Are Passwords Protected by the 5th Amendment?

[ph0b0s123]

The US being undecided about this is good. In the UK being forced to defeat your own encryption, has been law for a few years with people going to prison for not giving up passwords. Punishments are between 3 to 5 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom

Also in the US wasn't the precedent set already by the Supreme court that you can force someone to produce a key for a safe but not a combination for a safe as it comes from their mind. I just can't find a link to the precedent at the moment.

The only reason this is coming up is that they have effectively invented a safe that takes a very long time to open. So as per usual rather than trying to work out better ways to open these new safes or getting the evidence another way, both of which might take more man power, under the bus go civil liberties. It seems to me that freedoms that people have died to protect are only important to governments until they become inconvenient, then they are just dumped. The right for trial being eroded in the US recently just to get a defence budget through, being as case in point. Don't care how much Obama was crossing his fingers behind hos back when signing it, it was still very wrong.

I think the principle is simple, someone should never be forced into aiding their own conviction. Simple as....

 

[evilneko]

Why does it matter?i tend to agree; it would be a violation of her 5th amendment rights but if theybwant in that bad, why not just use a dictioary attack? Or failing that, a password cracker. I have one. They're not hard to come by and im sure the police can get a MUCH nicer ome than the crappy little cypher cracker i have.

Pretty much. Consider: my computer is not even top of the line. Depending on the type of encryption it's facing and what software I use to try to brute-force it, it can run hundreds of thousands to millions of passwords per second. Imagine what a more powerful rig could do--particularly one with multiple GPUs.

Throw away the locked safe analogy because it is not applicable to this situation.

I'll abandon it when I damn well please. Besides, it fits just fine, here's how:


Password protected hard drive: Protecting confidential data.

Locked fire safe: Protecting confidential data.


They're doing the exact same thing. If the court has a warrant to search it the password is not protected by the fifth amendment any more than the combination/key to a fire safe. The only difference is one's digital while one's physical, and that doesn't make a damn bit of difference as far as a search warrant goes.

They have the data. That they can't understand it is their problem, not the defendant's.

And I suppose having a safe they can't crack but have a warrant to search falls under the same logic, aye? guess we should let crims get out from under warrants by buying a top-of-the-line safe and storing the evidence therein, because by your logic a warrant wouldn't be able to compel them into unlocking that either.

No, it's not the same. They have access to the container (the hard drive) and they can browse the contents. As has been pointed out multiple times, that they cannot understand some of those contents is their problem, not the suspect's.

Let me try this again:

You have murdered someone. Your house gets raided by cops on a search warrant, looking for the remains and/or the murder weapon. You have cleverly hidden the evidence on that very premises, and the police are convinced of this as well, but despite their best efforts they haven't been able to find it.

Legally, you are only obligated to not impede their search efforts. You have every right to not assist them in any way. Would you agree to this?

 

[Aris Khandr]

Here's an alternate analogy: Say I am suspected of something, and they get a search warrant for my house. They find my diary, and have reason to believe that I made entries about the crime I am accused of in it. But they run into a problem. My diary is written in code, with my own alphabet as well. It's all perfectly legible to me, but they can't make heads or tails of it. Do I have to translate my diary for them? Same situation, they have the data, it is sitting right in front of them. But without my knowledge, they'll never understand it.

 

[evilneko]

Here's an alternate analogy: Say I am suspected of something, and they get a search warrant for my house. They find my diary, and have reason to believe that I made entries about the crime I am accused of in it. But they run into a problem. My diary is written in code, with my own alphabet as well. It's all perfectly legible to me, but they can't make heads or tails of it. Do I have to translate my diary for them? Same situation, they have the data, it is sitting right in front of them. But without my knowledge, they'll never understand it.

That's pretty much exactly the analogy that the defense used in this case, actually. It's pretty much spot-on for the situation. The police have a device containing information, but can't understand that information. Well, that's just too bad for them.