Encrypted Laptop Poses Legal Dilemma
February 8th, 2008 By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press Writer(AP) -- When Sebastien Boucher stopped at the U.S.-Canadian border, agents who inspected his laptop said they found files containing child pornography. But when they tried to examine the images after his arrest, authorities were stymied by a password-protected encryption program.
Content from The Associated Press expires 15 days after original publication date. For more information about The Associated Press, please visit www.ap.org .
Similar stories from PHYSorg:
Australia says Web blacklist combats child porn
Mar 27, 2009 |
2.7 / 5 (3) |
6
You can childproof your computer
Feb 27, 2009 |
4 / 5 (2) |
1
Hitachi Ships Quarter-terabyte Laptop Hard Drive
Jun 05, 2007 |
3.4 / 5 (10) |
0
New Opera technology allows simple content sharing
Jun 16, 2009 |
4.7 / 5 (3) |
1
Tunnel vision: Border Patrol agents to spot tunnels with advanced ground-penetrating radar
Jun 29, 2009 |
3.5 / 5 (2) |
2
And even if they could break this guy's encryption, that would only delay the question. Eventually we'll start using Quantum Encryption, and while I haven't actually checked into that, I've heard it's unbreakable with the key.
So better to deal with this issue now, before it reaches a critical level.
My thought experiment here is: If your house contained incriminating material and it was completely impregnable and could only be entered by a code that only you knew, could you be compelled to tell the code?
Even with a modest encryption algorithm that could take decades using brute force. It's nearly trivial to extend old algorithms to larger keys; nothing short of a quantum computer or finding a significant weakness in the algorithm could hope to do anything about it.
Flops are floating point operations. Integer math is used for the vast majority of encryption schemes and floating point performance is of no consequence.
(regardless of the contents)
This case is very interesting.
The devious and evil trick going on here is the attempt to win support for this level of intrusion on the basis that, for the moment, it's for a cause we all support (the prevention of child abuse or the identification of "the evil terrrrists"); but once you've granted the bastards access for that purpose, they automatically have access for all other purposes. Those stupid enough to believe that's a good idea deserve what is coming to them at a gulag near you...
No 5th here,if you stay silent you are presumed guilty.If the police latch onto you our sniveling government will keep changing the law until you are guilty of something,all condoned by the European Court of Civil Rights(?)
Roll on becoming the 51st State.