In a scary turn of events an appeals court in Minnesota has ruled that having PGP installed on your computer can be used as evidence against you:
A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent.
Ari David Levie, who was convicted of photographing a nude 9-year-old girl, argued on appeal that the PGP encryption utility on his computer was irrelevant and should not have been admitted as evidence during his trial. PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy and is sold by PGP Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.
But the Minnesota appeals court ruled 3-0 that the trial judge was correct to let that information be used when handing down a guilty verdict.
“We find that evidence of appellant’s Internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state’s case against him,” Judge R.A. Randall wrote in an opinion dated May 3.
This is a dangerous path that they are treading on. It means that in the eyes of US law, if you have security on your system you must be trying to hide something illegal. This means that they can throw anyone in jail that they want to, and pesky things like trials and being proven guilty can be ignored. God Bless America!
Sexy Jihad » Blog Archive » Thoughts On Using PGP As Evidence // Jun 9, 2005 at 4:53 pm
[...] eier reports on some intersting comments regarding the recent Minnesota court hearing that just having PGP on your computer can be used as evidence against you: The o [...]
If encryption is proof of guilt then we are all guilty –every one of us.
Ever do a credit card transaction on the web?
Then you have used encryption…..SSL
Every OS write need to omit SSL from the OS that they write rather it be Linux or Mac or Windows