contempt of court (Re: s/forget passphrase for/cause permanent destruction of/ , Re: Letwin wants increased penalties for refusal to decrypt)

[Adam Back]

Contempt of court is a pernicious concept.

Of course most people are contemptuous of courts -- courts hand out
punishments and edicts which are disconnnected from reality and what
most people consider as just and fair.

Contempt of court ought to be scrapped, people should be considered
innocent until proven guilty.

If the prosecution have no evidence to convict someone, they should be
free to go.  If the prosecution would like some information they think
someone has they will have to persuade him without coercion to hand
over the information (ie no torture, no bogus contempt related
sentences).  In other words they should buy the information or trade
it for something else of value to the owner.  If the person still
chooses not to share the information, well I'd say that's just tough
luck for the prosecution.

Naturally enough I think passwords and keys also are information which
the courts must have no power to coerce from people.

They have no power to make you talk.  (You are free to say "no
comment" in answer to all prosecution questions.)  It used to be that
they couldn' discriminate against you for doing this.  (Then there was
the futher erosion of justice when they eroded the presumptuion of
innocence and allowed the prosecution to take into account that you
had not said anything.)

So if you have some information recorded on a computer encrypted with
a key stored only in your head, by definition the plaintex information
is secret split between the key in your head and the stored
information, one piece of information is useless without the other.  I
think that the key and the encrypted stored information must therefore
all be considered to have equal protection as any other information
you may choose not to share.

Adam

On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 11:30:23AM +0100, Ben Laurie wrote:
> Peter Gutmann wrote:
> > He gave one example where someone was being detained for tax evasion/fraud
> > (depending on your point of view, it was rather murky).  Eventually he told
> > the judge that as his wife was taken care of and his kids were going to the
> > best schools, as far as he was concerned the judge could leave him in maximum
> > security with the mother rapers and father stabbers and mean and nasty and
> > ugly and horrible crime-type guys until he died.  It was only then that the
> > detention officially changed from being a means of persuasion to a punishment,
> > which it wasn't allowed to be, and he was released.
> 
> ISTR they released him in the end because they decided he was telling 
> the truth (i.e. detention was not going to make him talk). That is, the 
> decision was based on cost, not law.