Police Claim Encryption Use Is Illegal

http://cryptome.org/2013/09/police-crypto-illegal.htm

by slashdotaccount • 13 years ago

89 49 13 years ago

cryptome.org

JimmaDaRustla• 13 years ago

Silly Police!

Next lock boxes and safes!

fexl• 13 years ago

They do hire some ignorant yahoos from time to time.

justanother• 13 years ago

The website isn't exactly presented in a linear fashion, but I gather the issue is the subject's use of Truecrypt to contain his personal files, whereas on a company-owned computer, all data therein is company property.

This certainly seems like it should be a civil matter, not something to involve the guys with guns and blue suits. But more to the point, $21.50 an hour for a 1099 job for a huge bag-of-dicks of a boss who pirates all his desktop software? Is that BSA hotline still around, or do they even care about small fries?

tomp• 13 years ago

whereas on a company-owned computer, all data therein is company property.

Are you sure? AFAIK, without signing any contracts, all work I produced is mine, regardless of where it resides. By inference, is all data in my computer mine as well?

jimktrains22• 13 years ago

When you start with a company you sign over the rights to the work you do with their time, equipment, and resources (most of the time, and exact conditions vary, but that's a very common LCD)

rayiner8• 13 years ago

Work created within the scope of your employment automatically belongs to the company: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=6488654&whence=item%3f....

Spoom• 13 years ago

The police are allowed to lie. That's why you don't take legal advice from them.

sokoloff• 13 years ago

The police aren't attorneys that you are paying for.

THAT is why you don't take legal advice from them.

LanceH• 13 years ago

Yes, always hire your own professional liar first.

furyg3• 13 years ago

His timeline and story are all here: http://www.innocentbeyondareasonabledoubt.com/

Lesson: Do not ever cooperate with the police.

Bo should have just let the original issue (I'm not even sure what that issue was) between he and his employer go to a civil court.

Toenex• 13 years ago

Lesson: Do not ever cooperate with the police.

Seriously? So if I get mugged in the street or if I have my home burgled I should do what?

knowaveragejoe• 13 years ago

I think it would be more appropriately phrased as "do not ever cooperate with the police if it is unsolicited interaction".

bcoates• 13 years ago

Call your insurance company, if you're insured, then get on with your life.

The cops don't have a time machine and they don't give a shit about you getting mugged or your stuff getting stolen. If you work hard enough you might get a police report out of them for insurance purposes.

I don't have a good text source lying around but here's a law professor and a cop explaining the downside: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

mcv• 13 years ago

If you need them, by all means, talk to them. But if they need you, get a lawyer first.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

Yes. Well, ish.

At most, do the minimal reporting you have to so. The problem is, as a human you might innocently give the officer some cause to suspect you in some way, or in some way mitigate the crime against you. I know people who have felt more anger after the police turn up to do their thing than they did on discovering the crime.

I would only involve the police in something I felt was very serious, which had to be solved, and could not be solved any other reasonable way. My definition of something very serious? Don't know till it happens, and frankly I'm sure we all have our own ideas of limits.

Burglary wise, don't know about other countries, but here in the UK the only real reason to report a normal burglary is to get a crime number for the insurance company. Mugging is pretty much the same, assuming you have something stolen which is insured. And luckily that can be very minimal, Im think, cant be sure, you can report crime online and get an instant crime number for insurance purposes. I think it probably only worth it is people get physically hurt or something vital is stolen and can't be replaced. Even then...

GFischer• 13 years ago

It's not the U.S., but I was robbed twice in the last few months.

I lived at the most populous neighbourhood in my city, and so I reported the theft to the police station, they made me enumerate my belongings and gave me some papers stating what I had lost.

A few weeks later, I called to inquire if some advance had been made, and the lady told me "no, we haven't recovered anything"... but I hadn't given her my case number ! So they hadn't recovered anything for anyone.. in a 100.000 people neighbourhood...

At least in my country, if there's no violence or some important reason to go after the criminal, police won't pursue. They don't care much about material losses (they do have a decent track record aprehending murderers and such).

rayiner8• 13 years ago

EDIT: You have to read the complaint in the last link. It sounds like there were some laptops or something that were "lost" and the owner believed he stole them, and filed a police report. That's what the charges stem from.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/InnocentBeyondAReasonableDoubt/PDF/C...

With regards to the allegations of theft, I'm not sure what the author's point is. He repeatedly says he offered to pay the owner back for the missing items. Should that mean that he can't be charged with theft? If I steal something and get caught, should I just be able to offer to pay and avoid prosecution? He repeatedly says that the missing items amount to at most a civil matter, but stealing stuff from work is not a civil matter.

For the rest of it, the author doesn't have a leg to stand on. Say instead of an encrypted partition we were talking about a safe. I kept a safe in my office, and one day I was summarily fired and escorted out of the building. I promised that there was no business information or property of my employer in that safe, then refused to hand over the combination. Should the employer leave it at that, saying "gee, if he says he didn't put any business property in the safe, I guess I just have to believe him!"

I can understand where the author is coming from (though his writing makes that difficult). The owner is clearly being a huge asshole. But the author is being naive to think that there must be something "fishy" going on. Unfortunately for him, he's on the wrong end of this story. It's so common for disgruntled employees to steal company property or damage company property that nobody is going to give him the benefit of the doubt except the jury, who is legally required to. The author repeatedly mentions the standard for conviction (beyond a reasonable doubt). However, that's not the standard for prosecution, which is closer to "more likely than not."

dpcx• 13 years ago

He said several times that he would unlock the encryption. He also said that he didn't feel right giving the password to anyone.

rayiner8• 13 years ago

Why should the owner trust him that he's actually doing what he says he's doing?

shutupalready• 13 years ago

The author doesn't have a leg to stand on. Say,...I kept a safe in my office

The guy writes: "I was an independent contractor. No employer-employee relationship existed. Federal labor laws afforded me the right to choose when to work, where to work, how to work and what work I was to produce. There were no other work-for-hire contracts or specific performance contracts signed and I did not sign any NDA."

To carry forward with your "safe" analogy: Suppose a plumber came to your house. When he leaves, you demand to search the toolbox he brought to your house. Who's in the right here?

outworlder2• 13 years ago

My understanding is that the "toolbox" was the client's, not his.

R_Edward2• 13 years ago

You cannot just buy your way out of a theft charge. If that were the case, can you imagine how thefts would skyrocket? Steal as much as you want, and when someone catches you, give back the specific item(s) they're missing and keep the rest!

Of course, a private accusation of theft is not an official charge of theft, or a prosecution, or a conviction for it. If a private individual comes to you and accuses you of taking something that belongs to them, and you return it, that ought to be the end of it, unless the victim is really honked off and insists on involving the police. Once the Boys in Blue are involved, it becomes much more difficult to resolve the situation extra-judicially.

yk• 13 years ago

If I steal something and get caught, should I just be able to offer to pay and avoid prosecution?

What we know is, that the owner claims there was a theft and the (lets call him) contractor offered to reimburse the owner. This does not mean that there was a theft. If I should speculate, it is rather likely that the contractor did loose a laptop, and at this point the relationship was already poisonous enough that the owner either assumes that there was a theft or tries to exploit the missing laptop.

For the rest of it, the author doesn't have a leg to stand on. [...]

I think this strongly depends (IANAL) and the contractor should get the benefit of doubt. So for example if his .ssh/ directory is on that partition, then he may or may not have ample reason to keep the contents ( e.g. a private key for one of his servers) secret.

wslh• 13 years ago

We are moving back to square one.

stuaxo• 13 years ago

The letter of complaint is a lot easier to digest than going through the site

http://s3.amazonaws.com/InnocentBeyondAReasonableDoubt/PDF/C...

grannyg00se• 13 years ago

Putting personal files on an employer's computer is a bad idea. Why do such a thing?

rmrfrmrf• 13 years ago

Something is not right about this story. I can't put my finger on it, but the holes in Bo's story make me suspicious. What items were lost originally? What were the circumstances surrounding the lost items? Why wasn't Bo fired immediately after these items were reported missing? Why is Bo offering to pay for any lost items, and why does he seem so eager to do so?

Then, as it pertains to the laptop, what the FRICK is Bo doing installing single user pre-boot authentication on a work computer? That is totally out of line, and I wouldn't blame the employer for feeling like his computer was being held hostage by an ex-contractor.

I could see the theft charge in that case. If someone installed password-protected full disk encryption on my computer and refused to give me the password, yes, nothing was physically "stolen", but the fact that I'm being denied access to my own data is more-or-less equivalent.

The fact that Bo then cuts a check to a detective again makes no sense to me. Why are you paying off law enforcement instead of going through the judicial system? Don't forget, going to court is also there to protect you.

jlebrech• 13 years ago

Isn't an exchange of funds admission of guilt?

R_Edward2• 13 years ago

No. In a civil case, often a defendant will compare the cost to defend themselves to the cost of settling, and will opt for the latter, including in the settlement documentation that the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing.

Police Claim Encryption Use Is Illegal

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