saw unencrypted contents gives them enough reason to be confident the drive is encrypted and the defendant has the ability to decrypt it.
Presumably there is some evidence that it does exist, or the judge wouldn't be asking for it. If you send an email to a buddy saying "I've got some great stuff on my encrypted hard drive", the court will likely be interested in seeing some of that great stuff.
i don't get it. Is "you have the right to remain silent" limited only to oral means of communication? Or does it include the right to remain silent with respect to any means of communication, including writing, keyboard typing, sign language gesturing, etc ...?
"the right to remain silent..." etc is the Miranda Act which applies when you are taken into custody but before you have been formally charged with a crime. It really just boils down to not having to say anything to the police without legal representation present. That no longer applies since he is now before a court and we can assume he has legal representation (or he was offered it and has refused).
To answer your question directly: No, it applies to all methods of communication.
"...the U.S. District Court for Vermont ruled that because the defendant had already cooperated as far as he had and already potentially incriminated himself, by stating his ownership of his laptop and providing law enforcement with partial access to it prior to his arrest, that he must now surrender complete access to all information on that laptop, even encrypted and potentially self-incriminating or confidential information.[20] Because the defendant had cooperated in part already, the Court ruled that the defendant must continue cooperation and provide the decrypted and potentially harmful information to the government..."
The 5th amendment was written specifically for criminal proceedings. Why does the judge's request override his right to refuse being a witness against himself?
Searching for all posts by Bella1 that contain "Matthew", "jail", or "letter" doesn't find a previous letter. The closest thing is this post that provides case information (such as the case number, etc):
I tried looking up the case number in PACER (http://www.pacer.gov/) but when I went to register I saw that they charge 8 cents for every page returned, that is every page of a document clicked on as well as every page linked to in a search result. Transparency comes with a price tag these days I guess.
The Judicial Conference waives fees if they amount to less than $10 in a quarter, I believe. So you get 125 pages free. Be aware that search results do count as a page, though.
I can't find anything either, and the fact that he doesn't include that in the letter sort of implies that it's something that'd immediately lose him any sympathy or backing, doesn't it?
First, the guy could be accused of choking babies to death with child porn and that wouldn't make a damn bit of difference as far as his, and the rest of our, fundamental rights are concerned.
Second, accused (or even indicted) is absolutely different than convicted, which itself bears an indirect relationship to 'true'.
Third, courts typically don't post private proceedings on the internet - you'd be amazed how many things you wouldn't be able to "find anything" about via a google search. If he's being held for contempt in relation to a case that he's not actually a defendant in, I imagine it'd be really bloody difficult to find a whole lot about that online, and in either case I can't imagine any sane lawyer giving him the green light to post on the internet details about a case for which he's already being held in contempt.
But by all means, don't let me stop you from impugning the integrity of a man you admit to knowing nothing at all about.
> I imagine it'd be really bloody difficult to find a whole lot about that online, and in either case I can't imagine any sane lawyer giving him the green light to post on the internet details about a case for which he's already being held in contempt.
I can't imagine a lawyer giving him the green light to post on the internet asking people who don't know anything about the case to spam the judge and prosecutor, either.
In fact, he states that he doesn't have a lawyer.
If he expects people to write letters, he needs to explain WHY they need to write letters. That requires telling us what the case is actually about.
That's true. I've no strong opinons on the veracity of the man's claims, but I'm certainly not intending to write any letters without extremely strong and verifiable evidence that his story is as he claims. My point was just that the nature of the charges in the case and our ability to find anything about them have next to no bearing on principles in question, nor does the moral composition of the author, and I think there's danger in the idea that they would.
Sympathy for a particular individual is irrelevant here. Some rights should apply to everyone, regardless of what they are accused of. I believe that the right to encryption belongs to this domain of fundamental rights.
So far, it's not clear at this point this guy has actually been charged with any criminal wrongdoing. From what I've seen on the forum, here, and reddit, there doesn't appear to be a criminal charge reported. It's entirely possible that he is being held in contempt due to some civil case.
What you're trying to do here is obvious, and I don't like it one bit. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. You're trying to introduce bias, and shame on you for doing it.
I am doing no such thing - shame on you for making assumptions about another's intentions.
The fact of the matter is that even if the first sentence of his message stated that he was being held on child pornography charges, I would still back his right to not have to reveal his key. That's ridiculously lazy policing.
However, the omission of what his charges are from such a thorough message is extremely conspicuous. I could pretend to be a string parsing robot and only act on what the message itself contained... Or I could use my full brain like a human and make some reasonable assumptions. He's probably been accused of something pretty bad to leave it out like he did.
It's funny that in then contest to appear dispassionate and just people, even in an intelligent community such as this, handicap themselves. We're not better for having done so.
