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Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

This is probably a lot less black and white then it might seem at first. If there is sufficient evidence, one can obtain a search warrant and this forces you to possibly act against your own best interest by allowing the police to search your home. On the other hand you can usually not be forced to testify against yourself.

So this becomes the question where decrypting a hard drive lies on this spectrum. Is it more like testifying against yourself or is it more like allowing the police to search your home? Assuming one agrees with the way testifying against yourself and searching your home is currently handled by the law.

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> one can obtain a search warrant and this forces you to possibly act against your own best interest by allowing the police to search your home.

In Germany you never have to actively help the police even if they come with a warrant. They can't even compel you to open the door of the house or a physical safe. They will of course come in anyway and send you the bill for the locksmith, but it's your perfect right to just sit there and do nothing.

So with the hard disk encryption it's actually exactly the same: You don't have to help in any way, but of course the police can still take the drive and try to decrypt it. If they can't decrypt, well, bad luck. Not your problem, you don't have to help.

You made me realize that I was probably wrong here, i.e. you do not have to allow the the police to enter your home acting against your own best interest, and as far as I can tell this also applies to the USA.

This raises the question if there is any other situation where you have to act against your own best interest, otherwise my initial argument falls apart and it seems unreasonable to try to force someone to decrypt his hard drive.

Another question is, how far can I push the search warrant scenario? Am I allowed to use force against the police to prevent them from entering in the same way I may use force against burglars? Am I allowed to shoot at the police? Not that it would buy you much, it is pretty unlikely that you can hide at home forever, but from a purely theoretical standpoint?

Pretty sure that you don't have to help them but you can't stop them. So it will all depend on which side of the fence you land.

Whether not giving up keys is jot helping or is it stopping them.

I'd guess no one can fault you for assuming it's a home invasion in case the LE fail to identify themselves.

The downside is that you'll probably end up dead, since the police (in the US especially) have a record of killing even people who don't shoot at them.

A search warrant does not really require the target to 'allow' the police to search; the target could choose not to cooperate and police would break into the home, for example. As far as I can see, it is lawful to the target to do this. Similarly, in Rawls's case, the government is free to attempt to bruteforce the passphrase without Rawls's cooperation.

The comments here made me realize that I was probably wrong about the required cooperation in case the police shows up with a search warrant.

Obviously the former. The home search is analoguous with handing the hard drive to the police (they're free to search it). Giving the key is analogous to voluntarily digging up a secret stash in your back yard. And I disagree with it not being black and white, if you didn't already notice that. Rights are rights.

As I just wrote in other replies, I was probably wrong with regard to search warrants. Therefore my argument that sometimes you already have to act against your best interests falls apart unless someone can point at a better example than a search warrant.

Rights are rights.

But we make up those rights. If there is a right to not to incriminate oneself that applies in all circumstances, then I am of course with you, you should not be forced to decrypt the hard drive.

My point was that I am not sure if such a right applying in all circumstances exists and I thought the search warrant scenario proved that to not be the case but that turned out to be wrong.

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