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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

>possessing encrypted data

Is... a crime? Woah.

Possessing random data is also a crime since it's indistinguishable from encrypted data, and if you can't provide the non-existent keys, your SOL.

Which is incredibly worrying as that 'random data' could it's self be a one time pad (the passphrase used for something else).

How does that make things worse or change the situation?

I think I meant to say:

You have no idea if a file contains something needed as part of a decryption process, or if the file itself contains encrypted informations.

So basically, having a "pad" file incriminate you.

Presumably in that the data itself is not criminal, and there could be no viable method to determine whether the data the key decrypts is criminal.

What's this "my SOL"?

[you are/you're] shit out of luck. IE: fucked.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=SOL

It certainly raises red flags, don't you agree? After all, what were you planning to do with those alledged "random" digits? What do you have to hide?

You really shouldn't be able to access /dev/urandum until you have been cleared by a reputable Alphabet company. This is for our security and that "obviously" trumps individual rights (whatever that means).

Root cause of all this is, of course, "bad thoughts" and "bad information", which IMHO should also be made illegal and only permitted in designated "free and error prone thought" areas and participants monitored by physicians from the Ministry of Error Free Thought.

Oh that gives me an idea. Let's make it so the blob can be decrypted 2 ways. One shows your tax receipts and spec indie-horror script, the other is your real shit.

TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt do that in a way.

Plausible deniability by allowing you to decrypt with one of two different passwords. One gives you access to the volume with your data, the other opens a shadow volume that contains random non-senstive data.

In the UK, yes. Holding encrypted data against the wishes of the government, that is to say you are unwilling to decrypt it for them, is a crime. I believe up to two years in prison.

That's actually fucking insane. Things aren't great here in the USA, but as another user stated, encrypted data is indistinguishable from random data. Someone could point at scrambled bits on your harddrive and accuse you a crime you didn't necessarily commit.

jeeeeesus

Its even worse. I heard of someone who was raided in London based on the fact their IP was busy with torrents. Two of his drives were encrypted. But guess what - it wasn't he who torrented but another person who shared housing/same IP. So he happily gave up the password. Unfortunately for him, one drive got open (with bunch of his emails) another one did not want to. Although he swears he used same pass for both, apparently the second drive got corrupted during transportation, which can happen very easily. He still sits in jail 8 months later. So when you ready to give out your password - pray your drives did not get corrupted.

Do you have a source?

(Not disbelief or concern trolling, I'd like to find out more about this case.)

With very selective enforcement.

Almost everyone with an internet connected device possess encrypted data.

Welcome to <current year>, where more and more math is considered illegal.

Well, more and more math is used for non-math purposes too, so the illegality is not exactly as absurd as it seems.

What is that supposed to mean and how does it make it less absurd?

It's supposed to mean that wondering something akin to "it's just math, how can it be illegal" doesn't mean much in an era when math are not just some abstract theory or things used to measure our plots of land, but are at the core of very important technologies with great applications and huge implications.

Not to mention that with digitization, every file is "just a number" anyway. Top secret document leaked? Naked photos of an ex posted for all to see? "Hey, I just shared a binary number on the internet" doesn't really hold water.

It might be politically abhorrent to persecute people for such things, but absurd it is not.

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

If you don't provide the means to decrypt.

Absurd nonetheless.

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