Would police in the US have any alternative for handling a confiscated computer with a hidden partition? I've heard some fellow geeks (who are always obsessed with computer privacy) talk about how 'amazing' a hidden partition is for privacy. I don't really see the point of all the trouble if I'm not actively engaging in illegal activities on my machine, but for now I'm more interested in rather or not such a hidden partition is as foolproof as these individuals claim; specifically would it really render any law enforcement powerless to do anything. Without going too deep into the technical factors involved the idea is to have another partition (ie part of the computer reserved to install and run software on) where the partition is both encrypted and not listed in the boot sector, where partitions are usually stored. The net result is a hidden partition, no one can see or access it without using some special boot technique, such as using a CD or thumb drive to change how the computer boots up, to connect to it. if you don't plug in your magic thumb drive before you start your computer then in theory it would be impossible to tell you have another hidden partition or connect to it. I know enough about computers to know this hidden partition isn't quite as foolproof as claimed, as inferring the existence of a hidden partition shouldn't be impossible on a technical level. The fact that a large part of the computer isn't allocated, effectively preventing use of part of your computer's storage, should be enough to make an analyst at least suspect a hidden partition may exist, doubly so if someone mostly used their hidden partition so that their visible partition was rarely used or too small to be useful. Once a hidden partition is suspected some analysis of 'randomness' of the 1 and 0 on the unallocated space could be used to provide extremely strong evidence that there was encrypted data saved there, with a very large area of encrypted data in turn being very suggestive, but not definitively prove, that a hidden partition is being used. So say that a suspected criminal, who used one of these hidden partitions, had his computer confiscated. Let's further say the polices' technical folks are on the bar and noticed the evidence which strongly suggests, but could never definitively prove, that the suspect was using a hidden partition. The police would, of course, like to get access to this hidden partition to see if anything incriminating is saved on it, but their going to need the magic thumb drive to view anything saved on it. I suspect the police could not compel the criminal to hand this over directly, as the evidence, no matter how suggestive, would not be be absolute proof that the hidden partition existed. Though if the police were able to find some other proof of a hidden partition, such as conversations the suspect had with someone where the suspect refers to his use of such a partition, they may be able to meet a sufficient burden of proof to compel the suspect to make the content of the partition available to them? Would there be any other options that the police may have to deal with such a suspected hidden partition which may contain incriminating data? The two obvious ones I could think of are: getting a second search warrant to allow them to search for the thumb drive used to connect to the partition. I imagine that they only need reasonable suspicion of a hidden partition to get a more extensive search warrant? Though I doubt that would be too useful since a criminal would presumably destroy such a device immediately after their computer was confiscated to prevent police from getting hold of it? Could the mere (strongly suspected) presence of a hidden partition be used against the suspect? for instance in a criminal trial could the prosecutor argue the fact that the suspect was apparently going to great lengths to make it impossible to see what he was using his machine for as evidence that the suspect likely was doing something unlawful with the machine?
Though if the police were able to find some other proof of a hidden partition, such as conversations the suspect had with someone where the suspect refers to his use of such a partition, they may be able to meet a sufficient burden of proof to compel the suspect to make the content of the partition available to them? The US courts have ruled on this, and the answer is &quot;no&quot;: San Francisco - A federal appeals court has found a Florida man's constitutional rights were violated when he was imprisoned for refusing to decrypt data on several devices. This is the first time an appellate court has ruled the 5th Amendment protects against forced decryption – a major victory for constitutional rights in the digital age. In this case, titled United States v. Doe, FBI agents seized two laptops and five external hard drives from a man they were investigating but were unable to access encrypted data they believed was stored on the devices via an encryption program called TrueCrypt. When a grand jury ordered the man to produce the unencrypted contents of the drives, he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to do so. The court held him in contempt and sent him to jail. TrueCrypt is one of the forerunners of hidden partition cryptographic tools. The anonymous team behind it closed shop suddenly and unexpectedly in 2014 in mysterious circumstances. getting a second search warrant to allow them to search for the thumb drive used to connect to the partition. This is entirely reasonable, as it does not require self incrimination - if the USB key was password protected (as it should be) then you are back to square one. Could the mere (strongly suspected) presence of a hidden partition be used against the suspect? for instance in a criminal trial could the prosecutor argue the fact that the suspect was apparently going to great lengths to make it impossible to see what he was using his machine for as evidence that the suspect likely was doing something unlawful with the machine? It would be a very weak argument, if allowed by the court - the defence could equally argue that the partition contains medical information, self taken naked pictures or grand political plans that the defendant does not want to be made public. Both arguments would technically be equal in nature, as the contents cannot be corroborated.
The police (and any other involved public agencies) do not work for Steve. They make their own decisions. You didn't specify a location, and requirements to consent to a search vary by location. It wouldn't be surprising, though, if Steve can't legally consent to a search of someone else's room (but possibly could consent to search of common areas). One possibility you don't seem to have considered is that the police or prosecutor would, if Steve is willing to testify, use Steve's testimony as probable cause to get a warrant. Then they could obtain text messages from Mike's service provider (even if he's deleted them from his phone), search his room without his consent, etc. Details again vary by location. Finally, any jail/prison term is typically up to a judge or jury, not the police. Pre-trial detention is typically up to a judge or magistrate. (Also, outside the scope of your question, but if there is any chance Steve has allowed himself to become involved in the misdeeds, even slightly, Steve would be wise to talk to a lawyer. Or if he suspects the police could believe that.)
The problem with Solution 2 is that government officials in the United States enjoy qualified immunity with respect to actions that they did while acting under color of law. It's not total immunity, but if they do things by the book, they cannot be prosecuted even if something goes wrong (even when doing things by the book, Police deal in very volatile situations and things can still go wrong because of an X factor to specific for the training manual to cover.). In other cases, it may be because multiple officers are working the scene and Office A lied to Officer B about the situation. Consider Officer A pulls over a suspect and realizes it was someone who was suspected of a crime, but couldn't prove it. He calls for back up and Officer B arrives. Upon arriving on scene, Officer A tells B to search the trunk of the car despite the fact that A had not received consent from the suspect nor has a warrant, nor cause to make a search of a trunk of a vehicle. B makes the search and finds [the bloody knife/the stash of drugs/the smoking gun/the match to a child's shoe that was missing from the kidnapping scene/ insert other incriminating evidence]. Under system (2), since it was Officer B who made the illegal search, B would be liable for it, even though Officer A lied about having legal reason for a search of the trunk space. But what's more... if the evidence is gonna be used anyway, what's to stop the cops doing it again? After all, there is very little recourse for those who are illegally searched to contest this in court (If I'm illegally searched and don't have anything on me, I have to take this to civil court, which is a different animal than Criminal Court and exposes me to broader Discovery... aka gives the cops free reign to search my property for a hell of a lot more illegal things.) or just sit back and count my 4th amendment rights (the section of the constitution protecting against unwarranted search and seizures) as worth less than the paper they're printed on. Oh, and by the way... that second word seizure... that means that they will be taking my property (or myself if they arrest me) and will not be giving it back for some time while they process it... if it's a legal to hold item (like my laptop that I do work on) that's going to make it harder for me to do my job which injures me further in lost business and income. In other cases, it could be they have a warrant for a large item (a stolen big screen tv) and while searching for it, open my sugar bowel and find evidence of a crime unrelated to theft of the television (i.e. opening a baggie of weed). This is actually an illegal search because, unless I am a wizard, a Time Lord, or Mary Poppins, there is no reason why a container smaller than a big screen TV should ever be searched when looking for a Big Screen TV and the cops should logically see this as out of bounds of the search warrant. The nature of this is damaging before the legality of the search can be determined, and because the search may have been out of scope of the warrant that was otherwise justified, the rule of making the evidence of a crime inadmissible was held in order to prevent LEOs from doing this because they could. This rule also started to take formation prior to the Revolutionary War. British Law had ruled against compelled confessions being inadmissible as evidence in 1769, a full six years before the Revolutionary war started (1775) and seven years before the publication of the Declaration of Independence (1776). Now there are some exceptions that can get the evidence brought back in, such as plain view (&quot;The suspect's vehicle is a pick up truck with an open bed, the murder weapon was lying in the bed covered in blood&quot;), inevitable discovery (&quot;We have developed evidence by other means that would have lead us to this evidence legally&quot;) and Exigent Circumstances (&quot;We believed someone inside the property was in grave danger if we did not enter the property immediately and that's when we found a cache of stolen Big Screen TVs!) and Good Faith (the Warrant was authorized for the wrong street address of the target but we found the evidence of an unrelated crime in a place the warrant authorized us to search. Everything but the goofed up address was done by the book.).
Yes. The police have the power to seize your phone as evidence under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and the Terrorism Act 2000. There are no caveats or defined circumstances other than having a reasonable belief that the data on the phone forms evidence against you. They do not require a warrant to access your phone, and many police forces in the UK are using commercially available software to bypass password/PIN protection on your phone 1. In the event you do not provide your password/thumbprint/facial scan/PIN to officers to unlock your phone, you can be served with a Section 49 Notice under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) which compels you to provide that information. Failure to do so can lead to a conviction under Section 53 RIPA, in addition to any other offences you may be charged with.
The customers are able to leave, so there's no reason it could be a crime. Even if they weren't able to operate the lock themselves, they are presumably able to leave by asking a staff member. There is no way this could be remotely considered false imprisonment. Depending on the layout and size of the store and presence/lack of other fire exits, this might violate fire safety regulations.
There's a legal issue, and a practical issue. If you witness a crime, you can inform the police and something may happen. The FBI does actually investigate criminal copyright infringement, but they also don't respond to concerned-citizen complaints, only complaints of copyright holders (and not all of them). You cannot use DMCA takedown to get the service provider to remove the content (or shut down the site, or whatever would be necessary), since only the copyright holder can make the required sworn statements. So you have no legal recourse. A practical solution is to tell Google. This link could have been a way to inform them, but it seems to always resolve to identifying plausible DMCA takedown requests, and if you truthfully answer the &quot;are you the copyright holder&quot; question, you are told to go away. Even if you lie at the preliminary stage, the procedure ends with you making a sworn statement, and you can't lie on one of those. This information might allow you to send them a letter, which they might read. They might simply not consider it worth their time.
To be very straightforward, yes, a police department would very likely have records of their past interactions with you in the form of police reports. They cannot just throw them away because it's been scrubbed from your public record. They detail the interactions the police officer had with you. That being said, those records would not show up in a general inquiry into your record, because those records are meant to protect the officer and the department as a reference point they can go back to in case some dispute arose in the future. If a police officer really wanted to find them, they'd have to do a bit of digging for them. The difficulty in finding them would depend on what system the particular police department uses to store those records. Smaller departments may just file them in a cabinet somewhere, whereas larger ones may actually have their own searchable database. But a traffic cop out on the street is only gonna see what you're seeing at the DMV - nothing. There is also a formal NCIC database, but traffic violations would never end up in there. That is a national database that basically stores red flag persons of interest (think stolen vehicles, sex offenders, and gang members). Sometimes multiple departments within a state will share their information with each other, but a department's database is usually kept to that department only. Also keep in mind court records. The court case that had a violation removed under such and such conditions is still gonna be a public record. Those records would generally be available to a judge overseeing your case so if you repeatedly end up in court for the same thing, they're gonna know and they're gonna stop scrubbing it from your record or offerring certain options because you're clearly not learning your lesson. Many laws allow you to have one offense stricken per year and similar stuff like that, but that kind of stuff doesn't just permanently disappear. They have to keep record of it in order to know you've already had your once per year etc. Also a note about parking violations: not all of those are actually issued by police. If it was issued by a private firm then that is not something that would ever show up on your record. It would just be in a database somewhere with whatever private firm issued the fine. Those kind of tickets get sent to collections and hurt your credit score if you don't pay them, rather than affecting your driving record.
It is not necessary to design anything (program design is outside the scope of Law SE, anyhow). It is legal to pay a person to encrypt your drive with BitLocker. It is legal to instruct them, as part of the contract, to not reveal the key to you, until you complete your contractual obligation (paying the fee that constitutes your consideration under the contract). The contract could immunize the encryptor against liability for the drive-owner wising up moments after enter is pressed.