[950] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Undecrypted cyphertext (was: Re: Dorothy and the four Horseman)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sinster@darkwater.com)
Fri Jun 6 16:04:39 1997
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 12:39:52 -0700 (PDT)
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: sinster@darkwater.com
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Someone asked about the legal difference between undecrypted cyphertext and
an incriminating conversation that the cops failed to record.
The only real difference between the two is that undecrypted cyphertext
gives the cops something to point to to say, "Something happened." It
also gives the cops an approximate measure of the length of the message.
Unless the prosecutor thinks up a really funky case, neither of these
bits of info are useful in court, but they do help to cops to narrow their
investigation. Luckily, the unencrypted cyphertext is all that they have:
the courts have already ruled that a defendant can refuse to hand over
their cryptographic keys on 5th amendment grounds. Now that doesn't
necessarily equate to refusing to decrypt cyphertext, but I think that
would be easy to argue without even delving into technical arguments. An
unrecorded conversation, on the other hand, gives no information to the
cops: it doesn't even tell them that a conversation occurred.
Now this can all change if the _use_ of crypto by joe blow becomes illegal.
Then having the cyphertext itself is all that the cops need for a conviction:
Prosecutor: Are you currently engaged in business with the US
government?
Defendant: No.
Prosecutor: Do you use email?
Defendant: Yes.
Prosecutor: What is your email address?
Defendant: flunky@independant.org
Prosecutor: If it please the court, I submit into evidence exhibit
A, an email message containing cryptographically protected
text, which nevertheless does not hide the sender of the
message.
<hands email to defendant>
Would you please tell us who this email says it is from?
Defendant: Uhh. flunky@independant.org, but--
Prosecutor: -- so you see that this email message, containing
cryptographic text, was, by the defendant's own testimony,
sent by the defendant to bigboss@mafia.org. Is there
any more clear evidence of criminal wrongdoing? Can he
have any more clearly incriminated himself?
We all know that that email could easily have been forged, but if the
defendant's lawyer doesn't know enough to bring it up, the defendant
is screwed.
- --
John Paul Nollman ne' Darren Senn sinster@darkwater.com
POBox 64132, Sunnyvale, CA, USA 94088-4132
Unsolicited commercial email will be archived at $1/byte/day.
Congratulations FBI men: Hoover would be proud of you
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