It's true, encryption doesn't remove this ability. The reality is that the Constitution never provides this ability in the first place, and specifically prevents the government from passing any law that would provide this ability.
Refusing to testify against yourself (without a grant of immunity, anyway) is not a crime, it's your right.
So when they find a drive that passes the Chi^2 randomness test they know there has to be encrypted data on there, so you give them the key and they decrypt the outer ring (which contains nothing important). At that point they're stuck. They suspect there's got to be more to it, but they can't point to anything and say "decrypt this!", because there isn't anything to point to. So technically, they have to let you go. Or so I heard.
I remember hearing about this being used as a justification by a judge in a case relating to encryption. It's just sad that most cases involving encryption / computer crimes are related to child porn charges so people are more worried about punishing the person than they are about protecting the rights of everyone that is brought into the court system.
- a news organization
- matters of public interest
involved?
The iPhone will come out in July (or whenever) irrespective of you knowing two months in advance its specs. Nothing changes. Nothing will be hidden. There is no "public interest". It's just idle curiosity, and it's not journalism to pander to it to the extent of participating in a very dodgy transaction.
I personally don't agree with this, and you may not either, but that doesn't matter.
Reference? The ones I have been aware of have been very narrow, and there have been many public cases of the opposite (such as the recent Max Mosley case in the UK).
Generally the law seems to take a line similar to that of Wikipedia - that "public interest" means "general welfare". Note that this does not mean you can't publish details about the sex lives of celebrities, but you can't use public interest as a defense if you have participated in a crime to do so.
But it would be hard to argue that this story was presented with the aim of improving the public welfare, as you might if the contents of some confidential government documents were reported or publicized.
To me, the point of this law is that the finder's-keepers attitude is encouraging theft. I think "I found it" is a common alibi for theft. If you get rid of that alibi (which doesn't harm people who would return the items) then you discourage actual theft by making it harder to buy and sell.
The only people who are inconvenienced are those who truly did find an item and keep it. There's an exemption for items of small value so as not to burden those people too much. That's just my view of it.
Gizmodo never disputed that the phone was Apple's property and they returned it to Apple as soon as Apple claimed it. If Gizmodo physically damaged the phone they should be responsible for the damage caused to the device.
I actually don't see a huge problem if I lose my phone, someone else pays $5000 to the finder and then turns around and returns it to me when I demonstrate that it is mine.
Taking photos of the device isn't the issue. Anyone could easily have taken a photo of the phone at the bar. If you are saying the visual appearance of the product is a trade secret then it should not be paraded about in public by employees.
What if it's about one company illegally obtaining the trade secrets of another and then releasing that trade secret to a global media?
The whole thing smelled fishy to begin with. I honestly can't say what I believe. However, if this was some kind of setup and they find evidence that Gizmodo intended to steal that prototype then that would definitely explain the police raid.