Brittish teen jailed over encrypted password

http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/10/05/2038219/British-Teen-Jailed-Over-Encryption-Password

Yet, questions about integrity is still the most undermined political question today.

Wow, you almost have me convinced you are an active administrator.

huh, apparently he's arrested for kiddie porn. if you ask me, he might as well give away the password, maybe if he didn't have anything incriminating he wouldn't be in jail.

or maybe he just fancies this would happen to him:

In all honesty, was anyone expecting any different? For the kid, it's a decision whether the repercussions of hiding data from the court of law could be worse than the repercussions of revealing it. It's not right, and totally unfair, but it does make sense from the law's point of view.

Question: Is a "over 50 character key" really necessary for guaranteed protection?

@fuser: no need to post that comic here, it's right at the top of the link in the first post, we are all able to follow that.

@stealth-: what do you mean by "guaranteed protection"? Last I checked, there was no such thing; the only thing to exist is decreasing likelihood.

COM wrote: @stealth-: what do you mean by "guaranteed protection"? Last I checked, there was no such thing; the only thing to exist is decreasing likelihood.

Well, yes you're right, to clarify I was referring to the point at which it would probably take a ridiculous amount of time and/or computing power that the cracking party would simply give up or likely never reach their goal.

The deal isn't about him having child pornography on his hard drive. This wasn't what he was convicted for, it was for the cryptological protection he was using and not giving out his password to access it. There's most likely no proof that the pornographic content was actually stored on his hard drive, unless they scanned his internal IP. Thus, it's a lack of evidence.

@spyware, Hell no. I'm no active administrator. I just like pointing out stupidity in our society.

I think we all understand why he is being held. Not releasing your password, and therefore denying a court order, is just like refusing a search warrant of your house. I'm no law expert, but to me it does make sense that they would charge you for that.

Like I said, it's a shitty situation. :angry:

Proud to be an American… for once. We have this nice thing called the 5th amendment, and there was a case where it had been decided that forcing people to give up a password is the same as forcing them to give evidence that could be used against them. They used to throw them in jail for 6 months, then if they still wouldn't give it up they'd send them back.

most digital laws need to be re-written. nothing new. They can only be written as they come to court too. Some countries data theft isn't considered theft, as long as you leave a copy of the original.

Trying to crack the password? What OS is he using?

I agree with maug.