[bochen280]

I'm being wrongfully charged with a crime by the Addison PD in Dallas county for merely using encryption (TrueCrypt) on a work computer even though after I was abruptly terminated on false allegations of theft and after I was coerced into writing a check to the owner, the police later came back and said it was a crime to use encryption, even after I already offered and the police agreed to give me the chance to unlock it for the owner. This can't be right. Please see if you can link to it as an article or something to get this publicity and warn other people that something so innocent could get them in so much trouble in our police state!

http://www.innocentbeyondareasonabledoubt.com

[wallythacker]

What do you want from us?

Advice?

Money?

What?

[SeaGypsy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4R1EAFTWqY

[Keith_McClary]

I don't know what to say, there are so many whacko laws in some countries. It's the Totalitarian Principle:
"Everything that is not is prohibited is compulsory."

So if someone in a position of power wants to "get" you, the law is on their side.

Constitutions don't place much limits on what can be decreed a crime.

[SeaGypsy]

Something fishy about Bo's story here. He's certainly not telling us everything before asking for help. Since when is free legal advice part of what this site is for? Using encryption on someone else's computer is suspicious. Using it on a work computer without specific permission is probably at least a breach of employment contract, without reading your employment contract this would be impossible to know. Then the worksite's non specific and specific Policy and Procedure, protocols documents. Without all of this it's fantasy land to think anyone here can give proper advice. You need a lawyer- suck it up tough guy.

[Pops]

If you use privacy tools, according to the apparent logic of the National Security Agency, it doesn’t much matter if you’re a foreigner or an American: Your communications are subject to an extra dose of surveillance.

... according to a document signed by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and published Thursday by the Guardian, it seems the NSA is allowed to make ambiguous exceptions for a laundry list of data it gathers from Internet and phone companies. One of those exceptions applies specifically to encrypted information, allowing it to gather the data regardless of its U.S. or foreign origin and to hold it for as long as it takes to crack the data’s privacy protections.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenbe ... -crack-it/

the Times writes that the “full extent of the N.S.A.’s decoding capabilities is known only to a limited group of top analysts from the so-called Five Eyes: the N.S.A. and its counterparts in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” But it deploys “custom-built, superfast computers to break codes,” and it works with “technology companies in the United States and abroad to build entry points into their products.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/e ... ption.html


So, the moral is: don't use encryption, it makes you a target and it's useless anyway.

[SeaGypsy]

Even more so at work, on a work computer, owned by your work.

I'm thinking of another parallel involving a work car as an example. Say you are trusted to use this car, but just in case- the boss has fitted some nifty devices to ensure employees honesty with it's use. An employee disables what s/he thinks is the only device/s and does a sneaky weekend trip to the snow- in violation of terms of contract. As returned to garage, the monitoring device is turned back on and the employee sleeps soundly, dreaming of shredding the alps. Weeks go by, the employee is sure all is fine and is planning another sneak, maybe aspring fishing trip- meanwhile the vehicle goes in for service. The mechanic notifies the employer that another, better hidden monitoring device has detected some anomalies. The employee is given a please explain, tries to bluff out, ..... get the picture?

[ColossalContrarian]

My work makes me and everyone else I work with who has a laptop use encryption on our laptops. I know a lot of people brag about cracking encryption but honestly it would take so much work it probably wouldn't be worth it. We use TrueCrypt also. Our work phones can be whipped remotely as long as they are on and have cell signal. There is nothing illegal about it because they are not our computers but company computers. I imagine what would be against the law is if we used our computer to commit a crime and the evidence was encrypted. If we were to interfere with an investigation and not give up access to our files we could be prosecuted so I imagine that the encryption isn't illegal but the fact that BO isn't giving up access to the data is what is illegal because it is hampering an investigation.

[lowem]

Odd attitude on your side. Here it's official policy to use encryption. Wouldn't do to have loose laptops lying around with classified material inside, yes?

Even before the policy became official, internally some of the folks on my side were already doing either full disk or at a minimum volume encryption on our work laptops with Truecrypt and encouraging others to do so. Especially after seeing all the news pieces that were coming up about people losing laptops containing thousands of govt documents, social security numbers and all.

[SeaGypsy]

If you took the time to read the OP's links- he was holding encryption keys for his work computer and there was a dispute of some sort about access. A company or departmental protocol requiring encryption will also include who holds the key- which won't be at the sole discretion of the employee- is my bet anyhow.

[lowem]

Yup, that's probably one of the issues that corporate types might have with TC - you hold your own keys / passphrase. Which could be a problem if you quit and nobody else has access to certain business critical data.

But then if that is the issue then there's something wrong elsewhere, the question becomes, why is there only one copy of business critical data residing only on a certain laptop, that is not backed up and recoverable elsewhere?