Legal compulsion and self-incriminating passphrase

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 11:16 7/07/1998 +0100, Caspar Bowden wrote:

[snip]

>If it is the case (or claimed by the defendant) that the passphrase is a
>(true) confession to a crime, would this invoke any protection against
>self-incrimination under UK law? The difficult case is when the crime of
>which the prosecution seeks evidence in the encrypted data, is much more
>serious than the crime confessed to in the passphrase (e.g. "I dropped
>litter in Trafalgar Square on dd/mm/yy").
>
>Does the relative seriousness of the crimes make any difference ?

If this were found to work (and it might), it would not be for long.  When
the anti-piracy forces began to make inroads into software piracy through
the use of "Anton Piller" orders (injunctions compelling the defendant to
give immediate access to premises to enable pirate software to be seized
and catalogued, and to give information on oath about sources of supply and
customers), defendants began to find offences which such orders would force
themselves to incriminate themselves of.  When this stratagem was held
valid by the House of Lords, legislation followed to provide an exception.
(I cannot recall the details, which would need some research.)

Bearing in mind that this was in aid of private rights enforcers, action in
support of government access might not wait for an appeal to the House of
Lords.

Ross Anderson's plausibly deniable file system is what we need.

	Regards,

		Nicholas Bohm

Salkyns, Great Canfield,
Takeley, Bishop's Stortford CM22 6SX, UK

Phone		01279 870285	(+44 1279 870285)
Fax		01279 870215	(+44 1279 870215)
Mobile   	0860 636749  	(+44 860 636749)

PGP RSA 1024 bit public key ID: 0x08340015.  Fingerprint:
9E 15 FB 2A 54 96 24 37  98 A2 E0 D1 34 13 48 07
PGP DSS/DH 1024/3072 public key ID: 0x899DD7FF.  Fingerprint:
5248 1320 B42E 84FC 1E8B  A9E6 0912 AE66 899D D7FF