
Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, feds say - jseliger
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/feds-say-suspect-should-rot-in-prison-for-refusing-to-decrypt-drives/
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cnvogel
One important fact one should keep in mind: This particular case is likely
pushed forward because the suspect is accused (morally, and not even in a
legal/formal way, as the article mentions) of a particularly abhorrent crime.
It's always Child-Pornography and Terrorism.

Once it will become standard practice to force people to decrypt files or
harddrives, expect being compelled to unlock your computer for suspicion of
owning pirated files, "whistleblown" documents or GPS logs of traffic
infringements :-(

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shirro
Prosecutor: "We have found a witch, may we burn her?"

Judge: "How do you known she is a witch?"

Prosecutor: "She won't decrypt her hard drive"

All: "A witch! burn her burn her!!"

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gedy
The suspect sounds vile if this is true, but is there not a way to convict
based on some evidence apart from unlocking his encrypted hard drive?

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damienkatz
I wonder what if he legitimately doesn't remember the passwords? How can you
possibly prove or disprove such a thing?

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DanBC
You don't need to prove / disprove that the defendent hasn't forgotten their
pass, you need to convince someone else.

For some cases the burden of proof will be "balance of probabilities"; for
other cases it'll be "beyond all reasonable doubt".

This is the kind of thing that courts deal with all the time - how can you
prove that a thief had the intention of permanently depriving someone of
something and wasn't just borrowing that item? How can you prove a murderer
really wanted to kill a person and not just injure them?

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sharemywin
to me it's speech. <sarcasm>Why not just save everyone time and jail all the
criminals until they say they are guilty. obviously, if the prosecutor thinks
he's guilt we should take his word for it. </sarcasm>

