Re:Irish police to be given powers over passwords
by bccdee on Wednesday June 16, 2021 @12:50AM
(#27525040)
An unreasonable adversary, such as a terrorist group or something, could plausibly do that. But the legal system has things like the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of guilt. If the court finds encryption headers on your disk, they've got evidence beyond reasonable doubt that there's encrypted data on it. If there's only noise, it's totally plausible that it's just a spare usb stick, especially if you consistently wipe your unused disks and don't just have one conspicuous disk full of noise.
Re:Irish police to be given powers over passwords
by brokenmachine on Wednesday June 16, 2021 @02:52AM
(#27525629)
>If the court finds encryption headers on your disk
Encryption with plausible deniability will not have readable headers. It will appear to be completely random data.
Re:Irish police to be given powers over passwords
by bccdee on Wednesday June 16, 2021 @04:34PM
(#27533164)
Yeah, that's my point. A proper plausibly-deniable system will be indistinguishable from a disk which has been wiped, to the point that no court can reasonably accuse you of hiding files on it.
You're creating a situation where you have a set of encrypted and non-encrypted devices that are indistinguishable, and expecting the police to let you off. But there's nothing stopping someone with only encrypted devices to claim the same thing. I'd be worried that approach would fail either by 1) the police calling your bluff, or 2) indefinitely holding you in jail for contempt of court until you decrypt a drive that has un-decryptable random data.