Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: doublebass69 on December 10, 2012, 07:06 am
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I'm increasing my security measures this week, formatting all drives, true crypting them, and then using a darknet virtual machine usb.
But my question is when i'm using true crypt do I really need to make hidden operating systems or volumes to provide plausible deniablity?
It seems like in the USA I would never be forced to reveal a password. Please let me know, Thank you :).
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Short answer, no, as an American you don't need to make a hidden volume.
Long answer:
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects witnesses from being forced to incriminate themselves, and there is currently no law regarding key disclosure in the United States. However, the federal case In re Boucher may be influential as case law. In this case, a man's laptop was inspected by customs agents and child pornography was discovered. The device was seized and powered-down, at which point disk encryption technology made the evidence unavailable. The judge argued that since the content had already been seen by the customs agents, Boucher's encryption password "adds little or nothing to the sum total of the Government's information about the existence and location of files that may contain incriminating information." [18]
In another case, an district court judge ordered a Colorado woman to decrypt her laptop so prosecutors can use the files against her in a criminal case: “I conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ruled on January 23, 2012. [19]
In United States v. Doe, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on 24 February 2012 that forcing the decryption of one's laptop violates the Fifth Amendment. [20][21]
The difference between the two rulings is in previous cases, the courts have held that when the government already knows of the existence of specific incriminating files, compelling a suspect to produce them does not violate the Fifth Amendment's rule against self-incrimination. On the other hand, if the government merely suspects that an encrypted hard drive contains some incriminating documents, but lacks independent evidence for the existence of specific documents, then the owner of the hard drive is entitled to invoke the Fifth Amendment.
In the Colorado case, the police had intercepted a telephone conversation in which the defendant, Ramona Fricosu, acknowledged her ownership of the laptop and alluded to the existence of incriminating documents in the encrypted portions of the hard drive. The government successfully argued that this precluded her from claiming Fifth Amendment protection, since she had already acknowledged the existence of incriminating documents in the case. The Tenth Circuit let that decision stand, though it may consider the issue again later in the process. In the Florida case, on the other hand, the government lacked any specific evidence about the contents of the encrypted hard drives. A forensic expert acknowledged it was theoretically possible that the drives, which were encrypted using TrueCrypt, could be completely empty. Hence, forcing the suspect to decrypt the drive would be forcing him to reveal whether any relevant documents exist, which would be inherently incriminating.
From clearnet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_States
tl;dr As long as you aren't caught admitting that your encrypted files contain incriminating evidence relevant to an investigation, you don't have to give up the key. (And frankly I'd like to see what would happen if the Colorado woman still refused to produce her password. She has to give it up simply because they think it would incriminate her? Sounds fishy, but IANAL.)
The sad thing is that the vast majority of Americans don't know these tools exist and wouldn't have any faith in them if they did know. Then again, the vast majority of Americans aren't ordering black tar heroin online. But they should know how to cover their tracks if they do!
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thanks for the reply thats all the info i needed
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Ya thanks, I enjoyed your reply too.
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Glad my copypasta could help!
For non-Americans, there's plenty of info about key disclosure laws in other countries in the wiki article. (Sucks not to have Fifth Amendment protections! Though you're probably less likely to have your dog shot during a paramilitary raid over a dozen pot plants, so it kinda balances out.)