The justice system is not intended to offer guidance to the moronic or
rehabilitation for the deviant.
It should.
Simply put, ignorance of the law is
not an excuse and knowingly covering up any crime, is a furtherance of
a criminal act--a crime.
What if the encryption is not specific to the crime. for example, if someone
operates with full-disk encryption, are they then furthering a crime by storing
data about a crime on that drive? What if they use Windows 2000 Encrypted
Filesystem. What if they use always-encrypted email like hushmail and happened
to once send a mail that might be considered evidice of a crime?
Then again, what if you don't have the passphrase? Is it a crime to withold
the passphrase? If someone is convicted of a crime and refuse to say anything,
that's a constitutional right... except if it's a passphrase?
there are too many holes in the concept for me to support this type of thing,
despite your rhetoric about "save the children" which is approaching academic
dishonesty as an automatic "shut down the argument" phrase because it riles
people when you say "I disagree".
Putting cameras in all private spaces and GPS tracking on all children would
catch pedophiles too. Think of the children.
Those who prey on children for pleasure,
pedophiles, are considered especially heinous because such acts lead
to the devolution of society and in effect cannibalization of one's
young.
I agree, however back to our rehabilitation and protection, I'm absolutely not
an expert on this, but I recall this discussion on slashdot and a lot of
numbers being thrown around. But there was only one really in depth study I
saw regarding sex offender recividism. Here it is (I had to go dig through my
slashdot posting history to find it):
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/rsorp94.pdf
According this study from the United States Department of Justice, Sex
offenders are the least likely category of all classes of criminals to be
rearrested and reconvicted. They have the lowest re-conviction percentage (in
terms of arrests) and are also the least likely to be reconvicted for the same
crime as they were previously. Like I said, I'm not an expert, but am
regurgitating the conclusions i drew from a discussion with a number of
seemingly more knowledgable people.
I understand that any re-conviction is a bad thing, but I also recognize that
putting hundreds of thousands of people in prison for extended periods is
socially destructive as well. Our arrest rates have been accelerating linearly
for the last 40 years. If the rate continues, more than 15% of the US
population will be in prision by 2050. Pedophiles and terrorists are a
convienant extreme case, but laws should be made also considering borderline
and minor cases, not just the most extreme murder-abduction-rape-bombing.
Violent crime in the US is down by 50% since the 1970s you know. Sexual
assault is down by over 100% IIRC, despite media claims otherwise and high
profile cases everywhere. But the hysteria surrounding it is reaching new
heights, which I attribute to media saturation. Frankly, one article I read
said that the incidence of sexual assault isn't down, but reporting of it is
down because the penalties are so severe, people shy away from reporting all
but extreme cases.
Call me crazy, i've heard it before. .
And thanks to the number of people who have emailed me privately with words of
encouragement and agreement.
Eric
Hagen, Eric wrote:
I am firmly of the belief that it is a corruption of justice to
use the judicial system to seek revenge, or "provide closure" for
a victim's family.
It is intended to offer guidance, rehabilitation and in the worst
cases (like this one) to remove the offender from the public.
I have been close friend to a victim of a very nasty case of a
similar nature, but i stand firm by my belief that this is not the
way it should be regarded.
For the benefit of the list (being technical in nature), I propose
we wrap up this discussion as it is a philosophical disagreement
rather than a technical one. I think making encryption a crime,
regardless of the circumstances is contrary to civiand often done
for the wrong reasons and I'll leave it at that.
Eric
PS smart criminals store their information in a hidden partition
and get around this whole thing.... and we're back to "minor"
crimials getting tagged... or so the theory goes.
On 10/19/06, Hagen, Eric <hagene@denvernewspaperagency.com> wrote:
How about if you cleaned up the scene of a crime so that it was
nearly impossible to identify you as the culprit? Should this be
prosecutable? You were using gloves and a mop to attempt to cover
up misdeeds. Is this a crime? Should it be a crime? How does
encryption differ?
No, it is very different. In this case a pedophile is using
encryption
to illegally hold back information from the law enforcement
agencies -
the information that can be used to solve several crimes and bring
closure to victim's families. What you are talking about is
completely
off-topic.
What I am talking about is when a criminal is "already convicted" the
DA can make deals with the pedophile in exchange of leniency in
sentencing. My proposal give more leverage to the office of DA to
make these kinds of deals.
If you are the family of a victim wouldn't you want to some kind of
closure even if the pedophile is already behind bars for a different
case?
Remember:
"The art of policing is, in order not to punish often, to punish
severely"
--
Saqib Ali, CISSP, ISSAP
http://www.full-disk-encryption.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is sponsored by: Norwich University
EARN A MASTER OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION ASSURANCE - ONLINE
The NSA has designated Norwich University a center of Academic Excellence
in Information Security. Our program offers unparalleled Infosec management
education and the case study affords you unmatched consulting experience.
Using interactive e-Learning technology, you can earn this esteemed degree,
without disrupting your career or home life.
http://www.msia.norwich.edu/secfocus
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is sponsored by: Norwich University
EARN A MASTER OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION ASSURANCE - ONLINE
The NSA has designated Norwich University a center of Academic Excellence
in Information Security. Our program offers unparalleled Infosec management
education and the case study affords you unmatched consulting experience.
Using interactive e-Learning technology, you can earn this esteemed degree,
without disrupting your career or home life.
http://www.msia.norwich.edu/secfocus
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
