Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfoutz | Hacker News Reader

Isn't that already covered by spoilage of evidence, or something along those lines? If i have a magic safe that destroys its contents, I'd be on the hook for maybe Obstruction of Justice? That may or may not be better than losing the contents, but it's not like i could just walk away.

View on HN

I think OP meant opening up a safe with some explosives. But let us say it is a magic safe that incinerates the contents if it detects excessive tampering - I am assuming the purpose of which is to protect sensitive documents in case if the entire safe is stolen. Then the safe maker is not liable for obstructing justice any more then a paper shredding manufacturer.

For a more concrete instance, we have the case of a friend of the Boston marathon bombers deleting his search history and getting charge with obstruction of justice[1]. However, that doesn't mean the DOJ can use the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to prevent browsers from allowing the user to delete history.

[1]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/clearing-your-browser-histor...

The safe maker wouldn't be liable, the owner of the safe would be. If there's a warrant for the contents of the safe, but the owner refuses to open it up, then the owner is guilty of whatever law requires you to cooperate with the warrant. Isn't that enough?

Punishing the owner for not giving the government access to the contents of the safe doesn't change the fact that the government doesn't have the contents of the safe, so I guess they might not consider it enough.

I think this would come down to the purpose of the safe.

If the sole point of the safe can be demonstrated to be defeating law enforcement access then the judge won't look very kindly on you.

If you can make a reasonable argument that the safe was there to prevent thieves and crooks and safe crackers from getting their hands on the contents, you have a stronger case.

Judges don't take lightly to people trying to skirt the law in "clever" ways.

This is easy; you market the safe for the storage of trade secret documents. Getting back to the original issue, Apple can (and does) claim it offers encryption with no backdoors because a backdoor would give hackers a way to get in.

This has always seemed like a moot point to me when the government can demand that they install a backdoor at any point in the future under a gag order. Though this is true for any company anywhere basically.

My take is as long as said self-destruct feature exists prior and independent of it being used with evidence related to a crime, then spoilage of evidence should not apply. Apple created this feature in their phones for many many uses, just like a knife can be used for many many uses, legal and illegal.

At the end of the day, the evidence need not be destroyed either. It can just sit there concealed in an uninspectable form.

At the end of the day, they may or may not have the evidence they want in their possession. They just can't inspect that evidence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com