In the UK if you won't give up your password (or essentially give means to decrypt data) when requested you can get 5 years for that.
Encryption will not protect against the state in this case. Likely other countries will start to copy that...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140116/09195525902/uk-ma...
You can Google more easily...
From your own link - he said he forgot the password, which(I assume) in itself wasn't enough to prosecute, it was the fact that he eventually caved in and provided it 4 months later, so they got him on purposefully obstructing justice for 4 months. It's not clear if he could be successfully prosecuted for this crime if he never remembered the password.
"Judge Christopher Parker did not accept Nicholson's "wholly inadequate" excuse that providing his password would expose information relating to cannabis."
So basically he said "I know the password, but I'm not going to tell you". That's obstructing justice.
My point is if you say you don't remember and maintain saying you don't, can you be persecuted purely on this one law. Because so far it looks like you can't.
I've long wished most of the American constitution made it's way over to Britain. We've had many of the freedoms enshrined in it for centuries but a few, particularly the principle of freedom of speech, has been trampled over in the internet age.
On the one hand, there is federal precedent (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca3/17...) that the government must be able to demonstrate both that the defendant knows the password and that criminal evidence is known to exist on the device. The bar for both of these things appears to be fairly high.
On the other hand, there is precedent at the state level in Pennsylvania (https://law.justia.com/cases/pennsylvania/supreme-court/2019...) that disclosure of passwords is testimonial in nature and therefore always (I think?) protected, even if you admit both to knowing the password and to the existence of criminal evidence.
Note the different jurisdictions for the precedents here. In federal courts that fall under the third circuit (which includes Pennsylvania), the first one applies. In state courts within Pennsylvania, the second one applies. This oddity won't change until and unless the US Supreme Court chooses to hear a relevant case. So in Pennsylvania, the law is currently different depending on if the FBI or the local police is the one prosecuting you.
Also note that from the first case, failure to provide the password is a form of civil contempt and therefore confinement is limited to 18 months at most.
The police think Bob has material that they need to see.
They think that:
The key, password, code is in the possession of the person given notice.
Disclosure is necessary in preventing or detecting crime.
Disclosure is proportionate.
The protected material cannot be obtained by other reasonable means.
Bob can ignore this. But that means he may be guilty of an offence under S53.
One of the defences available is to say that he's not in possession of the key. He'd have to persuade the court that either He'd forgotten the key or your encryption was set up in a way that he'd never had the key in a memorable form.
> For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if—
> (a)sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and
> (b)the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
So, to answer your question: yes, a person could be prosecuted, and they'd have to prove they forgot the key. The prosecutors wouldn't have to prove that the key had not been forgotten.
If you're providing part of your password you run the risk that
i) you'll be convicted of the S53 RIPA offence (potentially 2 years for most stuff, potentially 5 years for child sexual exploitation or terrorism)
and
ii) they'll decrypt it somehow and you'll also be convicted of the original offences.
Criminals are well aware of the trade-offs of the English courts. Do you plead guilty at the earliest opportunity (and get a reduction in sentence as a result) or do you wait until the day of the trial (because many trials collapse before they get to court).