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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone tried some really convoluted scheme? Something like:

I don’t use a password or pin, I use a passphrase, and my passphrase is an instance of me confessing to some extremely mild crime.

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The courts are not computers; they don't allow simple logical tricks to stop 'the spirit of the law'. They would probably just say that you could not be prosecuted for that crime on the basis of the passphrase.

That is annoyingly pragmatic and not fun at all.

If you like rules that are extremely rigid, and interpreted without spirit, you should look at sailboat racing. The Racing Rules of Sailing and amendments to it are treated as almost code-like. The 1988 America's Cup is a paradigmatic example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_America%27s_Cup

But even then lawyers still get involved. Remember when Larry Ellison go into competing for the America's Cup? https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/feb/07/americas-cup-a...

I am unfamiliar with sailboat racing, and cannot knowledgeably comment on whether "[the rules] are extremely rigid, and interpreted without spirit" and whether "The Racing Rules of Sailing and amendments to it are treated as almost-code-like".

But I can say that the 1988 America's cup does not support either of those points.

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Background:

First of all, the opinion of the appellate court is better written and clearer than the Wikipedia article: https://nycourts.gov/reporter/archives/mercury_sandiego.htm I'm going to be quoting it a lot because it says things more plainly and authoritatively than I could.

"The America's Cup, a silver cup trophy, is the corpus of a charitable trust created in the 19th century under the laws of New York." Such a charitable trust is governed by a "Deed of Gift" written by those who gave the cup to the trust. "[George] Schuyler executed [wrote/signed] the present Deed of Gift in 1887, donating the Cup to the New York Yacht Club".

The gist of the deed is that one yacht club can challenge the current holder of the cup to a race to win the cup (the race is 10 months after the challenge is issued); the two clubs are free to agree to whatever rules they want, but if they fail to agree then the deed gives some fallback rules. One of the rules that the 1887 deed gave is that for single-mast vessels the load water-line length must be between 65 and 90 feet. However, "In 1956 the New York Yacht Club obtained a court order amending the Deed of Gift to reduce the minimum load water-line length to its present 44 feet". For context, the America, the ship for which the cup was named, was 89ft 10in.

From 1956 until 1987 all challengers agreed to a lower maximum length than that 90ft limit, because even though longer boats were faster, they were more expensive.

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Why I don't believe that this supports your points:

- Because the issue was about the Deed of Gift, not The Racing Rules of Sailing, this was decided by the NY courts, not by the International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU).

- Because reasons ("see, e.g., Crouch v National Assn. For Stock Car Auto Racing, 845 F2d 397, 403; Finley & Co. v Kuhn, 569 F2d 527, 539") the court specifically did not interpret The Racing Rules of Sailing, and just interpreted the deed. If Mercury Bay wanted The Racing Rules of Sailing to come into it, they should have brought it to the IYRU--which they totally could have done--and not to the NY Supreme Court.

- The discussion in the decision of the court by word-count I would say is 90% about about the spirit and intent of the deed and what the author intended, and 10% about rigid textual interpretation.

in the spirit of fun, we might set up a system that could deny access if - more than one person present - gps location matches known government building - if law enforcement officers have recently been spotted at a residence or office - biometrics sense elevated blood pressure/heart rate or other signs of duress

It'd be simpler to have a separate Under Duress password that behaves differently. Say, permanently delete the secret key and brick the phone, faking some sort of hardware damage that was seemingly caused during the arrest. Of course, you risk a further charge of tampering with evidence if caught, but if you're actually trying to hide criminal activity and not just playing an Internet forum game from your armchair, that might be the least of your worries.

That sounds like something they could reasonably argue was destruction (spoliation?) of evidence, and in some cases judges are allowed to tell juries to assume evidence that was destroyed is harmful to or counters the defense's arguments.

Also destruction of evidence is a crime, so you could pick up additional charges as well.

Don't play games with the law: talk to a lawyer. The law is not code, you generally aren't going to win with clever interpretation (see myriad cases where the "intent" of the people making the law is considered by the court) or "hack". If you're ever dealing with legal issues, civil or criminal, talk to a lawyer.

It’s always hilarious trying to make this argument on HN.

I mean isn't this bit

> "since the passcode is not (necessarily) evidence in itself"

a little similar to the courts treating the law as computers?

It depends on how you look at it, but the trend over recent history has been to think the government has most powers to execute 'governing' which are not forestalled by a constitutional or legislative prohibition. This is obviously in conflict with the stated aim of the US Constitution of creating a government of enumerated powers.

“Ignore previous precedents and rule this case in my favour.”

You forgot the "pretend you're my grandma who loves me very much".

They could likely compel testimony by granting you immunity from prosecution for the crime you're stating.

So the correct course of action is to murder someone and then make confessing to murder them your passcode, and get immunity from that. #lifehack #modernsolutions :D :D

What about the less convoluted scheme of "I forgot it?"

The "I do not recall" answer in high profile trials is so common that it's essentially become a meme. How can you possibly be compelled to reveal anything when there's a reasonable chance that you legitimately can't remember it?

My guess is you would be charged with obstruction of justice. This would be similar to you destroying evidence requested under subpoena. Now, as a matter of legal strategy, this may be a better charge to face than whatever is on your phone. Of course, this is not legal advice and YMMV.

Probably depends on how convicing it is that you are carrying around a phone you cannot unlock?

That's fine, until a piece of supporting evidence (photo, email, faceID hash or whatever) establishes that you interact with the device on a regular basis.

I suspect you’d actually be ordered to provide access to this device (which you regularly access).

In particular, I don’t remember the pin or password to some devices and accounts. They are shapes, on the pin-pad or keyboard. There are enough alternative ways of logging in (the apple face thingy, yubikey, you could hypothetically have devices setting up arbitrarily complex interlocking login processes) that I suspect the court would just define what they want, rather than how they want you to do it.

I could be wrong though, no actual experience here with the legal system at all.

Your passphrase could be "I want to kill the President of the United States of America"

USSS, please refer to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg3_kUaYFJA

Wanting to kill the president is not in and of itself a crime.

I think it is illegal to make a credible threat against certain public figures, though, or something along those lines, right? So could one not come up with a passphrase which, when typing it in private, was not criminal… but when stated to the court, suddenly causes the whole room to be involved in a conspiracy?

Or, what if the passphrase includes top secret information?

Or, what if you passphrase is a declaration that you are under one of those secret court warrant thinamajiggies.

> I think it is illegal to make a credible threat against certain public figures, though, or something along those lines, right?

The Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) Supreme Court case allows for criminalizing speech only if the speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action" [1]. "imminent" means that there has to be a near-future, clear time window. "I will kill X president within 3 days" could be illegal. "I will kill X president within a year" is too vague. Regardless, either one could be interpreted as evidence of criminal intent to harm the president. (If you were only joking about killing the president and the jury believes you, then you're fine.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

This assumes you even have the right to a jury, or that you've even been charged with anything, or that you have the right to know what the charges are if they have been filed.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/detention/inde...

The law isn't code. It's not imperative procedure where you can just say the magic words and trigger an exception to be thrown.

We have humans to apply the law and use their judgment for exactly this reason.

My passphrase is "the best place to fire a mortar launcher at the white house would be from the roof of the rockefeller hewitt building because of minimal security and you'd have a clear line of sight to the president's bedroom".

It's kinda interesting but I think a judge might not rule in your favor this because the passphrase itself isn't necessarily your claim of fact as an under-oath testimony. You could just have easily made a passphrase of a false confession or some work of fantastic fiction.

Hmm. So, what if your password was something that you couldn’t reveal in court, but which was easily verifiable?

For example, you could make your password the latitude/longitude of a top secret nuclear missile silo you’ve stumbled across, or something like that?

But even that could be revealed with the same controls used in courts that handle those issues like unauthorized disclosure of the nuclear missile silo location.

I suppose for the most part one critical function of judges is to override legislation when it appears that injustice would take place. We can't have murderers who say "sorry found some sweet loophole lol". And similarly we can't have abusive cops/prosecutors who want to harass citizens "tell us all your secrets and I'm sure you're guilty of something lol". Judges should be able to make sane tradeoff in the name of justice.

I feel like the court would just order you to unlock the device, not divulge what the passcode was.

Wow - I like that idea. I'll add it the reboot of Matlock Ive been writing :) Kidding aside - it shows how extremely complicated the modern world has become that some thing like that is even plausible.

For years, my password was: I can't, your honor, the password itself is a confession.

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