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Comment by slackerIII | Hacker News Reader

What is your plan for when the judge tells you to supply the decryption key?

You supply it, of course. But having the drive encrypted buys you time. The cops have to take the machines into evidence, nominally send them out to the lab for processing, and only then do they run into your encryption key.

They then need to go back to the judge, and get a court order to compel you to supply your encryption key. By which time you've gotten a lawyer, and can fight back.

Does the 5th amendment not apply in this situation?

Still undetermined at the federal level. Are the contents of your computer evidence (like papers in a safe) or testimony. Most precedent points to the former, and if the Boucher case actually gets appealed to the circuit level (or even the supremes) then the odds are strongly against it being protected by the 5th.

Hm, you are probably right - I'm used to thinking about things from a civil suit perspective.

http://volokh.com/posts/1197670606.shtml

Truecrypt supports plausible deniability: http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability

I don't do anything remotely heinous enough to warrant a court order to reveal my encryption key, however.

A possible plausible explanation for the existence of a partition/device containing solely random data is that you have wiped (securely erased) the content of the partition/device using one of the tools that erase data by overwriting it with random data (...)

Um...that kid in Tennessee that accessed Sarah Palin's email did a secure erase, but enough of his activity was revealed by some malware on his machine, as well as ISP records etc., that he also got charged with obstruction of justice for having deleted stuff germane to the crime of unauthorized access. Just sayin'.

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