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Comment by einhverfr | Hacker News Reader

There have been cases about this though and judges so far have not always bought this argument.

There was a case I read about where someoen was using full disk encryption. He said he gave police his password but it didn't work. The judge dismissed the charges because of the difficulty proving that the key produced wasn't correct but that the hard drive was not corrupt, among other things.

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Yes, but the chances of proving such nebulous ideas change greatly if you can be demonized in the public eye.

That situation is really independent of the law. Imagine the law said that nobody could be compelled to decrypt data (using fourth amendment type reasoning), and it was leaked to the press that this person was suspected of traffic child porn, but refused to decrypt his harddrive - even when decrypting the harddrive could prove his innocence, wink wink nudge nudge.

I think refusing to decrypt a hard drive in the US is dependent on whether it is self-incrimination (5th Amendment) while police activities are more tied to the 4th Amendment.

But the point is "I gave you my password. I haven't seen the computer in a month while your forensic team was looking it over. Maybe I got it wrong, or maybe your boys screwed it up." That is not refusing to decrypt it. In fact it is very apparently cooperative.

US courts have already ruled that the 5th ammendment does not apply to crypto keys. The court said that it was like requiring someone to hand over the keys to a container, etc.

US courts have split on the issue.

I agree, and I definitely meant the fifth. But the GP talked about being demonized in the public eye - which doesn't rely on the law being one way or the other.

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