I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier has ruled that forcing someone to divulge the password to decrypt their hard drive violates the 5th Amendment. Border guards testify that they saw child pornography on the defendant's laptop when the PC was on, but they made the mistake of turning the laptop off and were unable to access it again because the drive was protected by PGP. Although prosecutors offered many ways to get around the 5th Amendment protections, the Judge would have none of that and quashed the grand jury subpoena requesting the defendant's PGP passphrase. A conviction is still likely because prosecutors have the testimony of the two border guards who saw the drive while it was decrypted." Link to Original Source
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IIRC, it was at least somewhat based on them not having proof that he knew the passphrase (they didn't see him type it in, so it could have been entered by someone else before crossing the border).
But I doubt that it will have much of an impact on the prosecution in any event. My bet is that the jury will just think "well, what was he hiding?" and convict anyway, just on the say-so of the guards.
If they are so certain they saw what they think they saw, why not just hold the laptop as evidence and run a brute-force attack against PGP until the guy dies under suspicion or they find his passphrase (or the actual key)? It's relatively common in the US to seize property that may or may not have been used in a crime and even to resell it without any verdict or even any charges against the owner. What we need is actual protections for due process so this cannot happen.
Dupe. (Score:2)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/15/1459243
IIRC, it was at least somewhat based on them not having proof that he knew the passphrase (they didn't see him type it in, so it could have been entered by someone else before crossing the border).
Good (Score:2)
But I doubt that it will have much of an impact on the prosecution in any event. My bet is that the jury will just think "well, what was he hiding?" and convict anyway, just on the say-so of the guards.
Reasonable suspiscion? (Score:2)
If they are so certain they saw what they think they saw, why not just hold the laptop as evidence and run a brute-force attack against PGP until the guy dies under suspicion or they find his passphrase (or the actual key)? It's relatively common in the US to seize property that may or may not have been used in a crime and even to resell it without any verdict or even any charges against the owner. What we need is actual protections for due process so this cannot happen.
BTW, if the guy really is guilty I ho