Well, it’s not testimonial and thats what the 5th protects. It’s like hair samples at arrest to get DNA.
I haven’t read the opinion but I assume they came down on the “not testimonial” argument to the 5th doesn’t apply.
Heck, who hasn't ever forgotten a password?
Regards,
Make your password 200 characters long and store it on a thumb drive. “Sorry officer, the password was stored on a thumb drive which got lost in a canoe accident. I can’t open the file”
Rather perverse that a man can be jailed for refusing to cooperate with his own prosecution.
If revealing the password directly results in his felony conviction, and without it he isn’t convicted, seems it’s absolutely a 5th Amendment violation. Seems as plain an application as possible.
What trial?
I would like to see the pervert’s hard drive decrypted, and him given a long prison term if (as one might infer from his behavior) he is guilty. However, this is not the right way to do it.
You can reasonably argue that compulsory provision of a password is not quite being “a witness against himself”, and that since there is a warrant it is not quite a violation of “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”. I still don’t like it. The Bill of Rights is not a line where the government has blanket permission to go up to that point; it’s a hard limit that cannot be crossed but also that normally should not be approached.
I am okay if they guess his password or hack the drive. Keep it as evidence until they figure out how to read it. But do not lock him up for contempt.
“I don’t recall” only works for Cankles.
The suspect, a former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant, well he should know the law.
and then there’s that poor schmuck who was jailed by the feds for his film that the obozo administration falsely claimed caused the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans. I wonder when he’s going to sue the obozo and the hag for having him unjustly jailed.
So, he was not jailed for not turning over his password, as the lying headline says.
This is like opening a safe. If the court can order someone to open a safe (search done with warrant), then they can order someone to decrypt data.
He was jailed for not complying with the search warrant (court order).
Headlines should not aim for sensationalism, but for a clear statement of the facts.
-PJ
In addition to strong encryption, we need devices that you can set up with two passwords. The one that locks the device, and the one that shreds everything immediately, perhaps even physically torching the drive.