How will he be convicted if the primary evidence is on his computer?
My geek half that believes in strong 4th and 5th Amendment tights and crypto thinks this is a fine decision. My forensics half bets this guy has gigabytes of atrocious child pornography on his system and that CP cases are the motivating factor for the police wanting to decrypt your hard drive in 99 out of 100 cases with a search warrant.
These cases are not abstractions; every pic is of a child who was abused and the perpetrators organize themselves into networks that include distributors and abusers/“content producers.” How is justice served if these networks can’t be rolled up due to full disk encryption?
I like encryption. I don’t want to be compelled to give up my password to a tyrannical government. But I think the tech community is quick to take an absolutist view of the right to strong crypto, and quick to discount that harm can happen as a result. I also don’t think that view is shared by most people... so it seems like a problem worth solving.
I’ve worked with a lot of LEOs who handle these cases. I’m not sure I’d characterize them as wanting things to be as easy as possible even at the expense of civil liberty.
How do you prove possession of CP if all the data is on encrypted drives? What sort of additional effort do you think is necessary?
My geek half that believes in strong 4th and 5th Amendment tights and crypto thinks this is a fine decision. My forensics half bets this guy has gigabytes of atrocious child pornography on his system and that CP cases are the motivating factor for the police wanting to decrypt your hard drive in 99 out of 100 cases with a search warrant.
These cases are not abstractions; every pic is of a child who was abused and the perpetrators organize themselves into networks that include distributors and abusers/“content producers.” How is justice served if these networks can’t be rolled up due to full disk encryption?
I like encryption. I don’t want to be compelled to give up my password to a tyrannical government. But I think the tech community is quick to take an absolutist view of the right to strong crypto, and quick to discount that harm can happen as a result. I also don’t think that view is shared by most people... so it seems like a problem worth solving.