(June 26, 2016 at 11:06 am)Tiberius Wrote:(June 26, 2016 at 4:47 am)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: My view on this is that it's analogous to disclosing a safe combination to satisfy a warrant. Search the safe all you want, but you can't compel me to help you.
I disagree. The safe is physical; encrypted data has both a physical aspect (the 0's and 1's written to the hard drive) and a non-physical aspect (the decryption key in your head). The 0's and 1's the police already have access to; that's the data, the evidence they need. The decryption key is how you read the data, and if that is stored in someone's head, then trying to coerce them into revealing should violates the 5th.
I understand the law might not work that way, but it most definitely should. Digital safes and physical safes are not even remotely similar.
I don't think we are actually in disagreement. I don't think that they should be able to coerce giving up a passphrase. The parallel I was drawing was to a combination lock - with a warrant, they can cut the lock if I can't / won't disclose the combination, likewise they're welcome to attempt to decrypt my data without the password all they want.
