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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

If I'm not mistaken, there's no limit on contempt of court. A... stubborn judge could keep you detained until you're no longer in contempt.

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Longest jail term for contempt was 14 years for a man who said he lost $2.75 million, and therefore couldn't give anything to his wife.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=8101209&page=1#.Tx4s...

Imprisonment for civil contempt can be of unlimited duration, but the purpose of it is to force you to give up the information. Once you have been in jail long enough for the judge to realize that imprisoning you won't change your mind, you will be released. That could be a very long time.

I've read that it's tied to a particular grand jury session, which is something like 18 months.

Either way, the longest contempt sentence ever was 14 years, which is nothing compared to what you'll get if the government convicts you of laundering money, selling drugs, possessing child porn, or all the other crimes that you might have documented on your computer.

Why would you want that person to be able to avoid going to jail just because he was smart enough to use encryption?

Because I believe in the right of a person to be secure in his papers. If you've done something illegal, the government should be able to make its case without needing your computer. If they can't, what you've done is, to me, not illegal. The people that wrote the Constitution seem to agree.

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