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Comment by ethanbond | Hacker News Reader

I mean... police can force you to open your door, your safe, or virtually any other container of secrets. The 5th Amendment doesn't give you broad protection to hide things from police when they have a warrant.

A phone is unique thing not because it contains so many secrets, but because you have to give testimony (as opposed to property, like a key) in order to open it, and it's impossible to open by bashing the door down or cutting it open. It's a technological coincidence, not a legal/philosophical doctrine, that makes phones secure against compulsion by law enforcement.

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> I mean... police can force you to open your door, your safe, or virtually any other container of secrets.

No, they can't. They can force you to let them try to open it, but they can't force you to open it for them.

If you have some mechanism like "if you try to open this incorrectly it destroys the contents", and you intentionally don't disclose that with the expectation that they're going to try and fail and destroy the contents, you might get charged with destruction of evidence.

(EDIT: Replies suggest that disclosure may not suffice.)

If they have a warrant, they can force you under threat of legal action if you don't comply. If they don't have a warrant, you can claim the 4th. If they try to get you to divulge the password/code/secret, you plead the 5th. If you let them in, well... Politely tell them they are no longer welcome. Please leave. If they don't comply, they are trespassing (unless they have a warrant, in which case none of the above applies and you're probably going to jail, wear clean underwear).

I have to wonder how much of this goes on without a warrant, just pressuring people into it.

News articles suggests this happens a lot at the borders or during customs.

A border crossing is an entirely different realm where these rules do not apply.

See also, the 100-mile "constitution free zone" in which around 2/3rds of the country live.

https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2018/03/23/two-th...

Yeah. I believe they can look in your phone.

For what it's worth you'll still be charged with destruction and/or obstruction even if you warn them.

Interesting, and surprising. Is there case history and purported rationale on that?

Why is that surprising? The 5th isn't some sort of blanket gotcha, it's just there to curtail abuse.

There's a huge difference between "get out of the way" and "compelled to help".

Right, but that doesn't cover "and I booby trapped it". Why wouldn't you be open to charges in that case? Obstruction, destruction of evidence, contempt of court - such mechanisms exist in part to cover such cases.

I think there's a case to be made that if the contents contain a booby trap before the warrant is issued and executed, they found what was inside, a booby trap was inside. Similar to a canary, an action that causes destruction of evidence deliberately after the warrant was issued is not the same as a system in place beforehand that performs the action automatically in every case without input from the user. This obviously doesn't apply to say a passcode that wipes evidence as that requires deliberate action, but it would apply to something like wiping if the wrong passcode is entered 3 times.

Exactly. Intent also seems like it should matter. If your intent was "destroy evidence if the police comes knocking" that's one thing. If your intent was "have an extra secure safe to protect my secrets from anyone who might steal them" and you made that decision without knowledge of any warrant, that seems like it ought to be fine.

I'm not sure it's directly applicable, but courts have repeatedly ruled that you can't booby-trap your own property; I'm not quite sure this applies to, say, [non-explosively] erasing a USB drive by entering a decoy PIN.

https://www.hecklawoffices.com/blog/2020/11/its-illegal-for-...

Yeah we aren't talking about land mines here, just devices that destroy the owner's property, and more specifically software systems that destroy information. It is well established that weapons that harm people automatically are illegal.

It's an interesting area, the 5th is actually really narrow (and of course other jurisdictions have something else). It's not obvious what can be compelled; e.g. it wouldn't seem like a court ordering you to defeat such a measure would run afoul of 5th, but maybe something else.

I have been curious about when/where destruction of evidence takes place. Presumably during the crime, the perpetrator does their best to hide the evidence.

Does it only become destruction after you have been informed the police are interested in you? What if you do it before a warrant is issued? What if your device will self destruct if a password is not entered every N days and you withhold that information?

> I mean... police can force you to open your door, your safe

Actually, the government cannot compel you to give the combination to a safe [1]. If it's locked with a key, not a keypad or combination lock, they can force you to give the key. The distinction is that the former is a product of the mind, while the latter is a physical object. Furthermore, what if you forgot the combination? There's no real way to tell if someone has forgotten the combination or is deliberately withholding it.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/27/

> If it's locked with a key, not a keypad or combination lock, they can force you to give the key. The distinction is that the former is a product of the mind, while the latter is a physical object. Furthermore, what if you forgot the combination?

Sounds a bit silly. The location of the key is "a product of the mind." What if you forgot the location of the key?

If law enforcement has a warrant to search your safe, they could presumably expand that search to the rest of your house if you forgot where the key is. The core distinction is that the key is a physical object, it exists somewhere even if you forgot where it is. By comparison the combination is a product of the mind. The only way to retrieve it is for someone to talk to the police (which they have a constitutional right not to do).

IANAL but you could likely successfully claim that you forgot where the key is, exactly because that's a product of the mind. If they have evidence that you do actually know then you might be compelled to hand it over, though.

Correct. The “have combination in head” is directly analogous to encryption key. But they are allowed to open the safe by other means.

In the UK forgetting a password is not a defence.

TFA, and my above comment pertain to the US.

The UK's laws to compel people to give up passwords seems to make it a de facto crime to forget one's password. Worse yet, it seems like it's illegal to possess random bytes on your devices. I wonder if the UK would change course if people started emailing random bytes to politicians and other supporters of this law, while giving tips to law enforcement that these individuals are coordinating criminal acts over encrypted communications.

I know.

But ... If you're going to compell someone to give up the contents of their mind under threat of being found guilty if their mind isn't working properly, you may as well just do away with trial.

IOW, if you're going to compell speech, just compell the suspect to confess; it's the same thing.

Subtle distinction: I don't think the police, even with a warrant, can force you to open anything. They can use force to open something if you refuse (or seemingly, if they feel like it), but they can't make you do it.

A court on the other hand, can compel you to open something.

A court can compel you to do pretty much anything, within the law.

A court can compel you to open something within the warrant as well. In which case they can force you to open anything.

Yes, but that is a court order issued by the court not the police.

An order to unlock something coming from the cops is entirely different, even if they have a warrant. Warrants would allow them to seize a phone, but you don’t have to provide the password.

The only thing we must do in this world is die. Everything else is up for debate.

> police can force you to open your door, your safe, or virtually any other container of secrets.

Is it different from compelling someone to enter a text password to unlock a vault? What if it's self-destructive otherwise?

What happens if the password itself - or act of unlocking - is something self-incriminating (in form, in contents, or otherwise)?

> What happens if the password itself - or act of unlocking - is something self-incriminating (in form, in contents, or otherwise)?

Reminds me of Ian Watkins: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/26/lostprophets-sin....

You might be able to argue that decrypting the phone's filesystem is forcing you to provide them with information which is not relevant to the case at hand but still incriminating in other ways, since a phone could reasonably be expected to hold vast amounts of unrelated days.

If you save incriminating documents into an encrypted .ZIP file, the state cannot compel you to provide the password, because the password is in your mind. The contents of the mind cannot be demanded to incriminate self.

The state can install a keylogger if they have a warrant, and the results of the keylogger can be admitted as evidence.

Again, a coincidence of the technology.

It’s “you can’t be forced to open it because it requires you saying the password,” not “you can’t be forced to open it because it contains important secrets.”

Right, if they can figure out a way to reveal your secrets without forcing you to say something, they’re allowed to do that (with warrant of course).

> police can force you to open your door, your safe, or virtually any other container of secrets

No, they can't

Gotta love the insane legal opinions people come to on this site.

You should see the ones written by actual lawyers!

If the government hadn't always have the possibility and right to break into a safe you wouldn't give up the combination to, then that would have been a debate for decades. The reason this is a debate is because they can't crack it.

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