A Dangerous Rush to Judgement
Bruce Schneier wrote about a recent Minnesota Appeals Court ruling which stated that the presence of encryption software on the computer was properly viewed as evidence. In his writing he interpreted this as evidence of criminal intent. If that was the case this would be a very very dangerous precident.
He wasn’t the only one to react this way and a rash of debate broke out on the internet about it. A look at other possible interpretations, asserted that the most plausible was not evidence of criminal intent but of consciousness of guilt. That’s still a bit of a stretch, but not as bad of one. At the very least, however, the evidence has bearing on the case because it illustrates a certain baseline of computer knowlege for the defendant. I am sure a popular defense in those types of cases is ignorance about how computers work.
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: mediaserf
