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Man in jail 2 years for refusing to decrypt drives.


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Defendant to ask Supreme Court if compelled decryption is a 5th Amendment breach.

David Kravets - 8/29/2017, 2:34 PM

A now-fired Philadelphia cop has been behind bars for almost two years for refusing to decrypt hard drives that authorities found at his residence as part of a federal child-porn investigation. On Thursday, his lawyers are set to ask a federal judge to release him while he appeals the reason for his confinement to the Supreme Court. If the justices take the case, it would be the first time they weighed the constitutionality of whether forcing somebody to decrypt hardware amounts to a Fifth Amendment violation.

Francis Rawls

Francis Rawls

The dispute concerns Francis Rawls, who has been serving an indefinite jail term after being held in contempt of court for refusing to unlock at least two FileVault-encrypted drives connected to an Apple Mac Pro. He has not been charged with any criminal offense even though the contempt order (PDF) was issued September 30, 2015.

Both a federal judge and the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals did not agree with Rawls' contention that forcing him to unlock the drives amounted to a violation of his Fifth Amendment right against being compelled to testify against oneself. The courts also concluded that it was a "foregone conclusion" that kid porn was on the drives because a forensic examination revealed that the "hash" values of the files have been linked by the authorities to known child pornography.

All of which is why Rawls has been behind bars for longer than anybody who has refused to unlock passcode-protected devices.

"t remains Mr. Rawls' intention to seek Supreme Court review of the Third Circuit’s decision rejecting his Fifth Amendment challenge," Keith Donoghue, a federal public defender, told (PDF) a Pennsylvania federal judge who will entertain the motion Thursday.

Donoghue told US District Judge Cynthia Rufe that federal law only allows his client to remain locked up for a maximum of 18 months on a contempt-of-court violation. Rawls, however, has exceeded that by five months.

Another way for the contempt order to be lifted would be for Rawls to unlock the drives. Doing that, however, might expose him to other legal troubles.

 

SOURCE: Arstechnica

We've all seen cop shows, we know U.S. Miranda rights (you have the right to remain silent, etc. etc.). They stem from police getting a confession from Ernesto Miranda to kidnapping and rape without informing him of his right to be silent and his right to an attorney and subsequent use of that confession against him in court. His challenge to the use of that confession went to the Supreme Court, which agreed and granted him a new trial. On retrial, he was found guilty.


My point is that while this defendant assuredly guilty as hell, case law regarding the rights of the accused is not made from innocent defendants who have other legal arguments to use and the Supreme Court has never ruled definitively if courts can compel people to decrypt their devices.

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They had this also in the U.K.

The person had years added to his sentence.

The Fed's should ask the authors of the decryption software for their help cracking the password.

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3 hours ago, LeeSmithG said:

The Fed's should ask the authors of the decryption software for their help cracking the password.

 

If the author helps one time he will sell his software after that only to idiots.

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6 hours ago, LeeSmithG said:

The Fed's should ask the authors of the decryption software for their help cracking the password.

They tried  too  get Apple  too help  them do this once  already  and they wouldn't so they claim the FBI  paid hackers to unlock IPhone  encryption .. Well  this is MAC OS encryption

 

Quote

 

FileVault is a disk encryption program in Mac OS X 10.3 and later.

FileVault was introduced with Mac OS X Panther (10.3)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileVault

They most likely will have more luck with the guy who has been in  jail 2 years than they would Apple  and if he dont unlock it he can just rot in jail i guess .

 

The way the court system works  they can hold you in jail tell  there is a verdict  if you are being held without bond.. As long as he refuses to unlock the drives  unless there  statute of limitations  after so many years hes hindering  his own  trial  and doing it to himself . Laws vary a lot  from state to state  and the state hes in is not going  too drop the case.   :P
 

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8 minutes ago, 0bin said:

Is quite fast to encrypt entire disk, but there are better alternatives.

I used on my Mac many times.

This only proves  encryption is effective too keep hackers out if they put you jail  and you never get out encryption defeated  it's purpose. It just shows more human ignorance too think you can do sick things like this guy is accessed  of and not be punished for it . They going punish you  one way or the other. If he didn't have nothing to hide he would unlock them by now.

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The NSA has already broke this software, I don't know why they don't offer to decrypt the drives for them.  It is amazing how all the law enforcement and intelligence agencies don't cooperate.

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1 minute ago, straycat19 said:

The NSA has already broke this software, I don't know why they don't offer to decrypt the drives for them.  It is amazing how all the law enforcement and intelligence agencies don't cooperate.

These limitations apply to versions of Mac OS X prior to v10.7 only.   They only cracked  FileVault v1  this is FileVault v2 witch never has been cracked  .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileVault

 

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Quote

Several shortcomings were identified in Legacy FileVault. Its security can be broken by cracking either 1024-bit RSA or 3DES-EDE.

 

FileVault v2   uses the user's login password as the encryption pass phrase. It uses the AES-XTS mode of AES with 128 bit blocks and a 256 bit key to encrypt the disk, as recommended by NIST. Only unlock-enabled users can start or unlock the drive. Once unlocked, other users may also use the computer until it is shut down.

 

Nobody  can unlock AES with a 256 bit  key unless the device  has been hacked into  . Only exploits are effective against it... it's never been cracked.

 

Quote

AES-256 is currently labeled as sufficient to use in the US government for the transmission of TOP SECRET/SCI information. That's pretty much the highest classification level they could clear it for, so the US government is pretty darn confident that nobody can break AES-256 on the timescales required to protect our nation's greatest secrets.

 

It's not it cant be cracked  it could be .  Encryption is about the amount of time it would take too crack it.  Apple says it would take like years  just to try too unlock it. They broke in too IOS  with a exploit they claim but even if Apple unlocked it  if they can they still did not crack it . It would be Apple gave them the master key  . If you understood how cracking  works some stuff is not really cracked,  they found a weakness in the OS  and exploited it to get around the protection  .

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3 minutes ago, knowledge said:

what encryption  program he use ?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204837

 

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Meet The Russians Helping America Hack Silicon Valley

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/08/30/russian-hackers-help-us-with-encryption-nightmare/

They have Russian Contractors helping them hack Apple's iCloud Also they use Israeli Contractors too unlock the iPhone  but they cant even hack Mac OS encryption ..If you can guess the mans password you can unlock it.  :lol:

 

Quote

 

,Josh Osborne Former Apple employee (for almost a decade), I don't speak for them though :-)

Say for the sake of argument something like 30,000 guesses per second. You can’t guess all the possible pass phrases before the sun goes boom. However you can guess the top multiple million common passwords and phrases and do it again with 3’s replacing the e’s and other junk like that, and you can do that in a fairly short amount of time. Plus you can guess owner’s girlfriend’s name and birthday, that’s probably it. Or maybe the day they met. I’ll bet this works out most of the time (there are 10,000 4 digit PINs, but over half the people that get to choose PINs pick one that is in the top 20 guesses - so I’ll bet most people when given a “type a passphrase as long as you like, just remember it and be able to type it each time you boot your computer” pick one of the same, say, 5 million passwords or so)

Encryption is only as strong as the key, and humans don’t pick very strong keys, even with the benefit of good hashing altos to turn passphrases into real keys…

 

 

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13 hours ago, steven36 said:

unless there  statute of limitations  after so many years hes hindering  his own  trial  and doing it to himself

 

Statutes of limitations apply to how much time has passed before legal proceedings can be initiated.  He's already been charged, so that would not apply.

 

My guess is he knows that whatever is on that drive is enough to put him away for a long time, so why not fight it?

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1 hour ago, jtmulc said:

 

Statutes of limitations apply to how much time has passed before legal proceedings can be initiated.  He's already been charged, so that would not apply.

 

My guess is he knows that whatever is on that drive is enough to put him away for a long time, so why not fight it?

How is he fighting it by spending 2 years in jail  ?  Maybe hes just doing this too too kept from being sent up the road  too real  prison  were cops never do very well . Hes a  cop and been charged with being a pedo what do you think would happen too  him? And there are statute of limitations on certain crimes  but there are none for people like him. I had  some guards  tell me once  they are people in jail for murder  that were under there watch who kept getting  there trial put off too keep from going too real prison . 

 

Quote

The government points out that if the drives do contain child abuse images then Rawls is looking at over 20 years in prison, and there is no statute of limitations for crimes against children. It asks that Rawls should be given another chance to decrypt the drives, and if he refuses, he should get used to prison.

People have been held for contempt of court for seven years before. we will find out  latter today if they keep holding him for Contempt of court.

 

Ex-Adviser Out of Jail After 11 Years, Including 7 for Contempt

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/ex-adviser-out-of-jail-after-11-years-including-7-for-contempt/

Here is one guy who spent 14 years in prison for Contempt .
 

Quote

 

 

H. Beatty Chadwick   is the American record holder for the longest time being held in civil contempt of court. In 1995, a judge ruled that Chadwick hid millions of U.S. dollars in overseas bank accounts so that he would not have to pay the sums to his ex-wife during their divorce. He was incarcerated until such time as he could present $2.5 million to the Delaware County Court. Chadwick maintains that the money was lost in a business transaction and therefore he cannot surrender money he does not possess. Although never charged with a crime, H. Beatty Chadwick spent fourteen years of his life in prison.

On July 10, 2009, Chadwick was ordered released from prison by Delaware County Judge Joseph Cronin, who determined his continued incarceration had lost its coercive effect and would not result in him surrendering the money.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Beatty_Chadwick

Full story

https://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/14/man-jailed-on-civil-contempt-charges-freed-after-14-years/

Chadwick was in the same area Rawls is in ..So things dont look good for him because  they done it before.

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