Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by DINKDINK 3208 days ago
What checks exist to prevent police from planting a USB hard drive on an enemy of the state that's encrypted and then claiming the defendant won't decrypt the hard drive? The state would have a really easy time imprisoning him/her because the defendant would never be able to provide a key to decrypt it.
2 comments
PeterisP 3207 days ago
The check there is the judge and jury, which could be convinced by the defense that this is not their hard drive - unlike the case of Francis Rawls, where they haven't even attempted to contest that he knows the password. They haven't claimed that they are unable to perform the action, they're simply refusing to do it (and unsuccessfully contesting that they don't have to do this), so that's contempt.

It's kind of counterproductive to assume a singular agent "the state" in this context - all legal checks and balances essentially rely on multiple, separate, competing agents of the state controlling each other, separation of powers and all that. If police and all the judges are both on the same corrupt side then there's nothing stopping them from convicting you for murder of Abraham Lincoln and locking you up indefinitely for that, but we're working off of the assumption that this is not the case.

link
hvidgaard 3208 days ago
Nothing but morale prevents it, just like planting any other evidence.
link
DINKDINK 3207 days ago
I'd say though that if a judge can get a free pass to lock anyone away indefinitely by police planting a USB drive -- by claiming the defendant is in contempt of court -- that's drastically different in terms of payoff on evidence planting.

Planting a gun on a defendant is much harder to do than planting a USB drive. If it really was the defendant's, they probably have munition for it, there's biological contamination etc.

It seems to me there should be an onus on the prosecutor to prove that they defendant has the key and isn't giving it up before the defendant is held in contempt of court: "Here's a video showing the defendant access the banned booked on the USB drive, she won't give up the USB-decryption key!"

link