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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Gawker's COO is arguing on that basis (http://gizmodo.com/5524843/)

Reading that warrant makes me not regret the full-disk encryption on every computer in my house. It makes the computer slower, but it removes any incentive to remove the device from my home. (And it removes the ability of my own computer to incriminate me.)

It does not remove the ability of law enforcement to serve a search warrant and carry your computers out the door, nor does it remove the ability of a judge to plant you in a jail cell until you cough up the passwords. What it does do in create an incentive for anyone who does serve a search warrant upon you to look very, very closely at the contents of the drive once you do provide the password -- if you thought the inconvenience of full-disk encryption was this important then they are likely to think that they will find some child porn or tax evasion documents buried in there somewhere.

nor does it remove the ability of a judge to plant you in a jail cell until you cough up the passwords

It's true, encryption doesn't remove this ability. The reality is that the Constitution never provides this ability in the first place, and specifically prevents the government from passing any law that would provide this ability.

Refusing to testify against yourself (without a grant of immunity, anyway) is not a crime, it's your right.

The unencrypted contents of your hard drive constitute evidence, not testimony.

I believe in the US you can still be legally compelled to give up the encryption key(s), and simply held in contempt (indefinitely?) until you do.

I disagree. See my post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1296381

Isn't that covered by the 5th Amendment (not 100% sure, I'm not American)?

The 5th Amendment says that you can't be compelled to incriminate yourself, but I don't think that covers everything. If you have a safe in your house and the police have a search warrant for the contents of the safe, I think you are legally required to turn over the combination or key.

I remember hearing about this being used as a justification by a judge in a case relating to encryption. It's just sad that most cases involving encryption / computer crimes are related to child porn charges so people are more worried about punishing the person than they are about protecting the rights of everyone that is brought into the court system.

Oh I see, thanks. I didn't realize this kind of jurisprudence was linked to the child porn issues. Obviously that's a commendable reason to add exceptions to the 5th amendment.

Yes, but only if they know there to be an encrypted partition. Because all encrypted data passes a Chi^2 randomness test you cannot (really cannot) distinguish between empty space on an encrypted partition and a different encrypted partition inside an encrypted partition.

So when they find a drive that passes the Chi^2 randomness test they know there has to be encrypted data on there, so you give them the key and they decrypt the outer ring (which contains nothing important). At that point they're stuck. They suspect there's got to be more to it, but they can't point to anything and say "decrypt this!", because there isn't anything to point to. So technically, they have to let you go. Or so I heard.

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