Police get another year to crack student’s code in child porn probe
Using multiple computers around the clock, Ottawa police have been trying to crack an Algonquin College student’s laptop password for more than a year, and have now been granted a 12-month extension to see if they can finally break the code.
The computer technician student is a suspect in a child-pornography investigation and was arrested in the college parking lot on Feb. 4, 2014 — the same day authorities seized his laptop, thumb drive and iPhone from his backpack.
The police didn’t find any child pornography on his phone or thumb drive, but they still don’t know about the laptop because the police department has been unable to crack the student’s 26-digit alphanumeric password. In a police interview on the day he was arrested, the student refused to reveal his password and the police have been trying to crack it ever since.
Not for lack of trying. In fact, in his March 24 ruling to let the police keep working on the laptop for another year, Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett said, “The evidence before me indicates that multiple computers have been working 24/7 to unravel the password, but it has yet to happen.”
“There has been no foot-dragging in this investigation, nor any evidence of procrastination or bad faith. It is not a matter of a lack of training or resources. It is a matter of decrypting a hard drive, which is a long and complex procedure,” the judge said.
The original tip that sparked the investigation came on May 9, 2013, when Microsoft reported that 89 images had been uploaded from an online hosting site linked to someone’s IP address at a home in Greely. The police later obtained a search warrant and, months later on Feb. 4, executed it at the family residence, home to seven people.
Right before the search, as police did surveillance outside, they spotted one occupant — the student — leaving for school. They followed him and later arrested him at the college parking lot and seized his laptop.
It should be noted that none of the electronic devices seized from the home contained any child pornography. All seized devices except the laptop have been returned to the family. The police didn’t have a warrant to seize the student’s laptop but a judge ruled that the search was justified because there was a “realistic risk that any evidence contained on the hard drive would have been destroyed before the police had the time to obtain a warrant.”
Because of the urgent circumstances, the judge ruled there was no charter breach. Breach or not, the judge said she would not have returned the laptop either way.
The judge called it a matter of “striking the appropriate balance between (the suspect’s) rights at the investigatory stage of the proceedings and the public’s right to have serious offences properly investigated.”