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Comment by fenwick67 | Hacker News Reader

There have been several court cases where the government has compelled people to give up encryption keys in court, I assume this will be no different.

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If you have something, a court can order you to give it up. If you know something which might incriminate you (e.g. a password), your testimony is protected by the 5th.

Passwords have only been protected by the 5th amendment when ownership of the electronic account/device is unproven.

For international laws, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

Specifically for the US, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Suspension_and_gag_ord... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Fricosu

Important to note that this is a legal theory, that is not yet backed up by precedent or statute! The police have successfully compelled password disclosure many times.

There has been tons of precedent, on both sides: http://www.zdnet.com/article/florida-court-says-password-dis...

This is the only sane interpretation, though, as people have more and more encrypted devices, it's unreasonable to punish someone for not remembering a password.

unless you're that police officer from pennsylvania who they just locked up without due process until he coughs up the password.

Source? I'm from PA and haven't heard about this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/2...

apparently the "All Writs Act" of 1789 is the "constitution doesn't apply to you" trump card.

  they just locked up

That wording implies that this "just" happened, even perhaps during the current administration. The court order was 18 months ago, and he's been "locked up" for the past 16 months.

I think he meant 'just' in the 'simply' sense.

The Florida Second District Court of Appeals disagrees with you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

My iPhone is set to passcode unlock instead of fingerprint because of the reasoning you say, but if other courts start agreeing with this one, I'm inclined to change to Touch ID for simplicity :(

There is still the argument that you can be physically coerced to unlock your phone against your will by someone pressing it against your finger, but you can't type in a passcode against your will.

What if you have a self destruct code? (engineered in a way that makes it indistinguishable that it has been activated instead of normal description)

Or better yet, a dead man switch.

Cannot be really held in contempt for having features to prevent coercion.

Call me when a circuit court makes a decision, at the least. SCOTUS will almost certainly decide on "forgetting your password is not a crime".

The keys are derived from the password which can't be compelled.

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