RE: RE: The ugly side of using disk encryption

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

> The justice system is not intended to offer guidance to the moronic or 
> rehabilitation for the deviant. 

It should.

> Simply put, ignorance of the law is 
> not an excuse and knowingly covering up any crime, is a furtherance of 
> a criminal act--a crime. 

What if the encryption is not specific to the crime.  for example, if someone operates with full-disk encryption, are 
they then furthering a crime by storing data about a crime on that drive?   What if they use Windows 2000 Encrypted 
Filesystem.  What if they use always-encrypted email like hushmail and happened to once send a mail that might be 
considered evidice of a crime?  

Then again, what if you don't have the passphrase?  Is it a crime to withold the passphrase?  If someone is convicted 
of a crime and refuse to say anything, that's a constitutional right...  except if it's a passphrase?

there are too many holes in the concept for me to support this type of thing, despite your rhetoric about "save the 
children" which is approaching academic dishonesty as an automatic "shut down the argument" phrase because it riles 
people when you say "I disagree".

Putting cameras in all private spaces and GPS tracking on all children would catch pedophiles too.  Think of the 
children.

> Those who prey on children for pleasure, 
> pedophiles, are considered  especially heinous because such acts lead 
> to the devolution of society and in effect cannibalization of one's 
> young.

I agree, however back to our rehabilitation and protection, I'm absolutely not an expert on this, but I recall this 
discussion on slashdot and a lot of numbers being thrown around.  But there was only one really in depth study I saw 
regarding sex offender recividism.  Here it is (I had to go dig through my slashdot posting history to find it):

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/rsorp94.pdf

According this study from the United States Department of Justice, Sex offenders are the least likely category of all 
classes of criminals to be rearrested and reconvicted.  They have the lowest re-conviction percentage (in terms of 
arrests) and are also the least likely to be reconvicted for the same crime as they were previously.  Like I said, I'm 
not an expert, but am regurgitating the conclusions i drew from a discussion with a number of seemingly more 
knowledgable people.

I understand that any re-conviction is a bad thing, but I also recognize that putting hundreds of thousands of people 
in prison for extended periods is socially destructive as well.  Our arrest rates have been accelerating linearly for 
the last 40 years.  If the rate continues, more than 15% of the US population will be in prision by 2050.  Pedophiles 
and terrorists are a convienant extreme case, but laws should be made also considering borderline and minor cases, not 
just the most extreme murder-abduction-rape-bombing.  Violent crime in the US is down by 50% since the 1970s you know.  
Sexual assault is down by over 100% IIRC, despite media claims otherwise and high profile cases everywhere.  But the 
hysteria surrounding it is reaching new heights, which I attribute to media saturation.  Frankly, one article I read 
said that the incidence of sexual assault isn't down, but reporting of it is down because the penalties are so severe, 
people shy away from reporting all but extreme cases.

Call me crazy, i've heard it before. .

And thanks to the number of people who have emailed me privately with words of encouragement and agreement.

Eric


Hagen, Eric wrote:
> 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.
>
>
> 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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education and the case study affords you unmatched consulting experience.
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