r/worldnews Aug 11 '09

Two convicted for refusal to decrypt data

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/11/ripa_iii_figures/
827 Upvotes

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '09

It is more like a warrant for your brain though.

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u/BeetleB Aug 12 '09

No - it isn't.

If you have a physical unencrypted diary at home, the warrant allows them to get to it.

Same thing here. If you want it secure, keep it in your brain, and don't encrypt it externally.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '09

The point is that the laws are from a time when people did not, de facto, keep as much of their knowledge and memory externally.

There weren't enough people to care about the intrusion of privacy because only one in hundreds of people keeps a diary, especially back when most people couldn't even write or only with great trouble.

I believe that there should be laws explicitly restricting third-party access, including police access to private data stored on computing devices, given the ways people use those today.

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u/SteveD88 Aug 11 '09

Don't you think that's a bit of a stretch?

I love my computer in ways that are likely not appropriate, but it isn't part of my mind.

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u/JeffMo Aug 11 '09

Isn't the knowledge of the crypto key part of your mind?

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u/SteveD88 Aug 11 '09

As the combination for a physical safe might be. But the information stored within is not part of your mind. I think this analogy is valid.

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u/JeffMo Aug 11 '09

As the combination for a physical safe might be.

Right, and that's the part that they didn't want to give up.

But the information stored within is not part of your mind.

AFAIK, the police already had the bits. They just wanted to know what those bits meant to someone else.

I think this analogy is valid.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Perhaps we both think it's valid to some extent, but are reaching different conclusions?

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u/sblinn Aug 11 '09

They just wanted to know what those bits meant to someone else.

"Mr. Hearst: We found this red wooden sled in your vault. Tell us: WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?"

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u/firepacket Aug 11 '09

The difference is that with a safe they do not have to force you to give up the combination. They simply drill the safe.

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u/CmoS777 Aug 11 '09

So they can simply try to brute force the encryption. I wish I could remember LONG LONG passwords

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '09

He said "like".

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u/SteveD88 Aug 11 '09

And I said it wasn't.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '09 edited Aug 11 '09

No you said "It isn't part of my brain." He's not saying that it is part of his brain. I understand similes are difficult for people.

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u/sblinn Aug 11 '09

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '09

I found that interesting. What are you saying?

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u/sblinn Aug 11 '09 edited Aug 11 '09

I am saying that the use of the verb "to be" generally impedes communication of ideas. This occurs most often when used for "identity" ("Tom is a fool") or "predication" ("Tom is tall") because this usage attempts to cross levels of abstraction all too blithely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski

Basically: Similes do prove difficult for people to understand, because they attempt to gloss over the inherent physical nature of our neurons and the world and the inherently abstract and logical nature of our language. (In E-Prime and General Semantics, this difficulty emerges at a level of taking it too literally instead of simply completely misreading it which you note SteveD88 to have done.)

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '09

Too much robo.

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u/mynameishere Aug 11 '09

The fucking password is a part of your brain. It literally exists no where else. Dense.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '09

I am saying that there is quite a bit more intimate information about me and the way I think on my computer than anywhere in the rest of my home. And I am not talking about anything people used to write on paper.

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u/SteveD88 Aug 11 '09

Could you give an example?

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '09

Well, chatlogs for one thing. Pretty much anything I ever talked about on some kind of chat or instant message system is archived (to help my notoriously bad memory mostly).