RE: The ugly side of using disk encryption

["Hagen, Eric" <hagene () DenverNewspaperAgency com>]

Yes, the stories are ugly but the man is going to prison forever...  Absolutely deserves it, but I shudder to imagine 
what draconian laws could be passed using cases like this as justification.  Most people seem glad to say "Civil 
liberties?  I wasn't using them anyway." when the phrase "But what about the children?" is used.

John Ashcroft attempted to pass a law a few years ago that would have made "use of encryption" a felony that could be 
added to any other crime to get 3-5  years tacked on to the end of it.  Fortunately the bill stalled and has never been 
brought back up.  However, there are so many legitimate uses of encryption technology, where a seemingly minor crime 
could be turned into a felony because the user had encryption on their computer, even if it was only incidentally 
related to the crime.

This reminds me a great deal of the current legislative push to make ISPs keep all logs for years under the auspices of 
"terrorism prevention".

In reality, I would imagine any half-dedicated terrorist (one who is diligent enough to go to flight school and get a 
US VISA all in anticipation of killing himself for "the cause") has already been taught to use PGP, Tor, skype, 
remailers and open proxies to accomplish his dirty work... and yet again, the only people who suffer are small ISPs who 
don't have the resources to comply, and people doing far less dastardly things than blowing up buildings and schools.  
So, yes, if you are dedicated, it is possible to communicate anonymously and securely even if ISPs log everything, 
provided you don't get real-time traffic analysis capabilities across the entirety of the Internet....  Which means the 
only people who would be caught up in this are either stupid or not dedicated to their own security.

Then again, that's just my opinion, take it with however many grains of salt you care to.

Eric


-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce () securityfocus com
[mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com]On Behalf Of Saqib Ali
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 12:13 PM
To: security-basics
Subject: The ugly side of using disk encryption


The FBI has apparently been unable to crack the encryption password
used by a pedophile and murderer. The government agency says it might
take 30 years before the technology is advanced enough to crack the
encryption.

The the entire story at:
http://www.tribstar.com/news/feeds/apcontent/apstories/apstorysection/D8KQUA580.\
xml.txt/resources_apstoryview

saqib
http://www.full-disk-encryption.net

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