lukaszthegreat: court dismissing the safe analogy seems to me that you do not need to open the safe for police and they have to do the same. clearly judge is an asshole who doesn't understand what he is talking about.
This.
Encrytion keys are very clearly covered under the fourth and fifth amendments. The defendant in the case has a very clear protection from that under the fifth amendment prohibition on self incrimination. One cannot be compelled to provide interpretation of evidence for the prosecution. It's one of the bedrock principles of the US justifice system and one of the main reasons why torture isn't common here. (Yes, I know GITMO and black sites, but those aren't generally tried in our courts, yes I know another problem with that)
The big problem with have is that SCrOTUmS tends to be pretty deferential towards the legislature and has a decidedly anti-defendant stance by make up. These are the same jokers that couldn't find any Brady violations despite Harry Connick himself admitting that there were Brady violations in his office that likely led people to be falsely accused when they couldn't use all the evidence available for defense.
keeveek: Sir, you clearely have no idea what you are talking about.
Self-incriminate is not only to tell judge "I did this" but also giving incriminating evidence. Of course police can take the drive, but they have to encrypt / unlock it by themselves.
This is how law works in countries that respect the rules.
Right and more than that, they can't compel a defendant to testify about any incriminating evidence if doing so would lead to self incrimination.
In this case the defendant would have to furnish the HDD or the encrypted file, but the police would have to figure out how to get inside it without the defendant's help.
da187jimmbones: Hard drives and safes are just flat out different, even though they share some similarities.
xyem: We're not talking about HDDs and safes, we are talking about encryption and safes - and they are identical.
They both secure their contents (protection).
They both require a key (authentication).
They are both breakable given enough force/time.
If they rules were different, which set of rules would a safe that has a digital storage device inside fall under? The safe one because it is a physical safe or the encryption one because it is protecting digital data? If you split the encrypted data between two devices (like RAID0), can you be forced to give the second device up even though its absence is physically protecting the data on the other one?
I don't see where the "analogy" comes apart.
The rules aren't different. The police are just whining because they can't employ a locksmith to crack somebody's head the way that they would employe a locksmith to crack a safe. And in some parts of the world there are laws requiring that encrypted files have a back door or that the files be unencrypted at the request of law enforcement.
The difference of course being that law enforcement can always crack a safe, but rarely can crack an encrypted file in time to use it at trial.
timppu: What occurred to me right away, and was also hinted in the article, why doesn't the suspect simply say she(?) has forgotten the password? I have sometimes forgotten WinZip passwords, and at least once I've forgotten the hard disk decrypting password for one old Fedora Linux installation.
But then, I'm not sure if these systems have usually some kind of backdoor for those cases you forget the password, at least by contacting the company who made the software... but that would kinda defeat the purpose.
Because lying about that gets you an obstruction charge and refusing to say is legitimate under the fifth amendment.
Also, if you're concerned with that, use Truecrypt, it's known that the US government can't crack that one if you're using an appropriate cypher. Which is to say, that they can brute force it, but it would take so long for them to do so that chances are it would be beyond the statute of limitations by the time they were able to gain access.
