US Appeals Court Upholds Suspect's Right To Refuse Decryption

Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 24, 2012 @01:54AM from the still-vulnerable-to-$5-wrench-decryption dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has found that forcing a suspect to decrypt his hard drive when the government did not already know what it contained would violate his 5th Amendment rights. According to Orin Kerr of the Volohk Conspiracy, 'the court's analysis (PDF) isn't inconsistent with Boucher and Fricosu, the two district court cases on 5th Amendment limits on decryption. In both of those prior cases, the district courts merely held on the facts of the case that the testimony was a foregone conclusion.'"

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Re:Only when they don't already know? by nospam007 · 2012-02-24 04:50 · Score: 0, Troll

"The reason is that any safe can be physically forced. This makes access inevitable. The combination only prevents property damage.
That is not the case with electronic encryption"
Untrue. _Every_ encryption can be broken, just like any safe can be opened.
It's just a matter of time, for safes it can be a couple of days, for encryption it's a couple of days more.