English 19-year-old jailed for refusal to disclose decryption key

[Bernie Cosell]

On 7 Oct 2010 at 12:05, Jerry Leichter wrote:

> On Oct 7, 2010, at 4:14 AM, Christoph Gruber <grisu at guru.at> wrote:
> >>> a 19-year-old just got a 16-month jail sentence for his refusal to
> >>> disclose the password that would have allowed investigators to see
> >>> what was on his hard drive.
> >> 
> > What about http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability
> > Could this be used?
> Sure. And the technology used would have no effect on the standard
 ... used in court:

I think you're not getting the trick here: with truecrypt's plausible 
deniability hack you *CAN* give them the password and they *CAN* decrypt 
the file [or filesystem].  BUT: it is a double encryption setup.  If you 
use one password only some of it gets decrypted, if you use the other 
password all of it is decrypted.  There's no way to tell if you used the 
first password that you didn't decrypt everything.  So in theory you 
could hide the nasty stuff behind the second passsword, a ton of innocent 
stuff behind the first password and just give them the first password 
when asked.  In practice, I dunno if it really works or will really let 
you slide by.

  /Bernie\


-- 
Bernie Cosell                     Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com     Pearisburg, VA
    -->  Too many people, too few sheep  <--       



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