[2016-05-17] Refusing to Decrypt Hard Drives May Equal Indefinite Jail Time

[jdebunt]

The US government strongly feels this man — a Philadelphia police sergeant — should be left in jail until he complies. But enforcing such a sentence could prove to be rather problematic. While some people may feel this would be a violation of the Fifth Amendment right, authorities claim otherwise, as they see this as a “foregone conclusion” there is child pornography on the hard drives. Moreover, they argue their case by saying the suspect only needs to unlock the drivers and not reveal the passcodes.

https://news.bitcoin.com/refusing-decrypt-hard-drives-jail/

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[notthematrix]

well we all know this can not work.
why , if the encrypted file is not yours you can never know the password so that will be human right violation.
its easy to make things undrcrypteble for everyone , so the suspect gets a live in jail.

[Daisy14]

It is not human rights violation because no one will ask you to encrypt a file that is not yours to start with.

The man is involved in child pornography, he deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Besides if he has done nothing wrong, why is he trying to hide his hard drive?

[Gaugh]

Children should be protected not violated

[The00Dustin]

Making failure to decrypt something a criminal offense is as bad as making failure to comply a criminal offense (sadly, that is becoming the status quo, freedom could be dying, and the only people that would recognize it would be the ones with no voices because they had already been snared).

Rules like this are not necessary (the law abiding will already comply when they aren't being violated, and those not abiding the law can already be charged with something else), easily abused, and absolutely infringe on basic human rights.

Our system is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but the government's take is guilty until proven innocent.  It's terribly sad that free individuals are willing to so quickly switch to that harmful stance with the littlest bit of fear mongering (the ludicrous "forgone conclusion" of child porn, when that wasn't even initially suspected here, is clearly nothing more than a means to an end for someone with an agenda).  Moreover, if there was legitimate suspicion, that would imply that enough proof to get a conviction should already exist without the hard drive being decrypted.  Warrants are already abused in physical searches to find things that weren't specifically called out in the warrant, and decrypting a drive could absolutely be "self-incriminating" even if the drive doesn't contain child pornography (it could contain nothing more than correspondence related to an affair, and even something as simple as pirated music would be legally incriminating).

What is most interesting and scary about this to me is that a judge could already order decryption without these extra legal arguments, and a person could already be detained indefinitely for refusing using contempt of court charges.  Given that, there is absolutely no excuse for the behavior that is taking place and yet "free" individuals are still easily convinced that it is reasonable and necessary.

ETA:  I failed to point out two things:
1) It could even be that the accused has nothing to hide but firmly believes in standing up for his rights.
2) The feasibility of any suggestion of what might be on the disk per evidence, Occam's razor, or any other theory isn't really relevant; my point is that the government shouldn't be circumventing our constitutional rights for any reason.