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Comment by googlryas | Hacker News Reader

Your passphrase could be "I want to kill the President of the United States of America"

USSS, please refer to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg3_kUaYFJA

Wanting to kill the president is not in and of itself a crime.

I think it is illegal to make a credible threat against certain public figures, though, or something along those lines, right? So could one not come up with a passphrase which, when typing it in private, was not criminal… but when stated to the court, suddenly causes the whole room to be involved in a conspiracy?

Or, what if the passphrase includes top secret information?

Or, what if you passphrase is a declaration that you are under one of those secret court warrant thinamajiggies.

> I think it is illegal to make a credible threat against certain public figures, though, or something along those lines, right?

The Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) Supreme Court case allows for criminalizing speech only if the speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action" [1]. "imminent" means that there has to be a near-future, clear time window. "I will kill X president within 3 days" could be illegal. "I will kill X president within a year" is too vague. Regardless, either one could be interpreted as evidence of criminal intent to harm the president. (If you were only joking about killing the president and the jury believes you, then you're fine.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

This assumes you even have the right to a jury, or that you've even been charged with anything, or that you have the right to know what the charges are if they have been filed.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/detention/inde...

The law isn't code. It's not imperative procedure where you can just say the magic words and trigger an exception to be thrown.

We have humans to apply the law and use their judgment for exactly this reason.

My passphrase is "the best place to fire a mortar launcher at the white house would be from the roof of the rockefeller hewitt building because of minimal security and you'd have a clear line of sight to the president's bedroom".

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