http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_new...rders-woman-to-give-up-password-to-hard-drive What say you, amateur legal geniuses of the SO? Does this violate the 5th amendment?
Hell if she doesn't give it to them I'm sure they have folks that can hack it. Probably just trying to save some money. If the laptop was seized as part of the investigation then she needs to give it up. Otherwise the judge will probably see her as not cooperating. I am no lawyer. Somebody grade my response. I'm sure I'm way off. Common sense rarely is correct.
I can see the Fifth Amendment argument. Seize the computer and hack away, but don't expect her to incriminate herself.
Gotta love the EFF It's not trivial to break encryption like that Personally, I'd be afraid of forgetting my password...
I don't agree with the Judge at all. I know that if I was a prosecutor, I'd argue that there could not possibly be anything incriminating about the actual password, therefore, her 5th Amendment rights were irrelevant. That said, I think that is a pretty dangerous line of thinking. It'd be just like holding someone in contempt for not telling the police where the murder weapon was. Hopefully, this Judge is overturned. I really disagree with that line of thinking.
It's pretty scary what's happening to our civil liberties. This particular case isn't all that bad as this is just a lone wolf federal judge who has made a pretty disturbing decision. It doesn't set precedent, so outside of this individual case, where the turd probably deserves to at least be made to sweat, it's not a big *** deal (yet). The problem is that this isn't just a single decision floating out there on an island. Our 4th and 5th Amendment rights are basically experiencing death by papercuts. An exception here, an exception there, and pretty soon, the rights are meaningless. The SCOTUS made a great unanimous decision the other day, which said that a warrant is now required for GPS trackers. That's a step in the right direction. It gives me hope that no matter how many conservative or liberal judges we have up there, our civil liberties matter.
The federal criminal code is around 50 titles long and 23,000 pages. You probably can't even pass gas without violating something in those books. It's a fine line between a free society and a police state, and those civil liberties are that fine line.
Im in agreement with you on this . Its that so many have said that here i was just bringing it back up
Question: Imagine one had a safe that was impossible to break into without the key. (yes, I know no such thing exists, but imagine for a minute that it does. If that's too much for you, imagine that breaking into it without the key would result in the destruction of everything inside). Is it a violation of civil rights for a judge to order the owner of the safe to turn over the key to that safe? This seems fairly analogous to what is being done here.
Not federal but... http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...rts-on-policeman/story-e6frev20-1111117581109
That reminds me of a case we read in law school back in my 1L days... A shock jock radio host was hosting some sort of anti-smoking fella. To tick him off, he lit up a big stogie and blew smoke in the guy's face. Sumbitch took it to trial on a civil assault charge and won a whole dollar. It held up on appeal because the particulate matter of the smoke was enough to create the contact required for a battery. I guess the particulate matter of a fart would also be enough to constitute a battery. Never had considered it 'til now...
That reminds me of a case we read in law school back in my 1L days... A shock jock radio host was hosting some sort of anti-smoking fella. To tick him off, he lit up a big stogie and blew smoke in the guy's face. Sumbitch took it to trial on a civil assault charge and won a whole dollar. It held up on appeal because the particulate matter of the smoke was enough to create the contact required for a battery. I guess the particulate matter of a fart would also be enough to constitute a battery. Never had considered it 'til now...