Man imprisoned for not giving police password.

NickM said:
I agree! Do we have a jury selection process in this country, where prosecution/defence can object to jurors? If so he'd be kicked off straight away (I'd hope).



Admittedly I don't know the specifics of the case but if he had then there would be some ACTUAL EVIDENCE and they wouldn't need his decryption key..
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I don't follow sorry. He may be guilty, he may not however something has triggered the investigation, possibly server logs etc... but they need his PC for it to fully stand up in court.

It's possible he's innocent, it's not for me to say. I know I am and would prove it happily if required.
 
Captain_Slick said:
The police don't need a warrant to search premises and seize items and belongings, just the authority of an inspector.
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Only post arrest and if the inspector is satisfied as to the reasons for the search then Sec 18 of PACE kicks in. You can do this without written authority if the presence of the arrestee is neccessary for the effective investigation of the offence.

You can search a premises under Section 32 of the same act if you arrest someone at a premises and you believe items linked to the offence may be there but no inspectors authority is required.

No items of legal priviledge can be seized.
 
Masterdog said:
Simply not true. Of course it's the police's job to see justice served. They don't want to convict an innocent person any more than anyone else does. This thread has taken a turn for the paranoid.
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I've seen first hand, when the Police/CPS are trying to get an innocent man convicted of something he didn't do. I was smack bang in the middle of the incident and probably had the best view of what actually happened.

I was shocked that he was charged for what he was charged with, given that he did not commit the crime. Until that point I honestly believed that only the guilty get charged. After that case, my eyes were opened.

There are many people who believe that the Police/CPS can do no wrong. My own experience tells me otherwise.
 
ecksmen said:
I don't follow sorry. He may be guilty, he may not however something has triggered the investigation, possibly server logs etc... but they need his PC for it to fully stand up in court.

It's possible he's innocent, it's not for me to say. I know I am and would prove it happily if required.
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I may have misunderstood your post, I was referring to the first half where you said if he had done something to (ie abused) someone you know then people might have a different view. My point was if he had done something to someone you know then there would be other evidence and they wouldn't need his decryption key.
 
sunama said:
I've seen first hand, when the Police/CPS are trying to get an innocent man convicted of something he didn't do. I was smack bang in the middle of the incident and probably had the best view of what actually happened.
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Can you elaborate ? I have submitted countless files to the CPS over the years yet not once have I or the Crown prosecutor been in cahoots to convict an innocent man.

Firstly, I am an honest lad. Secondly there is the small matter of sleeping at night knowing you have fitted someone up then you have the thorny issues of perverting the course of justice, misconduct in a public office and perjuring yourself when lying at court to fit said innocent man up.

I would jack the whole job in if it were the norm and wouldn't think twice about shopping someone who did it.

Did you just stand by while the CPS and police did this or did you do anything about it ?

sunama said:
What does that mean?
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Solicitors letters, legal documents, that sort of thing.
 
gambitt said:
Like sunama says, you may be innocent of the original alleged offence but if they can't "do you" for that they will try to find something else to charge you with. Obviously this isn't always the case but I have also experienced this first hand when the police tried to give me a Police Caution for something I did not do.
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To receive a Caution for an offence, you have to admit it. You cannot be Cautioned if you deny the offence in any way shape or form.
 
I swear to you that a DS tried to "sell me" a caution for something I didn't do. Some of my associates (now ex) were guilty of said crime and signed a caution. They have since dropped the case (if dropped is the correct term) for the rest of us. As you know not all evidence is presented to the person unless it goes to trial so I'm not sure if one of the others had named me in their interview or not, I guess I'll never know.

Either way, he was clearly trying it on. He told me if I didn't accept a caution then I WILL be charged and I "won't be able to get a job WHEN I have a conviction for fraud" (his exact words). He tried to play it down but given that I have to go through enhanced CRB checks for the contracts I do then that would've stuffed me as well - he failed to mention this and tried to play down a caution as no big deal and a cheap way to make all of it go away.

Andy90 said:
To receive a Caution for an offence, you have to admit it. You cannot be Cautioned if you deny the offence in any way shape or form.
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Exactly. He wanted me to sign a confession or admit it in another interview according to my solicitor. I told him to shove it (more politely though ;))
 
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Von Smallhausen said:
Did you just stand by while the CPS and police did this or did you do anything about it ?
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The incident happened. I gave my statement to the Police. Months later, I received a letter stating that I was required to appear in court as a witness. I also looked at the charge against the accused and knew he was not guilty.

What did I do? I went in court and gave an honest testimony of what I saw. I also stated that from what I saw on the day, I believed that the accused was not guilty. I knew this because I was probably the only person who saw the entire incident occur, at such close proximity to the accused, while he was alleged to have committed the offence.

Ever since that day, I realised that the Police/CPS are there to charge someone of whatever they think can stick...irrespective of whether or not the accused is actually guilty.

I've also seen another case, which involved a good friend of mine. He was charged with 5 offences. We are fairly close, and he told me that he was not guilty of 4 of those offences. The case went to court. He plead guilty to the offence he was guilty of. He plead not guilty to the offence he was not guilty of. The final result:

Number of offences charged: 5
Number of offences actually guilty of: 1
Number of offences found guilty: 1

80% of the offences which the CPS charged him with, were incorrect. This is scandalous.

Justice was served, but I have no trust in the Police or the CPS (especially), who will do their best to charge you with as many offences as they can get away with.
 
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gambitt said:
He wanted me to sign a confession or admit it in another interview according to my solicitor.
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This is what I'm trying to say: the Police are there to try their best to pin as many offences on you as possible. Whether you committed the crime or not, they will do their best to persuade you that it is in your best interest to admit to the crime.

The best thing anybody can do is if questioned by the Police, keep their mouth shut and only give an interview in the presence of their solicitor. Even if you have nothing to hide its best to keep quiet, as anything you say can be twisted and possibly used against you. As I stated in my earlier post, the CPS will stop at nothing to charge you with something you haven't done. They will charge you and then hope for the best.
 
Energize said:
Yeah, the forgotten password thing is not really believable for an encrypted hard drive.
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what if its an encrypted drive, say a usb one..

they try and get and get you for something and fail (maybe you never did anything jsut you cc was stolen and used to access a kid porn site)

they searched your house and they find the USB drive.. only its 2 years old and you forgot about it... and you cannot remember the password.

now you are going to prison...

I have a USB pen drive I messed about and encrypted ages ago... if they search my house I can go to prison as I don't know the password...
 
edscdk said:
what if its an encrypted drive, say a usb one..

they try and get and get you for something and fail (maybe you never did anything jsut you cc was stolen and used to access a kid porn site)

they searched your house and they find the USB drive.. only its 2 years old and you forgot about it... and you cannot remember the password.

now you are going to prison...

I have a USB pen drive I messed about and encrypted ages ago... if they search my house I can go to prison as I don't know the password...
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Not only that, you're going to prison with the headline "Possible paedophile accused of buying child pornography sentenced to 2 years" written above your picture in the daily mail.


No one reads past to find out it wasn't actually for a Cp charge but now you're the paedo that got off lightly and so will be royally screwed both in prison and when (if?) you get out.
 
If your want to keep data secure from thieves or snooping house mates the best thing to do is probably just to use a key file with AES encryption to prevent you from forgetting the password. For hiding data from the authorities a one time pad would be preferable in order to maintain plausible deniability.
 
Just to clarify for people...

If done properly, the plausible deniability isn't really around the fact that you say "there is no encrypted volume here" when they ask why your "empty" hard drive shows non-random looking data. The plausible deniability is around the fact that you can put in one password to show perfectly innocent data, and another to access the stuff you're actually interested in hiding. That way, you can unlock the volume and say "Here you are, officer, my financial records" which you keep encrypted because you're paranoid or whatever, and no one can prove in any way that there are any other keys or any other volumes, and you've co-operated so can't be accused of withholding a key. They can only speculate that there are other keys, so then it's their word against yours.

An alternative is to put one encrypted volume inside another, such that whether or not the "empty space" looks random is irrelevant, as you can't analyse the inside of the outer volume in that way.
 
Whilst I take the 'its our right!' point if you were being accused of having kiddy porn and could prove yourself innocent by simply handing over an encryption key yet chose to go to jail instead of doing this, you've got to wonder..
 
[TW]Fox;17524505 said:
Whilst I take the 'its our right!' point if you were being accused of having kiddy porn and could prove yourself innocent by simply handing over an encryption key yet chose to go to jail instead of doing this, you've got to wonder..
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Indeed. As I said way back on page 1, he's either a martyr or he genuinely has got something to hide.
 
What exactly happens after the 16 weeks jail sentence? Its not as if they have the means to crack it in that time so do they just send him back for another 16 weeks till he hands it over?
 
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