Law enforcement students often ask the question “can I search a locked container?” A better question to ask may be “when can I search a locked container?” The fact that a container is locked may not increase the possessor owner’s expectation of privacy but does limit the law enforcement officer’s access to the secured area. The ability to search a locked container will depend on the justification the law enforcement officer has for intruding into the area. The purpose of this article is to examine the different legal avenues a law enforcement officer can use to search locked containers. ..."
https://www.fletc.gov/sites/default/files/imported_files/tra...
Well, my glove compartment is locked
So is the trunk in the back
And I know my rights, so you gon' need a warrant for that
> And I know my rights, so you go’n need a warrant for that . . . If this Essay serves no other purpose, I hope it serves to debunk, for any readers who persist in believing it, the myth that locking your trunk will keep the cops from searching it. Based on the number of my students who arrived at law school believing that if you lock your trunk and glove compartment, the police will need a warrant to search them, I surmise that it’s even more widespread among the lay public. But it’s completely, 100% wrong.
Caleb Mason, "JAY-Z’S 99 PROBLEMS, VERSE 2: A CLOSE READING WITH FOURTH AMENDMENT GUIDANCE FOR COPS AND PERPS", http://web.archive.org/web/20130216120816/http://slu.edu/Doc...
I'm not sure that's true, the police are authorized to break whatever they need to if you don't assist.
As for combo safes, this seems like a good overview: http://blogs.denverpost.com/crime/2012/01/05/why-criminals-s...
Maybe indefinite detention, and a chance at public attention is better than life in prison as a convicted child molester.
Lets suppose that there is someone motivated enough to distroy you. This people has months to mess with your system and substitute your usual decrypt command with a slightly modified version that 1) decrypts a file as usual when entered the right password and 2) runs a last extra line of code that inserts a child porn image or short video in the file. The timestamp of the decrypted file was changed to now. So you will not suspect that the file has been significatively modified also in the same operation. If the decrypt executable is closed and not easily available to examine... what could you do to prove your innocence?
Is possible for the jury (or the lawyer) to re-encrypt the file again exactly as in the first time to detect if the file was changed?
What does that mean though? obligation is given meaning by the penalty for not complying.
No, they can't. The way it's done is by trying many passwords until the right one is found. Once you have the right password, you can use it to decrypt the drive's contents, but then you are "opening it with the password".
(IIRC, there were some bad "hardware encryption" HDDs where the password wasn't actually used to encrypt the drive's contents, just verified against something in the drive's NVRAM; these can be bypassed. But that's not the case here.)
About those: http://www.h-online.com/security/features/Enclosed-but-not-e...
Sadly the images appear to be not working. But they were very clear: what should have been a point cloud had clear lines.
That you acquire the password in the process of opening it is immaterial.
For example if if there are server logs showing I downloaded illegal files, and there are people who testify that I talked about downloading illegal files, and there is non pre-installed software on my computer that is used for encryption then probably that sequence of random bits is an encrypted file.
Maybe you can't prove it mathematically, but you can prove it legally.
A doubt which you cannot reason away is reasonable, by definition. Therefore it is below the threshold of legal proof.
It is could even be possible, even likely, to create encryption schemes where several different encrypted volumes could share the exact same data blocks using something similar to homomorphic encryption. Which raises and obvious question: If the unlocked drive did not contain the data sought, can we hold someone in contempt after they did what we asked from them simply because we didn't find what we were looking for? Because we truly can't know if there is several encrypted volume in the same space without assumptions about information entropy and inaccessible configuration data.
Thankfully homomorphic encryption is not really practically viable today, so that particularly nasty can of worms is not imminent to solve, but we might be well served to let out decisions be informed by it, as it breaks most assumptions of what can be known, and what can't.
If there is a warrant to search my property, I am obligated to assist if required. E.g. open the gun safe. (Hey, speaking of guns...You know what other antedquated amendment from the Founding Fathers would be really convenient to ignore...)
Now, AFAIK, no one has tested whether that still hold true of a combination safe, where the access substaintivly requires information from the accused.
And a combination safe is very similar to an encrypted drive.