🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <1992Nov12.202606.22666@cactus.org>, by ritter@cactus.org (Terry Ritter):
>  If government agents *have* a warrant, would an attempt to prevent
>  their entry into a house be considered "legal"?  Is secretly-held
>  information really different from other "effects" mentioned in the
>  Fourth Amendment?

1. No, it's not legal to prevent the entry of LE with a warrant.....

2. Yes, there is a difference between the "things" and "information".
   For example, I can't prevent LE from seizing my diary and looking
   through it (or my PC :-).  But if it happens so, that my diary is
   encrypted or written in an obscure little-known language, I don't
   have to provide th LE with my keys,  or disclose the language, or
   the plaintext.

   It just happened so, that until very recent times, most governments
   could break most of private citizens' encryption.  Therefore it was
   not a concern for the gov't. Today anybody can get/write/buy a good
   encryption with almost 100% security - so some fools got scared and
   started devising counter-measures (as if indeed it were possible to
   drink a sea :-)... So again, you can under court order seize my PC,
   but I'm not obligated to tell you what's in it. If you can get that
   information out without my cooperation - lucky SOB you are. If not,
   too darn bad (:-).

   Actually, in real world, gov't proved it's inability to deal with
   real enemy ciphers (for example, see the case of Mr. Abel...  His
   asistant used a nice fully-mnemonic encryption system (i.e. no PC
   and other incriminating equipment, just a pencil and a nice clean
   sheet of paper). FBI wasn't able to break it... It all was during 
   50-ies; Mr. Kahn thought, that it was practically unbreakable - I 
   second his opinion :-). 
-- 
Regards,
Uri.		uri@watson.ibm.com
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