A man in the U.K. was jailed for nine months for refusing to provide police investigators with the encryption password to the files on his personal laptop computer. The man was served a section 49 legal notice under RIPA Part III, which gives a suspect a time limit to supply encryption keys or make target data intelligible. Failure to comply is an offence under section 53 of the same Part of the Act and carries a sentence of up to two years imprisonment, and up to five years imprisonment in an investigation concerning national security. In his final police interview, CTC officers suggested JFL's refusal to decrypt the files or give them his keys would lead to suspicion he was a terrorist or paedophile. "There could be child pornography, there could be bomb-making recipes," said one detective. "Unless you tell us we're never gonna know... What is anybody gonna think?" JFL says he maintained his silence because of "the principle - as simple as that". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl?page=2 So this is what it has come down to, government punishing people over information. Simply because he had unknown information stored and refused to hand it over to police. That 1967 TV series The Prisoner comes to mind. I wonder, how long before this comes to the U.S. ? There was another incident too. David Miranda, a journalist that was working with Glenn Greenwald with The Guardian. He had just gone to Berlin to meet the film-maker Laura Poitras, who was involved at the time in a documentary based on revelations from documents leaked by Edward Snowden. He was on his way back to his home country Brazil, but the return flight made a temporary stop in the U.K. When he landed in Heathrow airport, he was stopped under the Terrorism Act and forced to give up passwords. He had no right to remain silent. http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/14/obamas_war_on_whistleblowers_forced_edward https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/30/david-miranda-documents-schedule-7 Here's another thought that occurred to me: What if someone simply forgot their password? Would they still end up getting jailed? Maybe it was an old file, or an old laptop. Or what if someone was just simply in possession of an encrypted data file they did not have the password to? I've carelessly downloaded files all the time, and they just sit there in my computer until I finally clear them out many months later. Or this could even be used by corrupt police to frame someone. Simply put a small disc or flash drive containing encrypted files among the suspect's possessions. The suspect will not know the password so will be unable to comply with demands to open it. The actual information encrypted could be complete gibberish, but no will ever know that. This just seems like a terrible law that could end up getting misused. You know, I think there was a REASON for the Fifth Amendment "No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" after the American colonies had just broke away from Britain. My personal opinion, these are Stasi-like tactics that have no place in the law enforcement of a Free society. opening sequence from the British TV series The Prisoner:
Need a second password...that will, when used, trigger a full wipe of all data. Whoops, must have entered it wrong.
So if the police have reason to believe someone has evidence of criminality in their home and so turn up at the door with a search warrant, that suspect should be free to just turn them away? If the police suspect someone is driving a stolen car, should the driver be free to refuse to be stopped? If the security services suspect someone is carrying plans for a major terrorist attack, should that suspect be free to refuse to be arrested or searched and just left to go on their way? What if they’re suspected of carrying an actual bomb to the target? What if they’re carrying the trigger for a bomb on a password-protected phone? There is definitely a balance to be struck but the idea that it’s a simple, one-sided issue is a dangerous fantasy.
We are talking about arresting and imprisoning people for the reason of refusing to hand over information, in which police have no idea what that information even is. And, might I add, in which the suspect never even appeared in front of a judge or was able to legally defend himself.
Such is what can be expected in the united kingdom, where there are neither human nor constitutional rights to serve as a protection against government overreach. The matter is truly as simple as that. The public wished for a surveillance society to make them feel safe, and now they are being forced to realize what it is like when what they demanded can be utilized against them.
You're living in denial. US police have been forcing people to unlock phones for sometime. https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/12/new-jersey-police-phone-passcode/ https://www.komando.com/privacy/can-police-make-me-unlock-my-smartphone/582140/
Access Denied - It's unconstitutional for cops to force phone unlocking, court rules US courts disagree on whether suspects can be forced to unlock their phones. Timothy B. Lee, 6/24/2020, Ars Technica Indiana's Supreme Court has ruled that the Fifth Amendment allows a woman accused of stalking to refuse to unlock her iPhone. The court held that the Fifth Amendment's rule against self-incrimination protected Katelin Seo from giving the police access to potentially incriminating data on her phone. The courts are divided on how to apply the Fifth Amendment in this kind of case. Earlier this year, a Philadelphia man was released from jail after four years of being held in contempt in connection with a child-pornography case. A federal appeals court rejected his argument that the Fifth Amendment gave him the right to refuse to unlock hard drives found in his possession. A Vermont federal court reached the same conclusion in 2009 - as did a Colorado federal court in 2012, a Virginia state court in 2014, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2014. But other courts in Florida, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have reached the opposite conclusion, holding that forcing people to provide computer or smartphone passwords would violate the Fifth Amendment. Lower courts are divided about this issue because the relevant Supreme Court precedents all predate the smartphone era. To understand the two competing theories, it's helpful to analogize the situation to a pre-digital technology. A safe analogy Suppose that police believe that a suspect has incriminating documents stored in a wall safe and they ask a judge to compel the suspect to open the safe. The constitutionality of this order depends on what the police know. If the government can't show that the suspect knows the combination - perhaps the suspect claims the safe actually belongs to a roommate or business partner- then all courts agree that forcing the suspect to try to open it would be unconstitutional. This is because the act of opening the safe functions as an admission that the suspect owns the safe and the documents inside of it. This fact could be incriminating independent of the contents of any documents found inside the safe. On the other hand, if the government can show that the suspect knows both the password and which specific documents are in the safe - perhaps because the suspect described the safe's contents during an interrogation - then all courts agree that the suspect can be forced to open the safe. That's because the Fifth Amendment is a right against self-incriminating testimony, not the production of incriminating documents. But what if the state can show the suspect knows the combination but doesn't know which documents are in the safe? Here the courts are split. One theory holds that only the act of opening the safe is testimonial. Once the safe is open, the safe contains whatever documents it contains. The police get the information in the documents directly from the documents, the same as they would if they'd found them lying on the suspect's desk. So the contents of the documents are not compelled testimony. The other theory - the one endorsed by Indiana's Supreme Court this week - holds that it matters whether the police know which documents they're looking for. If the police are looking for specific documents that they know are in the safe, then there may be no Fifth Amendment problem. But if the request is more of a fishing expedition, then it's barred by the Fifth Amendment, since the act of opening the safe gives the police access to information they wouldn't have otherwise. Some courts have found this argument particularly compelling due to the vast amount of information on modern smartphones. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...ts-unconstitutional-to-force-phone-unlocking/
New Jersey's top court has ruled that police can compel suspects to give up their phone passcodes, and does not violate the Fifth Amendment. State v. Robert Andrews (A-72-18 ) (082209) Argued January 21, 2020 - Decided August 10, 2020 J. Soloman was the judge who wrote the opinion. The Court considered whether a court order requiring a criminal defendant to disclose the passcodes to his passcode-protected cellphones violates the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution or New Jersey's common law or statutory protections against self-incrimination. The target of a State narcotics investigation, Quincy Lowery, advised detectives that defendant Robert Andrews, a former Essex County Sheriff's Officer, had provided him with information about the investigation and advice to avoid criminal exposure. The State obtained an arrest warrant for defendant, who was later released, and search warrants for defendant's iPhones, which were seized. Later that day, detectives from the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office interviewed Lowery, who detailed his relationship with Andrews. Lowery explained that they were members of the same motorcycle club and had known each other for about a year. During that time, Andrews registered a car and motorcycle in his name so that Lowery could use them. Lowery also told the detectives that he regularly communicated with Andrews using the FaceTime application on their cellphones. Lowery claimed that during one of those communications, Andrews told him to "get rid of" his cellphones because law enforcement officials were "doing wire taps" following the federal arrests of Crips gang members. Lowery relayed his suspicion that he was being followed by police officers to Andrews and texted him the license plate number of one of the vehicles Lowery believed was following him. According to Lowery, Andrews informed him that the license plate number belonged either to the Prosecutor's Office or the Sheriff’s Department and advised him to put his car "on a lift to see if there is a [tracking] device under there." Lowery claimed that he also showed Andrews a picture of a man Lowery suspected was following him and that Andrews identified the individual as a member of the Prosecutor's Office. Lowery's cellphone records largely corroborated his allegations. Following their second interview with Lowery, the State obtained Communication Data Warrants for cellphone numbers belonging to Andrews and Lowery. The warrants revealed 114 cellphone calls and text messages between Lowery and Andrews over a six week period. Andrews was indicted for official misconduct, hindering, and obstruction. According to the State, its Telephone Intelligence Unit was unable to search Andrews's iPhones. A State detective contacted and conferred with the New York Police Department's Technical Services unit, as well as a technology company, both of which concluded that the cellphones' technology made them inaccessible to law enforcement agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory advised that it likewise would be unable to access the phones' contents. The State therefore moved to compel Andrews to disclose the passcodes to his two iPhones. Andrews opposed the motion, claiming that compelled disclosure of his passcodes violates the protections against self-incrimination afforded by New Jersey's common law and statutes and the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The trial court rejected Andrews’s arguments but limited access to Andrews's cellphones "to that which is contained within (1) the 'Phone' icon and application on Andrews's two iPhones, and (2) the 'Messages' icon and/or text messaging applications used by Andrews during his communications with Lowery." The court also ordered that the search "be performed by the State, in camera, in the presence of Andrews’s defense counsel and the court," with the court "reviewing the PIN or passcode prior to its disclosure to the State." The Appellate Division affirmed. It appears that in this story, the whole thing the authorities were looking for is a former law enforcement officer allegedly alerting one of his friends that the police were doing wiretaps, and then also confirming that a license plate number from a car the friend believed was following him likely belonged to law enforcement. Apparently these two acts constituted a crime, and gave authorities reason to search his phone and force him to provide them his passcode.
The equivalent here would be the suspect is already outside the locked location and refuses to turn over the key.
There are fundamental practical differences in any comparable situation though. With a locked building, however secure it is, the police have the practical ability to simply break in. It'd likely be easier (and less damaging) with the key, which is why they'd ask for it, but if it isn't provided, there is an alternative and if they have a valid warrant or other legally justified reason for accessing the location, they can (and will) do so. We have a unique situation here where it is essentially impossible to access the data in question without the password from the suspect. The closest equivalent would be that if the suspect has the only key to a locked area that the police have a good legal reason to access but if the suspect refuses to hand over the key, the police would be forced to just walk away.
I don't see where having to break into a building is essentially any different than having to break into a device. Different methods of course, but the principle is the same.
Because it is effectively impossible to break in to a strongly encrypted device. That is what makes these situations different to anything the law has had to address in the past.
The United Kingdom disarmed their citizens, so they can now freely do what they want, when they want to the public and there isn’t a damn thing anyone can do about it.
