re fifth amendment and passwords in article apr qualcomm com karn unix ka q ampr org phil karn writes in article apr colnet cmhnet org res colnet cmhnet org rob stampfli writes sadly it does not suspects can be compelled to give handwriting and voice exemplars and to take blood and dna tests i am sure that mike is correct on this point i am also pretty sure that administering truth serum would be ruled a violation of your right not to incriminate yourself but what is the salient difference you can find the salient difference in any number of th amendment related supreme court opinions the court limits th amendment protections to what they call testimonial evidence as opposed to physical evidence i have a question that is a slight variation on the previously mentioned examples that perhaps people could give me some pointers on it has been a couple of years since my con law class in college so i hope i am not missing something obvious here basic scenario i set up a bbs that uses public key encryption and encryption of files on disk the general setup is designed so that when users connect they send a private key encrypted using the system public key and the user s public private keypair is used to wrap the one time session keys used for encrypting the files on disk the result of this is that even if i reveal the system private key it is impossible for anyone to gain access to the files stored on the machine what is possible is for someone to use the revealed system private key to entice users into revealing thier personal private keys during the authentication sequence questions does the fact that the system private key does not provide any information useful for a search give me any protection as far as being coerced to reveal the key i doubt it myself it seems providing the system private key does not mean that i am assisting in entrapment the users would send thier key anyway and are not being enticed into doing something they would not otherwise do but is there any other hook that can be used would the user private key enticement require wiretap approval any answers or general musings on the subject would be appreciated jim jim mccoy ut unix sysadmin tiger team mccoy ccwf cc utexas edu include disclaimer h j mccoy nwu edu pgp key available via finger or upon request
