Re: rhetorical trickery

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

>> >> but I have a question: how did they know it was his diary?
>> >
>> >If I remember some earlier discussion about that case from a few years
>> >ago, the file was called "diary.pgp".
>> 
>> how did they know it was *his* diary?
>
>Well, nobody *knows*. But if you've got a file called diary.pgp on 
>your hard drive, chances are it's a diary of some sort. It's a 
>reasonable guess.
>
>Whether there's anything incriminating in it for him or anyone else 
>is another matter, of course.

all my respondents seem to be missing some basic points I have been
trying to make about law enforcement in the US.

the law runs on proof, and evidence. a file with the name "diary.pgp"
is not incriminating. it is not evidence. no one could be prosecuted
as a criminal for having a diary. there is the presumption of innocence
unless there is evidence and proof to the contrary. 

furthermore, suppose
the "pedophile" is actually prosecuted successfully. does that mean
the diary was incriminating? no, it does not. in the CA case it happened
that the pedophile was prosecuted without decrypting the diary. which
in fact argues in favor of the side that says, "cryptography is not
the end of law enforcement, and this case proves it."

as packwood demonstrates, it is easy to have a diary that one would 
want to encode to hide embarrassing information that is not 
necessarily incriminating.

now, a person might be successfully prosecuted for obstruction of
justice, or contempt of court, in refusing to hand over the 
decrypted diary (but the other post I made about giving the federal
agents a key that decrypts the file to a cookie recipe handles this
quite nicely).

somebody-or-other objected that the police are not likely to "buy
it" if such a situation occurs.

well, excuse me, but WHAT IS YOUR POINT? are you suggesting that they
are now going to have to resort to torture or something to elicit
the real key? last I checked, torture was illegal in our country...

please, will people stop sending me responses like the above? do you
understand how the American legal system works? a person cannot
be prosecuted without evidence. evidence cannot be illegally obtained.
a person is not required to testify against oneself.  these are all
basic long-established cornerstones of our legal system.

look, if someone WANTS to be put in jail for having encrypted files,
I'm sure you can probably figure out some way to pull it off. but
if you don't act like an idiot, such a thing is highly unlikely. it
clearly has not happened to date.

I am really amazed at all the times when I point out basic limitations
on e.g. the NSA or the law enforcement agencies, and somebody says, well
yes BUT so-and-so hypothetical situation might arise. it is almost as
if some people here have a secret "prosecute me" wish. why is there
such deep fear around here about life in the US today? I'd say 
that people here are high up on the list of creating the paranoia.
be careful what you fear, you might get it.