Last month U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered Ramona Ficosu to decrypt the hard drive on her Toshiba laptop by February 21st. The laptop was seized in 2010 in connection with a mortgage fraud investigation. The judge ruled that Ficosu couldn’t use the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment to keep her password to herself. Now Threat Level reports that Ficosu plans to tell the court “Oopsies, I forgot.”
“It’s very possible to forget passwords,” the woman’s attorney, Philip Dubois, said in a telephone interview. “It’s not clear to me she was the one who set up the encryption on this drive. I don’t know if she will be able to decrypt it.
That’s certainly an interesting, if dubious, way to avoid complying with the court order. According to the report, Ficosu has yet to use the “I forgot” defence in court, and that the court won’t deal with it until she does. In the meantime, Ficosu’s lawyers are preparing to appeal Judge Blackburn’s ruling to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. [Threat Level]
Image via Tatiana Popova / Shutterstock
Michael
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:59 AMPeople forget passwords all the time, and if it is one of those long hard to remember kinds of passwords with random letters and numbers, then well, they did take the laptop off her 2 years ago.
olearymo
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 9:27 AMI love how judges can just rule that someone can’t use a constitutional right.
Nathan
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 10:57 AMThe constitutional right in this case was the right to not talk if what they say may incriminate themselves. There is evidence on the hard drive, evidence is not covered by that right.
It was tricky because giving the password to unlock a hard drive with evidence that would incriminate, and where that sits.
Chris
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 11:12 AMBut on tv they can crack it in 2 mins? lol :P
Svenz0r
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:07 PM“nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” I don’t see how hard evidence is forcing her to be a witness against herself since they know it’s there. If it was a physical safe they would be allowed to forcefully open it but its not so easy with technology.
Hold her in contempt for as long as it takes is what I say. It would set a terrifying precedent if you could just say “I forgot my password to my encrypted information” and get away with it.
Also they did not ask for the password, they asked her to unlock the drive, which means she does not have to divulge the password to anyone just enter it.
Rob
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 1:07 PMExcept they took the laptop off her 2 years ago. If it was a one off password and she hasn’t kept her muscle memory trained to remember it over that two year period how is she meant to remember it?
It sets a terrifying precedent that you can be held in contempt for something we all naturally do (forget passwords).
TSH
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 1:59 PMI agree that it sounds a bit dodgy, but I would say that the more dire precedent is someone being locked away under contempt of court because they have an imperfect memory.
I’m a huge nerd, accustomed to keeping no less than half a dozen passwords in my head that I use on a regular basis. But the number of times I’ve had to get my password reset for an infrequently-used system is not trivial. Like a safe, encryption can be cracked open – it just takes rather a long time!