RE: The ugly side of using disk encryption

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

I am firmly of the belief that it is a corruption of justice to use the judicial system to seek revenge, or "provide 
closure" for a victim's family.

It is intended to offer guidance, rehabilitation and in the worst cases (like this one) to remove the offender from the 
public.

I have been close friend to a victim of a very nasty case of a similar nature, but i stand firm by my belief that this 
is not the way it should be regarded.

For the benefit of the list (being technical in nature), I propose we wrap up this discussion as it is a philosophical 
disagreement rather than a technical one.  I think making encryption a crime, regardless of the circumstances is 
contrary to civiand often done for the wrong reasons and I'll leave it at that.

Eric

PS smart criminals store their information in a hidden partition and get around this whole thing....  and we're back to 
"minor" crimials getting tagged...  or so the theory goes.

-----Original Message-----
From: Saqib Ali [mailto:docbook.xml () gmail com]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 9:03 PM
To: Hagen, Eric; kurt.buff () gmail com; Ozgur Ozdemircili;
knobdy () gmail com; robert.d.holtz () gmail com; theguitarizt () gmail com
Cc: security-basics
Subject: Re: The ugly side of using disk encryption


On 10/19/06, Hagen, Eric <hagene () denvernewspaperagency com> wrote:
> How about if you cleaned up the scene of a crime so that it was nearly impossible to identify you as the culprit?  
> Should this be prosecutable?  You were using gloves and a mop to attempt to cover up misdeeds.  Is this a crime?  
> Should it be a crime?   How does encryption differ?

No, it is very different. In this case a pedophile is using encryption
to illegally hold back information from the law enforcement agencies -
the information that can be used to solve several crimes and bring
closure to victim's families. What you are talking about is completely
off-topic.

What I am talking about is when a criminal is "already convicted" the
DA can make deals with the pedophile in exchange of leniency in
sentencing. My proposal give more leverage to  the office of DA to
make these kinds of deals.

If you are the family of a victim wouldn't you want to some kind of
closure even if the pedophile is already behind bars for a different
case?

Remember:
"The art of policing is, in order not to punish often, to punish severely"

-- 
Saqib Ali, CISSP, ISSAP
http://www.full-disk-encryption.net

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