French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes | Hacker News Reader

French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

theguardian.com

318 pointsbiomene236 comments

The legal system in the UK recognizes several rights against self-incrimination, but there is a carve-out for the per se crime of failing to disclose a key to encrypted information - punishable by years in prison.

How is this different than refusing to tell where you've buried the bodies? Why should the police be permitted to assume you're guilty and in possession of vital information under certain circumstances?

I suspect the law is not intended to be logically consistent.

> How is this different than refusing to tell where you've buried the bodies?

They can get away with it because it’s on a computer. The voters don’t care, and the MPs by and large don’t understand. Those who do would love the same principle to apply to the body case as well.

That's because the memory of truly oppressive governments in Western Europe has faded. People who don't remember history, are doomed to repeat it.

I wonder if Berlin's society is already atrophying in this department.

Germans are actually the most inoculated against that type of virus, they will be the last to fall. They are at the forefront of anti-authoritarian efforts in technology, for example.

US/UK/France, on the other hand...

Wasn't Germany actively supporting Russia despite US warnings before the Ukraine war?

https://elamerican.com/germany-mocked-trump-dependence-on-ru...

They were supporting Russia economically by purchasing energy (gas mainly) from them. They basically had the crazy idea that economically intertwining themselves with Russia and making themselves dependent on Russia would magically turn Russia into a modern, democratic European nation, basically "if we bring them into our club, they'll come around to our way of thinking". It didn't work, just like economically integrating with China hasn't turned China into a western-like nation either, it's only enabled the authoritarians.

The fuck are you basing this on.

I do wonder if the masses always end up voting in fascists every 50 years or so simply because they forgot that there were some things worth fighting for. Does it feel like to anyone else we are on the precipice of extremely big changes that might not be good for anyone?

I think this is a big part of it.

I remember growing up reading Harrison Bergeron (in school) and always thinking there's no way such a system would ever come about by the will of the people... yet SF proves people are all too happy to implement such a system (tearing down gifted students for the perceived benefit of everyone else). SSDD.

Of all the insane, repressive and straight-up authoritarian systems in the United States today, you picked... A failed pilot for middle-school algebra in SF?

It wasn't just a failed pilot: It was a pilot which prevented advanced students from taking algebra. Lines up with Harrison Bergeron perfectly.

And on top of it they claimed it was a success as failure rates went down. The failure rate went down because nobody was being tested.

https://www.joannejacobs.com/post/algebra-for-none-fails-in-...

> The district had bragged that algebra failure rates had dropped. Families for San Francisco, a parent group, analyzed the data: Failure rates dropped after the district dropped the end-of-course exam.

I don't think it's forgetting that some things are worth fighting for.

I think it's that, after a fascist government is ousted via violence, people spend so much time and effort to demonize them, that Joe Blow on the street doesn't see them as 'Us' anymore.

We would never make decisions like They made, so We don't have to worry if Our leader is a fascist. Our leader is nothing like Their leader was, other than in absolute power. Our leader has our best interests in mind. Their leader was just a power hungry madman.

When we remove the humanity from the monsters, we fail to remember that we could be monsters, too.

As social creatures, humans tend to defer to authority and go with the flow. Both of these make for disastrous outcomes, depending on the authority deferred to and the direction of the flow.

Why did so many turn a blind eye to the Holocaust? Why did so many ignore the Holodomor? Why did no one stand against great evil?

Presently, there is debate about whether there is true Evil, as well as some absolute Truth. And if there's no foundation on which to build a case of "this is evil", then why would anyone act? Couple that with the fact that -- at least in the United States -- it is legal for the government to propagandize (re lie) the American peoples, and you have a perfect storm of stress and lies that leads to "I'm alone and there's nothing I can do in face of all that is terrible".

What is one man to do?

The one man at Tianeman Square became an emblem of standing up to tyranny. What if there had been another with him? Or ten more?

Solzhenitsyn claims that a little resistance would have completely disabled the Russian Communists.

> The one man at Tianeman Square became an emblem of standing up to tyranny.

And was never seen again. :/

This is the big deterrent. People have families they need to worry about. My SO was telling me to be careful about the things I talk about because it could cost me my job.

I'm not sure where the line in the sand is.

> Solzhenitsyn claims that a little resistance would have completely disabled the Russian Communists.

The Russian civil war lasted six years, was a bit more than 'a little resistance', killed ten million people, and it didn't quite achieve the desired effect.

If anything, it grew and encouraged the winners' paranoia, and put them on a permanent war footing.

Unlike other autocracies who I find tend to be pretty chill?

Inter-war Russia was its own insane level of purges and paranoia, that put most run-of-the-mill autocrats to shame.

Primo Levi had a strong argument along those lines. We must not deny their humanity or call them or their actions inhuman. First, that would be doing them what they did to a lot of people (Jews, but not only). Then, it is in a way providing them excuses by holding three to a different standard. Finally, it would make it seem like regular, normal people are incapable of doing the same thing. Historical evidence shows that yes, normal people can do this.

> When we remove the humanity from the monsters, we fail to remember that we could be monsters, too.

I could not agree more.

Can't forget things they never experienced. Most of the voters weren't alive 50 years ago or more like 78 years ago if you're looking to the end of ww2.

Knowledge can be transmitted, if it doesn't happen (or significant distortions happen) is because we have societal failures.

Strauss–Howe generational theory holds that upheaval or major crisis (like a world war) occurs every 80-100 years

If that holds true the next fews years are going to be interesting

It will definitely be interesting times.

It usually starts with lack of representation, then coercion and then compulsion. I'd say its probably closer to 60 years, all you really need is one bad large generational cohort to get the snowball rolling, and then it becomes almost impossible to reverse, 2 generations down; with the standard generational time period being 20 years.

Lucky me that I am set to retire (15-20 years from now) about the time this will all kick off on the terrible side of that cycle...

unless ofcourse we get WWIII early due to Russia....

The absence of a strong constitution protecting fundamental rights is also an issue. With a 50%+1 majority, the house of commons can vote pretty much any law it wants with no counterpower.

The British system is, indeed, fundamentally insane, from a technical perspective. They nerfed aristocratic power by neutering the House of Lords, but didn't bother replacing it with some other check or balance, leaving the Commons all-powerful - and with an electoral system that disproportionately favours cohesive ideologic minorities. Ironically, this was largely done by self-declared leftists, who utterly failed to anticipate how fascism could easily manifest through such a system.

> Ironically, this was largely done by self-declared leftists

Eh, the Parliament Act 1911 was passed by a Liberal Government.

> who utterly failed to anticipate how fascism could easily manifest through such a system.

The Liberal Party, and its successor the Liberal Democrats, has long been in favour of electoral reform.

and the RIP Act was passed by a Labour government

(and the Terrorism Act)

From what I've heard, the UK Labour party does absolutely nothing for labor. They're turning into the US democrats

It's not that "they're turning", it already happened. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton shared political platforms almost precisely.

A recent effort to go "back to their roots" (the Corbyn years) ended with a stalinesque purge of such leader. Sadly this leaves free reign for upstart neonazi and neonazi-adjacent parties (BNP, UKIP, Brexit Party/Reform UK...) to rip through traditional Lab heartlands.

> Tony Blair and Bill Clinton shared political platforms almost precisely.

I think this needs justification. There is no evidence that Clinton has ever been in favour of socialized healthcare for example, investment in which was a major tenet of the Blair platform.

They literally declared to belong to the same area, the "Third Way": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way . They both loved Anthony Giddens' works, believed in triangulation and private-public partnerships as essential, morality-based foreign policy, etc etc.

On healthcare, the difference was due to the starting points in the two countries. What eventually turned into "Obamacare" was a push started under Clinton to address the obvious shortcomings of insurance-based healthcare in the US, providing an approximation of European universal-healthcare principles that could actually be applicable to the US context. Hillary Clinton was a massive supporter of that effort, effectively the link between the two Democratic presidencies. It just so happened that, because of the specific peculiarities of the US system (i.e. massive lobbying and astroturfing from insurance and healthcare giants), the actual law eventually morphed into what Obama enacted.

Yes, but we were discussing the supremacy of the House of Commons.

I think most of us agree that lack of enough aristocratic rule isn't the source of UK's problems.

> Parliament Act 1911 was passed by a Liberal Government

... sustained by Labour MPs, and mostly in order to bust a ironclad Tory majority in the Lords that was effectively "ruining" every progressive bill.

It was then further strengthened in 1949 (Lab) and 1999 (Lab).

I mean, there is no shame in this: it was a worthy and progressive cause to drag a XVIII-century model (kicking and screaming) into modernity. It's just a shame that the execution was fairly poor, particularly in 1999 - when there was a unique chance to build something more theoretically sound, and (unlike 1911) there was a lot of history to learn from.

This is useful context, however I wanted to make clear it was the 1911 Act that made the supremacy of the Commons; as you say it was further strengthened in 1949, by shortening the veto timescales.

Labour's position changing from 'abolish the house of lords' originally, to 'get rid of some hereditary peers' in 1999 was incredibly poor, as you say.

> Ironically, this was largely done by self-declared leftists

And they now want a similar thing in the US:

https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2019/4/9/18300749/s...

> The British system is, indeed, fundamentally insane, from a technical perspective.

The best is the unwritten rules. Which are ironclad and “part of the constitution of this country”, except when they aren’t and get just ignored because it’s convenient. But hey, every couple of years journalists can play fun what-if games tracking down ancient customs and speculate whether a 300 years old precedent could be used to behead the PM or some other nonsense.

While in theory you are correct the reality is somewhat different. Individual mps are beholden to their local party and would hesitate to vote on anything that may endanger their position. Backbenchers have brought down 3 successive governments. There also exists an upper chamber and a high court to appeal to. It's mostly a pretty stable system.

Individual MPs are not selected by local parties anymore, that ship sailed 30 years ago. Parachuting chums in safe seats it's been the accepted norm since (at least) Blair. Backbenchers do what they do because they're fighting among themselves, organized in gangs (sorry, "think-tanks" or "research groups") to bolster their own career opportunities.

There is no upper chamber that I know of (the Lords is legislatively dead, a strong government can simply ignore it), and the powers of the High Court, already diminished by recent reforms, are likely to be further curtailed very soon (read the tea leaves: the debate on "abusing judicial procedures to make law", once the remit of right-wing Americans, was the subject for an entire Reith Lecture cycle only a couple of years ago; after the Brexit saga, Tories will take an axe to the HC as soon as they can afford to do so).

Ah! Not to worry, those who do remember history are doomed to watch others repeat it, so I think it's a bit of a wash in the end.

The voters don't know. It has received very little coverage. From what I can see, only Guardian and BBC have covered it, and neither show it on the front page (for me) right now.

Of cases they consider more important are the late Aaron Carter's drug use, a mystery spiral in Alaskan skies, Russian ships accused of spying in Norway, how to combine Ramadan fasting with fitness, potholes in Uganda to name a few.

They're probably treating it the same as refusing to open a safe given a valid warrant; the rights against self-incrimination do not extend to protecting the contents of your safe, drawers, private letters, etc, and also to the contents of your smartphone.

See, but if you refused to open a safe for the cops, their fallback would be to drill it, not incarcerate you for failure to disclose the combination. Under that precedence, the cops have the right to try and crack my phone's encryption, but not to compel me to give them my passwords.

Because they have a fallback. I presume that if someone were to invent an uncrackable safe they would adopt the same stance as encryption

But they can charge and punish you for refusing to open the safe, that's obstruction of justice even if they could drill it and drilled it.

> if you refused to open a safe for the cops, their fallback would be to drill it, not incarcerate you for failure to disclose the combination.

Or, more likely, they would do both.

They would drill it, and prosecute you for failing to comply with a valid court order (obstruction of justice, interfering with an investigation, contempt of court, or whatever...).

And perhaps more importantly, it becomes a de-facto crime to ever forget an encryption key. People forget the passkeys to crypto wallets all the time, losing millions. How can the police effectively prove that someone remembers the passcode? What if someone, after a few months in prison, says they've reconsidered and are willing to comply. They try to decrypt it but fail and subsequently say they the stress of incarceration has made them misremember the passcode?

> How can the police effectively prove that someone remembers the passcode?

if they can prove you were using the phone an hour ago that would probably do it

The stress of being arrested and threatened with years in prison if you don't remember your passcode could very well cause someone to forget it.

the thing is it's not incontrovertible proof, it's "beyond reasonable doubt"

the prosecution would show up with when you bought the phone, how many times you'd used it, that you used it 80 times in the last hour, and so on

and it comes down to whether or not a jury would believe that you had really forgotten it (despite that evidence)

Which means that someone who forgets their passcode because of the stress of being arrested and threatened with years in prison could easily be wrongfully convicted. It's a horrible law, even for those who don't care about privacy.

I am not a fan of the RIP Act (and there's plenty more badness in there)

but playing devil's advocate, without this specific offence the disclosure sections would be completely ineffectual

(remember the UK also allows adverse inferences to be made from silence, it is not the US)

If you can't remain silent then what are you supposed to do to not accidentally incriminate yourself?

This is one of the reasons why other countries outside the US aren't as free as the US, even though the US is a complete mess too in different ways. Freedom of both speech and silence are not really respected in law anywhere outside the US to the extent that they are in the US.

Many many countries have rules against drawing adverse inferences from silence, including event Scotland, which is part of the UK.

Scotland really should leave the UK, and then rejoin the EU. They'd be better off.

They also have apecific devolved laws that you can be arrested for illegal speech in your own home and your children can be interrogated about it.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/29/sending-the-thought...

Yes, the Scottish Hate Crime bill. And as expected, they are trying to expand it to cover misogyny. So someone's going to end up serving time for a silly joke they made in a pub.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scots-give-backing-to-mak...

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/09/11/why-misogyny-must-n...

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/16/dont-make-misogyny-...

I'm not going to get upset if sexist jerks get a little readjustment.

> I'm not going to get upset if sexist jerks get a little readjustment.

If we break down what you're saying, you're saying it's acceptable for the government to punish and "readjust" (euphemism for re-educate?) someone for mere speech, including /in the "privacy" of their own home/?

Attitudes like this are unfortunately prevalent in Europe, or these types of laws wouldn't pass. I reiterate my earlier comment, that only the US has any real protection for freedom of speech.

It's not just the US: Japan has freedom of speech too, encoded into its constitution. Arguably, speech is more free here than in the US. Many other things are much more free too, such as being able to drink beer outside, or being able to build what you want on your own land without NIMBYs shutting you down. The only big "freedom" we don't have is being able to carry guns around, but I don't miss that at all.

Do I need to repeat myself?

Scotland's problem is that mentioning a "protected characteristic" is enough to get you arrested if someone feels upset. The problem isn't the intent of the law but the incredibly low bar for injury and lack of sanctions for false and unreasonable reports letting the law itself be used for harassment.

I think I should be able to tell a joke "Two catholics and a jew ..." as long as it's not a veiled way to call for harm to anyone, and I don't think a joke about the sexes in a similar vein should be a problem.

But, if you physically attack a catholic because they're a catholic, or a woman because she's a woman, then that is a hate crime - where you're just looking for someone of a class you don't like to inflict punishment on. A sentencing modifier doesn't seem like a bad idea.

The US has guilty pleas, plea bargaining and entrapment. Next to that the right to avoid self-incrimination, which also exists in a lot of Western country, feels like a footnote.

The US laws against self-incriminating aren't unique, and many countries go much further. In Norway, you can't be convicted for lying to police and court at all, if it concerns accusations against you or your closest ones (I think that means your spouse and kids/parents in practice), or if it would cause considerable loss of social reputation or welfare of other kinds.

Define 'many countries'.

Is it really important? I gave an example.

You say nothing about the alleged crime and instead ask for an attorney.

Remember this important advice—shut the fuck up. https://youtu.be/sgWHrkDX35o

That video is about US law. The above comment says shutting the fuck up can be used as a negative inference against you in court.

Not if you get a lawyer, because as soon as your lawyer shows up, they say "My client invokes his/her right to remain silent."

What right to remain silent are you referring to? Can you link it?

> remember the UK also allows adverse inferences to be made from silence, it is not the US

Even in the US, the law has changed rather drastically[0]:

“The only way to prevent the government from introducing evidence of the suspect's silence at trial is to explicitly invoke (assert) the right to say nothing. In other words, without being warned by the police or advised by a lawyer, and without even the benefit of the familiar Miranda warnings (which might trigger an ‘I want to invoke my right to be silent!’), the interviewee must apparently say words to the effect of, ‘I invoke my privilege against self-incrimination.’”

[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-how-invoke-your...

IANAL but it sounds like this defense would be received about as well as "Your honor, the defendant was in grave stress of being arrested and threatened with years in prison. That's why he completely forgot why and how he parked his car next to Crosby Lake and was walking in the shallow water, carrying an identified bag, at 3am."

So basically that just proves the parent poster's point because the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove that the defendant was carrying a bag containing a body and the defendant is under no obligation to remember or justify parking his car by the lake at 3am and walking around.

The defendant didn't admit to a crime and wouldn't open their house to unreasonable search. how suspicious

right, you are explaining why the law is ridiculous and unfair

The lesson to take away from that is to have a smaller compartment (or multiple) inside the computer that contains all the juicy stuff. Unlock the main one, claim to have forgotten the keys for the juicy compartments, and you're keeping it around in hopes of remembering the key one day.

Just today (and many times before) I witnessed a coworker flummoxed by their Windows log in PIN not working. They insisted it was the same thing they used to log in not even 10 minutes ago, before locking it to go pee. However perhaps because I was asking for immediate information, the PIN they used countless times per day simply didn't work. I said "don't worry about it, I'll figure it out" and walked away. Few seconds later they shouted down the hall, "It worked this time, what did you need again?"

Folks mistype when they are in a hurry. They were likely remembering it correctly but not inputing it properly until you walked away.

A few weeks ago my house sprang a massive leak in the roof during a rainstorm, just as I was preparing for a week-long business trip. I got so stressed, the next morning I forgot the passcode I'd been typing into my iPhone for the last five years. Three days of carefully writing down my attempts didn't work—I hit the ten-mistake limit and the phone auto-wiped.

Something similar happened to me (though I did eventually remember). Now I always save PINs and passcodes in a password manager

I invalidated my debit card in a similar event. I used it hours before but suddenly for the life of me I couldn’t remember the 4 digits and nor could my fingers. It was after I heard about a death of a relative. Eventually I remembered but the card was already useless and a new one had been dispatched to me.

Yeah, 10 is a stupidly low limit, it won't save you from some hackers, and it won't help you much when you forget

Especially that. I forgot my pin once in a stressful situation as well, and that wiped my brain.

I ordered a new SIM card which was luckily enough. But sometimes you store something in muscle memory, not number memory.

Actually, I forgot the passcode to my phone after being involved in an accident. It was utterly nerve wracking. Got blasted by so many people for not calling up and I was embarrassed to admit that I couldn't remember my passcode.

I had gotten used to putting in the passcode without even seeing the screen and completely lost this muscle memory at the time of the accident - likely due to high stress. I did not remember it later either - it was like my mind just rejected the memory and simply couldn't place out what were the exact digits.

Became far more understanding of my parents forgetting stuff after that incident.

Anyways, the point is that you can un-believably forget the phone passcode at a time of stress. Sure, some cool-as-cucumber humans will never forget anything, but the vast majority of people are not like that.

Right. I stopped using hardware encryption after I forgot the password to my IronKey and had to throw it away.

That's just a not-friendly HSM. You should be able to reinitialize things, but not extract secrets from them. For example, you can reinitialize Yubikey's "key slots", without remembering the PIN.

They can do it the same way they prove everything else - ineffectively

It's also troubling that it's a crime not to disclose right now.

Disclosing those keys is probably a serious legal decision. The police will copy your entire phone including any nude pics, saucy messages etc.

Given the absurd number of UK police who have gotten in trouble recently for sharing pictures of dead bodies it's understandable you wouldn't want to just give them forever access to that or take a decent period to fully consider.

Everybody’s guilty! Got unexplained 0’s and 1’s on a USB? Must be a hidden partition.

I can definitely see how instead of viewing a device as an extension of a suspect's mind, you can view it as just another piece of property. If you had a dairy noting where you buried the bodies, or some receipts for your illicit arms deals, locked in a closet somewhere, the cops could reasonably break in and search it, or more relevantly compel you to hand over the key.

Now, I definitely prefer the US's stance of a password being illegal self-discrimination, but I don't think it's unreasonable to have built legal precedent around that other view.

> Now, I definitely prefer the US's stance of a password being illegal self-discrimination

Is that true though? Never heard that before.

It's somewhat up in the air. The prevailing theory is that the 5th protects against compelling what amounts to testimony... but it's only been tested a few times in court, never by SCOTUS. With mixed results.

Is there a way I can learn more about this? A resource for non-lawyers.

btw, I think OP meant incrimination

I understood what he meant, and in fact I even missed the typo until you pointed it out.

Suppose the hypothetical diary were itself encrypted? And what if it was done with a one-time pad?

If you hand wrote diary entries in an encrypted scheme, could police compel you to decrypt it?

I think you meant diary. Unless you really are referring to a dairy farm filled with buried bodies, nourishing all that grass with their putrescence, which then distills into delicious milk for hungry people...

How many cycles does a molecule of protein need to go through to be acceptable for human consumption?

> How is this different than refusing to tell where you've buried the bodies?

It would be more equivalent to refusing to let the police search one room in your house after they’ve established a reason to believe that you might be hiding bodies in it.

> Why should the police be permitted to assume you're guilty and in possession of vital information under certain circumstances?

They haven’t assumed guilt of the suspected crimes. However, if they have sufficient reason to believe that evidence of a crime exists in a certain location then they can compel someone to provide access to it. It’s similar to how the police can search your private property if they have sufficient evidence that a crime has been committed

That said, I don’t know the standard of evidence necessary in the UK to get this far.

Yes but your mere refusal to allow entry to a room is not grounds for arrest if the police already have a warrant and can search it regardless of your permission.

Put another way, the police do not require you to produce the keys to the subject of a warrant, they will enter by force if necessary. It's perverse that technology is different only because the police have no means of forcible entry.

>the police have no means of forcible entry.

Technically they do as seen in the San Bernardino shooter case, it's just expensive

> It would be more equivalent to refusing to let the police search one room in your house after they’ve established a reason to believe that you might be hiding bodies in it.

No, it isn't. The police searching a room in my house doesn't require me to do anything. They can even do it while I'm in a coma or dead. It's nothing like forcing me to tell them my passwords or any other information.

It doesn't seem to be about self-incrimination.

The way I understand it, they don't accuse him of being a terrorist, they are accusing him of having information about terrorists and refusing to release them. To follow your analogy, the police doesn't think you are the murderer, but they believe you know the location of the bodies and accuse you of covering for the murderer.

It's still self-incriminating to say you were guilty of covering for the murderer or, in this case, terrorist.

Which rights against self-incrimination? The right to silence has been gone since the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

> Why should the police be permitted to assume you're guilty and in possession of vital information under certain circumstances?

It shouldn't but... Tacitus, 2000 years ago: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state".

And we have oh so so many laws.

I can kind of see the logic in it. They’ve effectively been given a warrant to search your device and you are preventing that lawful search.

It’s like if they were trying to search your house for the dead children but you say you’ve lost the front door key and accidentally put a forcefield around it. Did you really forget to deactivate the forcefield or are you obstructing justice?

According to this tweet[0] citing a (locked) article, the arrested publisher was asked by police "Do you support president Macron? Have you participated in the recent demonstrations in France? What books will soon be published by La Fabrique?". Scary stuff

[0] https://twitter.com/Mathieu2jean/status/1648394577449984014

Shameful. I cannot fathom how anyone in government or the police believes this (whatever they asked him, whatever they were told) is anywhere close to ok.

> I cannot fathom how anyone in government or the police believes this (whatever they asked him, whatever they were told) is anywhere close to ok.

Something along the lines of: It's okay when I do it, because my motives are pure, my cause is just. The ends justify the means.

With this sort of mentality, people have committed mass murder and earnestly believed they were the good guys. Millions upon millions have been murdered by people who were utterly convinced they were on the right side of history. Compared to that, police officers convincing themselves that it's okay to violate the civil rights of a publisher is child's play.

The proper personal data hygiene tips are:

0. Never take your primary personal or work cell phone to any demonstration

1. Cover your face, if you can, or wear anti-facial recognition makeup

2. Do not use social media from primary personal devices

3. Anyone intent on trying to join the cause is a cop. Until proven otherwise, anyone you meet is a cop

4. The standard response to any official questions in the future is to deny all allegations, keep quiet, and ask for a lawyer

The kicker being, there is actually a 6th critical tip:

5. record your interactions with anyone around you, specially cops

The number 0 point (not bringing your cell phone) makes it pretty difficult, so you need an everyday phone, and a dedicated "demonstration" phone.

It's pretty pathetic of the French government to be silent on why exactly they flagged him like this.

And presumably did not arrest him on exit!

But I'm afraid since Brexit the UK gov has fallen over itself backwards to look like it's still able to work with EU agencies. It's more valuable to them to overzealously agree than to resist when we had a secure table at the EU table.

Perhaps the optics of nations quid pro quo oppressing each others' citizens are better than direct oppression.

What are the tangible pro's and con's of Brexit?

IIRC, EU membership forced Scandinavian countries to broadly weaken regulations on toxic substances and discard the precautionary principle.

Would UK on Euro subsidize worse economic performance of other nations?

What is the new, actual situation in N Ireland in terms of trade, regulations, and standards?

Guess what, #1 is illegal in France: “Nul ne peut, dans l'espace public, porter une tenue destinée à dissimuler son visage”[0] (No one may, in the public space, wear clothing intended to conceal his face). Anti-facial recognition makeup should be fine, though. For the time being.

[0] https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/article_lc/LEGIARTI00002...

Generally a question posed to French society: So is it illegal to wear Islamic clothing or be concerned with airborne spread of communicable disease?

Bikelock-guy got ID and sentenced with roughly similar hygiene tips. There's no hiding really.

Cops/Feds can do parallel construction to nail you anyway. Use the fancy technology to discover what happened, build the case backwards with old fashioned techniques.

They never have to reveal the advantages they have, it's rigged.

Chicken-little isn't a rationalization for lowering security practices. Let corrupt (not all are) police investigations go-ahead and attack the defenses of a prepared adversary.

That is a disgrace. A direct consequence of totalitarian laws. And at the same time, I really want to know the role of the French government. I cannot believe HMG cares whether someone was amongst the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated last week. Why set up such an ambush for a book publisher?

In trying to normalise search with no warrant nor oversight in the UK one would definitely expect its use against someone who is "us" but not really.

One can't imagine this being done on a member of the house of commons, house of lords, famous bbc actor or personality or even a non-famous British subject and you might get rather a lot more pushback than doing it against a Frenchman nobody has heard of.

I think it would be horribly naive of us to not assume these kinds of considerations were discussed extensively prior by the police involved and their superiors. Remember when it was said repeatedly by politicians that just this sort of thing would never happen. When the power exists it will find a way, every time.

There was a time when a publisher being kept in jail for years on a mere accusation in a country he's not visited that he may have breached a law universally regarded as utterly absurd by legal scholars would be something for which the air of the UK was too free to even countenance, whatever one's views of the man but that man is Australian, you know and he was also accused of rape, which seems a very, very weak accusation all this time later and also antisemitism, for which we haven't seen any evidence. Take out the support of the person and personality when doing a power grab. Is it policy or simply repeated coincidence?

The person and personality does not matter - they can be as big a scumbag as possible and that should be of zero consequence. The principle really, really, really does.

Now we watch for leaks and stories about just what a reprehensible human being this previously anonymous French publisher really is so no matter that you're losing your rights against warrantless search because you're not a French publisher accused of something, nor an Australian... Don't you worry about it, just leave it to the police who are never corrupt, never criminal, never abuse power, never rape, never murder, never derail nazi thug murder investigations because they're friends with one of the thugs drug-dealer parents. The British police want no oversight because they clearly need no oversight. Although I'm sure Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or (insert current object of the hate) would agree with any dissent on the matter.

> I really want to know the role of the French government.

Seriously what the hell?

> A French publisher has been arrested on terror charges in London after being questioned by UK police about participating in anti-government protests in France.

> Ernest Moret, 28, a foreign rights manager for Éditions la Fabrique, was approached by two plainclothes officers at St Pancras station on Monday evening after arriving by train from Paris to attend the London book fair.

Why would he even be questioned in the UK for this at all? Did France issue an arrest warrant? If so, then wouldn't the UK just go through the normal process of extradition? What the hell does any of this have to do with the UK?

> “On Tuesday 18 April, the man was subsequently arrested on suspicion of wilfully obstructing a schedule 7 examination, contrary to section 18 of the Terrorism Act 2000.”

So this is just the UK's more eloquent version of America's "arrested for resisting arrest"?

It's even worse - under RIP act not only can you be "forced" to reveal any passwords:

- the onus is on _you_ to "prove" that you don't know it or have forgotten it - you can be told not to reveal that you've told them the password

Anyone administering systems might want to think about this, governments aren't known for good security.

> you can be told not to reveal that you've told them the password

Come again? I don’t catch the meaning of this.

abridgett didn't check after posting, and so didn't catch some weird formatting. They are making two separate points:

- the onus is on _you_ to "prove" that you don't know it or have forgotten it

- you can be told not to reveal that you've told them the password

But...how would you prove you've forgotten something?

If you figure that out then let me know. Seems impossible to me. Maybe when brain scanning technology advances they'll be able to know what you're thinking.

You could be instructed not to disclose that you've given them the password.

So for example, you can be instructed not to tell your accomplices that their security is now compromised because every secret you had is no longer secret.

Hypothetically speaking, if you're not a UK resident: Surely you can keep the password on a separate device in another country, and if asked for it, say that you do have know how to get the password, but you can't physically access it without travelling to the other country.

You then aren't breaking the rules, as far as I can tell. Of course you can't give them something that is only available in another country, where those laws would not hold up.

How would explain you were able to unlock and use the device within in the past minutes or hours? (Which could be easy to prove)

Pass code is randomly generated by a person in the other country and it changes every 15 minutes. You must contact this person to get the code and they cannot be compelled by the laws in your country

How do you set that up on an Android or iOS device?

Use a TOTP for a second factor of authentication and give it to your friend abroad.

So you have to contact your friend every time you unlock your phone screen?

That's what your lawyer would say is the case is the impression I got. Or, more seriously, perhaps that could be a toggle. Similar to how if you hit the panic button on iphones it no longer takes biometrics until you give it the code? That might solve for ease of use.

Lawyers aren't allowed to lie in court.

Hitting a panic button would mostly likely qualify as evidence tampering, disruption of investigation, or evasion of justice.

These were non-uniformed undercover police that intercepted the guy. In this scenario it's very plausible to think you're about to be robbed, and hitting a 'lock device until I return home' panic button could never be considered any of those things given the circumstances (under UK law, anyway.)

this is exactly the purpose of the 5th amendment in the US. the only thing I don't agree with is the supreme court's decision that you have to deliberately invoke your 5th amendment. so much for inalienable rights...

And you can set someone up by just filling their hard drive with random data. Now all you need next is a fake tip off for child porn or something similar. The police will ask to "decrypt" it, but nobody has the key. Absolutely insane, yes the UK is probably already a de facto police state, because of this, the mass surveillance, "smart" CCTV everywhere and numerous other attempts by the government to strip us of our liberties.

Yes, because the Overton window has slipped so far, we are in a situation now, that in the 1970s people would easily class as a police state. Mass Internet surveillance, with complete dossiers on every web user being compiled by GCHQ, the criminalization of possession of data, which is a thought crime, yes prison for possessing certain books that are legal in the US. The list goes on and on.

All supposedly to protect us from some minor threat, whatever is in vogue as the latest moral panic (e.g. terrorism, child pornography, petty harassment, etc.). All while so many more people are killed or harmed in road traffic accidents each year than from all of those combined.

It really is nothing but excuses for authoritarianism. Yes, fascism, in disguise there. I don't even want to imagine what things will be like in 20-30 years time for now, if it continues at this rate.

Charging under this law requires specific authorisation like most niche powers (eg charging someone for abducting their own child)

So they wouldn’t charge you based off a random anonymous tip off. It would more be, a naked child was found in your house and now they’re charging you for not giving them the tapes with the videos on it.

What about spoofing IP addresses (bittorrent DHT / IPFS / deliberately faked Tor IP leaks / etc.) or a combined technique, so that the police think illegal material was shared from that IP, and when they come to investigate they find large quantities of random data, which they think is encrypted?

Modern PCs are as secure as a loaf of bread in a mob of seagulls.

Use malware to actually install sharing software and hide it from the user and at the router. Then use actual full-disk encryption software and make a real hidden partition and dump the bait files from the file sharing into it and leave the forensic traces. Then wipe the malware and delete the password and the FDE is unopenable but the courts will never believe the user.

> you can be told not to reveal that you've told them the password

This is a good reason to use numbered, pre-made, one-time-passwords and require a reason when using them. "AdminX lost fob - using override to reset creds." Requiring you to lie is one step past requiring you to remain silent.

If the 'next PW to be used' number increased on everyone's override-PWs it couldn't be hidden. Co-admins could know to check an audit log of changes.

Is this a surprise to anyone? Britain is quite well known for its draconian laws on free speech and encryption.

Seems its quite easy to get arrested for posting stuff online too. I hardly ever agree with the content but scares me to see people getting arrested for what amount to opinions.

Yes, and good luck if you're ever unfortunate enough to be physically harmed.

Even rape victims are demanded to hand over their phone before a case can proceed. Because of course the alleged perpetrator (rightly) refuses to, delete even unrelated stuff before handing over? Case dropped anyways.

Implying the police actually turn up? Remember that those are the "lucky" ones.

This is a sign that governments and, by extension, people in power are very fragile and very scared. Like an animal backed into a corner, they're lashing out violently and defensively, bc they are afraid that accountability is coming.

There will certainly be more of this type of behavior, even in the US, and the rest of the world is about to realize why the US has the kind of constitution that it does.

No accountability is coming, and they are certainly not afraid, after all it’s their monopoly on power and not yours. Dogs keep pushing your boundaries until you resist, so do other people, and any government machine is no different. They are not fragile at all. They do it simply because they can and also for the reason that the accountability is nowhere near. If you can impose more control on the population that won’t resist it while being on their payroll, then, after all, why not?

did the french government put that guy on a terrorist list somewhere or what?

also, the refusal to share passcodes and subsequent arrest is more common across the world then one would expect:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

in countries such as France, Australia, UK, Ireland, India, South Africa it’s pretty clear: refuse to give password > fine and/or jail.

in other countries such as the US, Netherlands, Spain, New Zealand, Germany, Finland things are more grey. most have a version of the “self-incrimination”, but they’ll just go around the suspect in order to get the data, or get the data and try their luck at trial.

and from what i’ve experienced first hand, the few arab countries i’ve visited will straight up assume you’ve got something to hide if you don’t unlock everything you’ve got on you.

> the few arab countries i’ve visited

I would expect citizens of Arab countries are treated very differently from visitors.

In which direction? Some countries are more suspicious of outsiders and give their citizens an easier time. Other countries are more fearful of the threat within and couldn’t care less what some random tourist is doing.

Most Arab countries have a lot of immigrant labour (e.g. UAE 90%), and if you are on the receiving end of their legal system I can’t see why they would treat you much better than say a poor immigrant. Even if white, I am not sure you would get any privilege points, and instead it might work against you (think English chavs or German dicks in Majorca).

In most countries I have visited, visitors get away with a lot, because they want tourists, and because the tourists are relatively wealthy. In the UAE you are relatively poor compared to the citizens.

Relevant in New Zealand a few years ago: https://google.com/search?q=british%20gypsies%20%22new%20zea...

I'd say visitors are likely treated worse because they expect some rights!

They have the audacity to expect justice so really bring in the government abuse themselves /s

Western democracies are falling into authoritarian behavior at a remarkable rate. I am legit worried.

I guess to be fair, there always has been an authoritarian bent to Western democracies. It's just that most of us here on HN are not members of the groups against which those democracies employ authoritarian practices. It just kind of shows you why you have to stand up as soon as you see a practice or law that's F'ed up. It's pretty much a guarantee that on a time-scale long enough, that government will use that practice on you.

Even better, the folks who frequent HN could stop aiding authoritarianism by building the tech, but that would require turning down lucrative RSUs, so I'm not holding my breath.

We should not only stop building tech that aids authoritarianism but start building tech that fights it.

Time for a cypherpunk revival.

Dystopia is where the real money's at.

And they'll just infiltrate your open source project, in the name of preventing petty "harassment" of developers. That way they will allow weaknesses in the protocol to arise, due to attrition of the best developers. And there you go, everything has been handed over to intelligence agencies, who can now easily break its security.

I totally nuked my career in communications and networking as a result of Internet mass surveillance and the prosecution of Orwellian "thought crimes". It really is a modern day witch hunt. Had to do something else, and am so much happier now that it's gone.

Yes, I was so outraged and shocked from it, what the government was doing, specifically regarding Internet pornography, that I had "moral injury". A condition not dissimilar from PTSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_injury

We are living in the 21st Century and we are still behaving, on some level like it's 1692. The year when the Salem witch trials were carried out.

And few people speak up about what's going on. They consider it normal. Because of how the Overton window works. How the frog has boiled so slowly over the decades.

It has a specific name: inverted totalitarianism.

Yep.

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

Also democratic backsliding, which I think "new" Labour really set into motion starting all the way back in 1997.

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

Apparently there was Soviet influence on the Labour party and it was going on for decades, and may explain its particularly nasty authoritarian streak. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225637/How-Kremlin...

From that Daily Mail article (2009):

" The unpalatable truth is that many ministers in Government today rose through the ranks of a British socialist movement that was heavily influenced - and even controlled - by the Kremlin in Moscow. "

" As the Spectator says: 'Indeed, New Labour, which has governed since 1997, cannot be understood unless these communist influences are taken into account. 'Many of New Labour's characteristics - its deep suspicion of outsiders, its structural hostility to democratic debate, its secrecy, its faith in bureaucracy, the embedded preference for striking deals out of the public eye, and its ruthless reliance on a small group of trusted activists, result from the lengthy detente with the Kremlin.' "

So russia is not only causing trouble in Ukraine, it also seriously affected politics here in the UK. And it might be why we are living in such a precarious situation, when it comes to our liberties, here in 2023.

One major problem with these descriptions of inverted totalitarianism is how subject they become to ideological preference, even by those who create them. Note that Sheldon Wolin came up with his definition in 2003 during the hysterical Bush years (hysterical on the part of both the government with its war on terror justifications and by the progressive left for styling Bush as a new Hitler).

Would he have applied the same label to the same things under Obama later? After all, the later president expanded on nearly everything Bush did and took it to new levels. Trump after him did the same thing in many ways too.

In all cases, criticism is often divided along ideological lines against tendencies that can be used in either direction with just as much evil or authoritarian intent, and this selective blindness by critics becomes idiotica and absurd.

Certainly puts the French government and Foreign Ministry in a curious spot. Were they the ones to ask Britain to intervene? What is a publisher doing on a counterterrorism watchlist? Are we to assume the worst that Britain is impinging on freedom of speech or just merely abusing a statute like the US and the Patriot Act?

I can see it working well politically for Macron to call for his release as a demonstration of civility and liberal virtue. However, before he swoops in, I suspect there is more to the story.

The UK has never really had much in the way of clear civil liberties. And there is a clear pattern now of demanding unfetted access to electronic equipment from victim, alleged perpetrators and anyone they want.

But why is the UK suddenly overzealously engaging with any EU process it can? It's insecurity given Brexit.

Importantly France could have nabbed him on exit or entry. Or requested extradition it did not.

I would really like to see an implementation where entering different passcodes unlocks different profiles on your phone. For example, your real phone profile data is behind one passcode, and then you can unlock a decoy phone profile when entering a different passcode.

Yep 1234 for my real profile, 4321 for my cat pictures profile.

Totally totally insane. A revolution is coming, and it will be bloody.

Unlikely in the UK.

Yes, but the police are working hard to prevent it.

If only.

Is that why billionaires are pushing millions into civilian disarmament aka “gun control”?

Good luck, their cops confiscate pencils longer than 15cm as weapons, let alone butter knives.

Supposedly, the Met is working on "a few hundred bad apples" this year as a top initiative.

Meanwhile motorcycles are stolen in broad daylight and the post code is drenched in marijuana smoke in East London.

Power over the people, including letting them sink into poverty and crime.

Er hardly anybody in Britain cares, as much as I am outraged personally.

More of a reflection on the state of the West in general. Where the flame is lit doesn't really matter.

It’s not apparent to me that the use of Schedule 7 powers says particularly much about ‘the state of the West in general’. ‘Where the flame is lit’ does matter as to whether the resultant fire burns in Britain; the flames of 1848 did not.

Until the masses have Netflix, Pornhub and TikTok, nothing will ever happen.

It's easier to hide under the covers and doomscrool than go out and throw a brick.

The protest in France against Macron's raising of the retirement age was a principled act of dissent, and there is no evidence that participating in it suggests any plans for terrorism on British soil. Therefore, it is a violation of those principles for the British police to ask a French woman to show them the contents of her phone or computer simply because she attended the protest.

It's sad to see the UK as the non-EU, police state that it is today. Just 15 years ago it felt really free. I spent half of my 20s there and have great memories, but it's really gone downhill since then.

The news is always going to look worse than personal experience because of the selection effect: the worst events make the news.

If you look at the news from 15 years ago, it didn't look any better:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/aug/18/met-police-...

This is why passcodes are better than biometric auth. It’s easy for an officer to hold the phone up to your face.

It’s super easy to disable biometric auth immediately, either explicitly all through repeatedly failing the biometric auth by moving and keeping your eyes shut.

Not a foolproof method I would trust if I had something to hide from the police.

Unless they use the Ludovico technique

Don't tell the cops I hate showtunes

not sure how much face recognition was disabled by this but I rolled my eyes all the way up and it did not unlock, kind of strained my eyeballs though.

yes the rolling eyes method is the way to avoid it if you get into that situaiton.

They'll just wait until you can't hold your eyes up anymore.

it will try like 3 times before requiring a passcode

No. Stop. You are giving a false sense of security, as it seems to me like you're applying US laws to the UK, which is wrong.

In the US, you're correct that giving up a password is something understood to be protected under the 5th Amendment, whereas being forced to unlock by face or fingerprint is not[0].

In the UK, this is not the same. See point 59 of [1]:

> The power to search anything which the person has with them includes the power to search electronic devices, such as mobile phones. The person must provide access to any electronic device to allow for a search to be undertaken, including where access to a device requires the person to unlock a device through application of their thumb or finger, or any other form of access control (e.g. voice or face recognition).

[0] https://www.concordlawschool.edu/blog/constitutional-law/fif...

[1] https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/wp-content/uploads/20...

Unless the parent edited, I don't believe they claimed it wasn't illegal. I mean we're here because the title of the article says as much. But you can pass any law you want, and it'll still be very easy to press a person's finger to a button against their will

Exactly. You can't force a 34 character password out of a human brain if they have the will to refuse. All other means of storing and presenting cryptographic tokens are vulnerable.

I'm wondering if there are similars laws in Germany ? Can you be required to provide password for your mobile phone or computer by German police ? I had the impression that they were more protective of personal informations in Germany but maybe I'm wrong.

Disclaimer: IANAL

In German law you don't have to assist law enforcement in building a case against you, so you don't need to provide passwords or say anything. But you can be forced to unlock your device via biometrics (fingerprint, faceID, etc.).

I'm not sure how it works, when law enforcement calls you as witness. The law changed a few years back, so you are required to assist them, but I'm not sure to which extent.

Searching a phone is not fundamentally different to searching a home or searching a diary. The key difference is that encryption makes it impossible for the police to force their way in (as they would with a physical lock). We can then choose to either make it illegal not to let the police in, or give basically anybody a ‘one weird trick’ to prevent their phone or computer being searched.

Couldn't you have a max attempt lockout set pretty low and keep giving a slightly wrong variation? I mean if you dont remember, you don't remember

Both my laptops and phone I need to be the one actually typing or inputting the code, I know them through muscle memory and get tripped up those few times my laptop ask for my iphone pass code, as an example

According to https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/wp-content/uploads/20... point 59, it's legal for UK authorities to get information from electronic devices, and the device owner must unlock the device for the authorities.

So, in the context of this UK-focused article, you're giving people advice on how to evade a search that, in the UK, is legal.

Instead, I would suggest advocating for UK people and businesses to change the law.

There’s no way the law will be changed. Both major parties support it and have done for decades. Fear and being tough wins votes, and even if it didn’t, what’s the point of being in power if you can’t jail a few dissidents?

The only thing that politicians are afraid of is the media, and British people are sheep who follow the prevailing media narrative. If you want to change the law in Britain: buy a newspaper publisher.

Yes, the Murdoch owned newspapers use moral panic to get these draconian laws passed. And it's been going on for decades. That is how our civil liberties are destroyed here in the UK.

It's an almost symbiotic relationship with the government.

It was more of a question I was curious about, than advice. I see how it could be read as advice. It made think of the ~4 days I was in bed with covid I didn't use my phone at all and the first time I did I kept getting the passcode wrong. Once it got to a high enough number I started to worry I was about to unintentionally erase my phone.

That made me think if I were in that position to hand over or unlock a device, I could imagine the stress of the situation causing errors or even wiping the device. I imagine would be hard to prove intent but probably more difficult to prove it was unintentional as well

I've always felt nervous travelling through the UK, as it always seemed to me to be a place where freedoms are still unsecured, and somehow at the whims of the king (though now the king is replaced by a not-very-representative democracy).

I hope this continues to erode the standing of the UK as a travel destination.

Wonder if at some point all those inconvenient people would simply start falling out of the windows.

UK and EU are laying a lot of stones to become authoritarian in the near future.

What happens when people stop caring about being arrested? Prison is just a room after all.

What if the hardware token isn't where you left it?

Civil law moment

What the fuck. Nobody gets my passwords. I’m not unlocking shit for anyone.

Looks like UK is on the hard avoid list.

I know, I was thinking of going there next year, not now.

If concerned about privacy/security during international travel, a good option is to get a burner phone. A cheap android phone is peanuts.

Give it time. One day people will be arrested at borders for "suspicion that they are travelling with a decoy phone".

“Not having a smart phone” already is a warning sign in some countries.

Yeppppp

https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

>If concerned about privacy/security during international travel, a good option is to get a burner phone. A cheap android phone is peanuts.

Or just a Nandroid[0][1] backup and flashing the stock rom before you go, then restoring upon return.

[0] https://www.howtogeek.com/240582/how-to-back-up-and-restore-...

[1] I don't know if this is possible with Apple phones, as I don't use them. Perhaps someone could elucidate on the viability of this option for iOS devices?

Well shit, this was my reason not to ever visit the US, but I live in Britain so I'm fucked anyway.

I wish I could laugh, seems the US, UK and Australia are in a competition to see who can out do each other.

What is it with English Speaking Countries ? I guess Canada is OK because of Quebec keeps them sane :)

> What is it with English Speaking Countries ?

Legal systems based on common-law?

Canada has the same shit, NZ too.

Apparently not for the Canadian case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#Canada

>In a 2010 Quebec Court of Appeal case the court stated that a password compelled from an individual by law enforcement "is inadmissible and that renders the subsequent seizure of the data unreasonable

Quebec for the win :)

France and Belgium also have similar laws backed by imprisonment

Literally been like this for over 15 years, and people were sent to jail from 2009 onwards because of it

https://www.theregister.com/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl

It's not like Americans never get arrested or even jailed for remaining silent, despite it being protected by the fifth amendment.

The US and UK are more similar than they are different.

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/22/cbp-border-searches-jour...

Who says they're from the US?

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