The one thing they both have absolutely in common: the implicit assumption that inanimate objects are the cause of social problems, and the belief that controlling those inanimate objects will magically make social problems go away. Perhaps you can see how childish this viewpoint is?
Obviously a lot of people don't. Otherwise, we would not have had continual attempts to create legislation to "protect people from themselves".
We KNOW from history that Prohibition was a social, economic, and criminal disaster. We have absolutely NO reason to suspect that trying it again would work out any better. (Economic and criminal in that it drove honest businesses out of businesses, while criminal markets boomed.)
They are most likely to be the gun owner(and their immediate family).
This is a MYTH that was popularized by the mainstream press 40 years ago, and continued to spread.
Department of Justice statistics, in the 70s, pointed out that victims of violent crime -- note: this is violent crime, most of which is NOT "gun" crime -- was perpetrated by someone who was known to the victim.
Investigation into the matter turned up that in these figures, "known to" meant anybody the victim was known to have encountered before... like the guy who lives 3 blocks away who walks his dog past the house once every 2 weeks, or somebody seen a few times in the subway while waiting for the train to work. It did NOT mean a close friend, and it did NOT mean family (although those of course were also included).
The next thing you know, you had politicians and press saying that violent crime like rape was mostly committed by friends and family members (false). THEN it morphed into "Most GUN victims are family members."
And it's just not true. None of it. The fact is that the perpetrators of most violent crime are NOT "well known" to their victims, much less family. And that includes (but it is not exclusive to) guns. The very idea is a distortion of a distortion of a distortion.
First, CDC has been expanding its activities beyond its Congressional mandate. It has no lawful business spending taxpayer dollars in this area.
Second, CDC has been notoriously biased on precisely the subjects of guns, alcohol, and tobacco. Even courts have said so. Their figures are not credible. You might as well consider them a branch of the ATF.
Third, PEW has also demonstrated bias in these areas. So when you pile bias on top of bias, you end up with very little credibility indeed.
I would have to see the raw numbers CDC used for their "study" of this. I'm not disputing that the suicide figures are basically true. But I'm not going to accept them based on "Pew said CDC said so."
Even the "categories" it divides people into are weird, seemingly arbitrary groups, and it even does that based on a bizarre, non-scientific "survey" full of highly loaded questions.
I used to have some respect for Pew, until I looked a bit more into their methodologies.
University of Washington and University of Arizona researchers found that both natural plant odors and human sources of pollution can conceal the scent of sought-after flowers.
Methodology: mash up some flowers and alfalfa, then put it under your armpit all day in summer. See if the bees want it.
It's not even that. It's unthinking shooting themselves in the foot.
Private corporations might not be subject to oversight, but they also lack legal authority to conduct SWAT raids on citizens. In fact, that should net them a pretty good number of years in prison.
On the other hand, I'd never become a cop due to the incredibly ridiculous amount of liability, red tape, blatantly lying "news" channels and papers
You should send thanks to the heavens for every one of those things.
Just calculate the marginal cost of a kilogram of combusted fuel due to pollination problems and, add it to the fuel tax, and spend it on research to drive down the cost of more fuel-efficient cars and hydrogen vehicles.
I think if you research the actual numbers, you will find that government regulation has done anything but reduce the cost of vehicles.
ltimately, the problem is one of a practical nature: until the incriminating evidence is actually shown to be on the encrypted hard drive, it is only suspected to be there, by any legal interpretation of "suspicion" -- if it was legally known to exist there, you could be found guilty without the bothersome effort of having to decrypt the data. Thus, by the wording of the ruling, the court is allowed to compel testimony in the form of a passphrase under literally any circumstance, since any suspect is, by definition, under "reasonable suspicion."
That is not quite what decision says. Reasonable suspicion is sufficient to get a search warrant and the authorities can take the hard disk and try to break the encryption.
[[[Sigh.]]] No, you're BOTH wrong.
"Reasonable suspicion" is pretty much the lowest standard of evidence. You can be pulled over in your car, for example, if a policeman "reasonably suspects" that you have committed a traffic violation or broken some other law.
Can he then search your car? Based on the above, and generally speaking, NO. In most cases, in order for a search (and always for a search warrant), there must be "probable cause". Probable cause is a higher standard of evidence than reasonable suspicion. It requires clear, articulable (and often tangible) evidence of a crime, not just suspicion. It would take probable cause, not reasonable suspicion, to seize the drive and attempt to decrypt it. But even probable cause is not sufficient, by itself, to compel a suspect to reveal a password.
The defendant can be compelled to give them the key only if it is already proven (not just reasonably suspected) that he has it. This defendant lost because he bragged to the cops that he had the key.
[[[Sigh again.]]] NO. That's not how it works. That's not even what this is about.
It doesn't matter -- even a little -- whether he has the encryption key. The whole issue of the discussion here is whether the court can order him to cough it up IF he does have it.
The court can order him to provide the encryption key ONLY if the court already KNOWS there is incriminating evidence on the hard drive. In that sense, GP almost got it right. As TFA says, in bold print: "The defendant is only telling the government what it already knows." Those are the only circumstances under which the court can get around the 5th Amendment self-incrimination protection. Because if the court didn't already know that -- pretty much for sure -- then giving them the key would be self-incrimination, and the Constitution says the court is not allowed to force him to do that. As strange as it may seem, that's how it really works.
But GP's next statement -- that this means a court can compel decryption based on reasonable suspicion -- is way out of left field and totally wrong. The judge's ruling says nothing like that at all. The judge has changed no legal standards in any way.
But it also has absolutely nothing to do with whether he has the key, or if they can prove he has the key. The key is immaterial here (except to note that if he doesn't have it, it doesn't do much good to order him to produce it).
And, in recent times (as in within THIS month...) the Supreme Court of the US handed down a UNANIMOUS decision that they had to get a warrant to go digging about on a defendant's phone- this is the same thing.
No, this is NOT the same thing. This is a 5th Amendment issue. The cell phone thing is a 4th Amendment issue. They are not even remotely similar.
Your post talks about two very different concepts in a way that might be unclear. Someone might get the idea that the particularity of the evidence sought has something to do with the burden of proof. It doesn't, of course. Those are two different concepts.
Yes, they are different concepts, and it seems you are the one who is getting them confused.
Probable cause is sufficient standard of proof for a warrant. This, for example:
As an example, "we're looking for the email that Ms. Lerner sent to Mr. Smith on March 3rd" satisfies that condition.
... might qualify as probable cause.
However, probable cause is NOT a sufficient standard of evidence for an exception to the 5th Amendment self-incrimination rule. I've written it elsewhere in this thread, but I will repeat it. SCOTUS has ruled that the court must have knowledge, "with reasonable particularity", that the specific evidence IS present before they can compel "a product of the mind" like a password or combination. Only under those circumstances can the suspect be said to not be incriminating himself.
Neither reasonable suspicion or probable cause approach that standard of evidence. It is much higher.
In this case, the defendant admitted the encrypted data is communications with someone who is not his lawyer, and the state showed that those communications are likely to be evidence in this case. So, this time, the ruling is correct.
That's not quite true. According to SCOTUS, in order to get around the 5th Amendment self-incrimination limitation, they have to KNOW, "with reasonable particularity", that it is definitely there. "Likely" is not sufficient, and even probable cause is not sufficient. Only firm knowledge allows this exception.
In this case, a court would rule that a) you've just admitted the system contains information related to the government investigation, b) you created the system being used to obfuscate and hide that information, and c) even though you've made it difficult or impossible to produce that information at this time, you can be compelled to do so at the earliest possible moment the system physically allows, and d) the fact that you appear to have deliberately done all of this in a deliberate attempt to thwart law enforcement with full knowledge of the legal consequences can subject you to an obstruction of justice charge.
a) no b) no c) no d) no
[a] False because there could be many reasons for your actions, among them political. Encrypting or hiding information is not by itself evidence of wrongdoing. It CAN be, under particular circumstances, when certain other evidence is present. But by itself? No. And even if it DID contain such evidence, if it incriminated you, you could still not be compelled to disclose because of the 5th Amendment. The whole point of this thread.
[b] False because there is no law preventing you from encrypting anything you damned well please. 1st & 4th Amendments.
[c] False if by doing so, you could incriminate yourself (again, the whole point of this entire thread).
[d] False because it would not be possible to show this without having already convicted you on some other charge. It isn't "obstruction of justice" to do something unless it involves an actual crime. You aren't "obstructing justice" unless there is some kind of actual justice that you are actually obstructing.
That doesn't work. Otherwise, everyone who commits a murder should keep some cocaine handy. Then when they search your house for the murder you could argue that the cocaine constituted an illegal search because they weren't looking for that.
No, THAT doesn't work. I am discussing a 5th Amendment issue. You're talking about a 4th Amendment issue. They are very, very different things.
Nothing is wrong with that, but I am intelligent enough to see that you don't invalidate one shred of the original comment you reply to. What you write is orthogonal, meaning it's something unrelated, it neither supports nor invalidates the prior statement.:-)
I wasn't trying to "invalidate" anything. I was just presenting a point of view.
So if they force disclosure of a password and the data that was "known" to be on there isn't there, do you get to sue for violation of your fifth amendment rights?
Yes. Plus the witnesses who said it was there would probably face perjury charges a well.
Yes, but how many people are using 4.1a from what....10 years ago? Almost everyone would be using a newer and (from the evidence provided by the Dev) compromised version.
Pardon me. Brain fart, as they say. I meant 7.1a. That's the one being audited, and it has turned out okay.
The only thing they have in common is an interest in knowing how smart they, and other people are, by one particular yardstick. As interest go, that's pretty shallow.
That's simply not true. I met someone in an L.A. MENSA group. Within their group they have a rocketry club, and a movie-night club, and a poetry club, and many more.
They already can open your TrueCrypt volumes - hence why the dev shut it down and issued a warning that it's not safe to use.
Actually, the sum of the evidence says otherwise. The security audit has found nothing wrong with Truecrypt 4.1a, and in fact they plan to carry forward the TrueCrypt project when Phase II of the audit is completed.
No, as the series of court rulings have gone, the Fourth Amendment does not protect you from lawful search and seizure (such as a safe or hard drive). The combination to the safe, or encryption key to the drive, is not incriminating evidence and providing it to allow for lawful search and seizure does not violate your rights.
In most circumstances, this is just plain false. As explained (but not very well) in TFA.
Unless it is already known "with particularity" that the drive or safe contains some specific illegal or incriminating material, a judge cannot compel someone to hand over a decryption key or combination. Because those are the only circumstances that would not compel him to incriminate himself. This has nothing to do with the Fourth amendment at all, it's just the Fifth.
Having said that: if they have probable cause or a warrant, they can force open a safe without violating either the 4th or 5th Amendments. The 4th only requires probable cause, and it doesn't require the suspect to incriminate herself, so the 5th isn't violated.
However, with decent encryption there is no way to do that with a hard drive, so the circumstances are very different and the 5th Amendment comes into play. The court cannot compel speech, or "a product of the mind" like a combination or encryption key, if in doing so the individual would incriminate himself. The exception -- the ONLY exception -- is when specific evidence or illegal material is already known to be inside, "with reasonable particularity" as the courts have put it. ONLY in those circumstances is a suspect not being forced to incriminate himself. (And of course if the court did compel disclosure, and the material in question turned out to not be there after all, then the witnesses who said it was would be in some very serious trouble.)
Simply suspecting something is inside is not sufficient. Probable cause is not sufficient. It is a far higher standard of evidence.
They can indeed compel you to unlock a safe, just like they can compel one to hand over documents during discovery.
Not if it has a combination lock. Under some circumstances, that is.
See, a lot of people here aren't getting what this is about. The 5th Amendment, and how it works.
You cannot be compelled to produce knowledge -- "a product of the mind", as the courts put it -- if that could incriminate you. That includes an encryption key or a safe combination.
But what many people don't seem to get here, and what many people find strange, is that this only holds if the contents are unknown. If the contents are already known, then the person isn't incriminating himself. So decryption / combination can be compelled. (It should also be noted that a safe isn't really a good example, though, because they only need probable cause to force it open, and the hell with the combination.)
Example: a few years ago, a man was crossing the border with his laptop. He had an encrypted volume active and open when customs looked at it. A customs agent saw some child pornography on the encrypted volume, and showed it to another agent. Then the man somehow managed to turn off the laptop.
In court, the judge ruled that because illegal material was already known to be on the drive, the judge could compel the man to hand over the decryption key. The man wouldn't be incriminating himself because he was already known to have illegal material there. (I would argue, though, that the man could have had other content on the drive, which was unknown, and which could have incriminated him for some other crime. In which case the ruling would be improper.)
But again, it was only because specific illegal content was already "known with particularity" to be on the drive, that the judge could so order.
Based on simple convenience and peoples' time-proven behavior.
The way it is now, you have a watch telling you that you have an incoming call, so then you have to dig out your phone, or at least have your phone with you so you can answer the call with your watch. And if you didn't dig the damned phone out of your pack or your purse on time, you still missed the damn call, didn't you? "Smart" watch or not.
Why? Why force you to have TWO devices when you only need one for those things?
People don't need a tablet all the time. They don't need games all the time. They do (often) need a watch, and a phone. And these days, the fitness trackers might also be called a legitimate thing you want on your arm all the time.
So... it's simple logic. Put the things you want to have on you all the time on your wrist, and make the other things optional. Instead of the ass-backwards way it is now.
The way it is now, you have to have BOTH devices on you at all times for the one to be useful at all. That's dumb. Put the essential, all-the-time-carry things in the watch (And hey! Look! They fit!) and leave the rest to the optional thing... a decent tablet.
Tablet is all fine by itself, unless you need wi-fi or 3g-4g. That's what the watch does. Watch is also all fine by itself, and if you want to take an incoming call, it's there. Even if you forgot your tablet in Trenton.
Then I realized only a fuckhead would join mensa for intellectual validation.
Then I realized I was one of those fuckheads and promptly re-examined my life.
Yep. If you joined MENSA for "intellectual validation", you were indeed a fuckhead. They ADVERTISE that's not what they're all about. so why did you think they were?
Slashdot Mirror
The one thing they both have absolutely in common: the implicit assumption that inanimate objects are the cause of social problems, and the belief that controlling those inanimate objects will magically make social problems go away. Perhaps you can see how childish this viewpoint is?
Obviously a lot of people don't. Otherwise, we would not have had continual attempts to create legislation to "protect people from themselves".
We KNOW from history that Prohibition was a social, economic, and criminal disaster. We have absolutely NO reason to suspect that trying it again would work out any better. (Economic and criminal in that it drove honest businesses out of businesses, while criminal markets boomed.)
They are most likely to be the gun owner(and their immediate family).
This is a MYTH that was popularized by the mainstream press 40 years ago, and continued to spread.
Department of Justice statistics, in the 70s, pointed out that victims of violent crime -- note: this is violent crime, most of which is NOT "gun" crime -- was perpetrated by someone who was known to the victim.
Investigation into the matter turned up that in these figures, "known to" meant anybody the victim was known to have encountered before... like the guy who lives 3 blocks away who walks his dog past the house once every 2 weeks, or somebody seen a few times in the subway while waiting for the train to work. It did NOT mean a close friend, and it did NOT mean family (although those of course were also included).
The next thing you know, you had politicians and press saying that violent crime like rape was mostly committed by friends and family members (false). THEN it morphed into "Most GUN victims are family members."
And it's just not true. None of it. The fact is that the perpetrators of most violent crime are NOT "well known" to their victims, much less family. And that includes (but it is not exclusive to) guns. The very idea is a distortion of a distortion of a distortion.
To clarify my comment above:
First, CDC has been expanding its activities beyond its Congressional mandate. It has no lawful business spending taxpayer dollars in this area.
Second, CDC has been notoriously biased on precisely the subjects of guns, alcohol, and tobacco. Even courts have said so. Their figures are not credible. You might as well consider them a branch of the ATF.
Third, PEW has also demonstrated bias in these areas. So when you pile bias on top of bias, you end up with very little credibility indeed.
I would have to see the raw numbers CDC used for their "study" of this. I'm not disputing that the suicide figures are basically true. But I'm not going to accept them based on "Pew said CDC said so."
False. The majority of gun deaths in the US are suicide. Didn't you know that? Seriously?
And Pew Research is typically full of bullshit.
You didn't know that? Seriously?
Even the "categories" it divides people into are weird, seemingly arbitrary groups, and it even does that based on a bizarre, non-scientific "survey" full of highly loaded questions.
I used to have some respect for Pew, until I looked a bit more into their methodologies.
University of Washington and University of Arizona researchers found that both natural plant odors and human sources of pollution can conceal the scent of sought-after flowers.
Methodology: mash up some flowers and alfalfa, then put it under your armpit all day in summer. See if the bees want it.
The corporation stance is stupid legal wrangling.
It's not even that. It's unthinking shooting themselves in the foot.
Private corporations might not be subject to oversight, but they also lack legal authority to conduct SWAT raids on citizens. In fact, that should net them a pretty good number of years in prison.
On the other hand, I'd never become a cop due to the incredibly ridiculous amount of liability, red tape, blatantly lying "news" channels and papers
You should send thanks to the heavens for every one of those things.
and blame for having to enforce bad laws.
But not that one.
I heard what is better is to plant marijuana between your corn plants.
That certainly helped keep one kind of major pest away.
Just calculate the marginal cost of a kilogram of combusted fuel due to pollination problems and, add it to the fuel tax, and spend it on research to drive down the cost of more fuel-efficient cars and hydrogen vehicles.
I think if you research the actual numbers, you will find that government regulation has done anything but reduce the cost of vehicles.
I assume their 80% result was based on something more difficult, but it's still kind of a silly sounding number without context.
On our next episode: Scientists Use Computers To Determine Which Direction The Earth Is Turning.
ltimately, the problem is one of a practical nature: until the incriminating evidence is actually shown to be on the encrypted hard drive, it is only suspected to be there, by any legal interpretation of "suspicion" -- if it was legally known to exist there, you could be found guilty without the bothersome effort of having to decrypt the data. Thus, by the wording of the ruling, the court is allowed to compel testimony in the form of a passphrase under literally any circumstance, since any suspect is, by definition, under "reasonable suspicion."
That is not quite what decision says. Reasonable suspicion is sufficient to get a search warrant and the authorities can take the hard disk and try to break the encryption.
[[[Sigh.]]] No, you're BOTH wrong.
"Reasonable suspicion" is pretty much the lowest standard of evidence. You can be pulled over in your car, for example, if a policeman "reasonably suspects" that you have committed a traffic violation or broken some other law.
Can he then search your car? Based on the above, and generally speaking, NO. In most cases, in order for a search (and always for a search warrant), there must be "probable cause". Probable cause is a higher standard of evidence than reasonable suspicion. It requires clear, articulable (and often tangible) evidence of a crime, not just suspicion. It would take probable cause, not reasonable suspicion, to seize the drive and attempt to decrypt it. But even probable cause is not sufficient, by itself, to compel a suspect to reveal a password.
The defendant can be compelled to give them the key only if it is already proven (not just reasonably suspected) that he has it. This defendant lost because he bragged to the cops that he had the key.
[[[Sigh again.]]] NO. That's not how it works. That's not even what this is about.
It doesn't matter -- even a little -- whether he has the encryption key. The whole issue of the discussion here is whether the court can order him to cough it up IF he does have it.
The court can order him to provide the encryption key ONLY if the court already KNOWS there is incriminating evidence on the hard drive. In that sense, GP almost got it right. As TFA says, in bold print: "The defendant is only telling the government what it already knows." Those are the only circumstances under which the court can get around the 5th Amendment self-incrimination protection. Because if the court didn't already know that -- pretty much for sure -- then giving them the key would be self-incrimination, and the Constitution says the court is not allowed to force him to do that. As strange as it may seem, that's how it really works.
But GP's next statement -- that this means a court can compel decryption based on reasonable suspicion -- is way out of left field and totally wrong. The judge's ruling says nothing like that at all. The judge has changed no legal standards in any way.
But it also has absolutely nothing to do with whether he has the key, or if they can prove he has the key. The key is immaterial here (except to note that if he doesn't have it, it doesn't do much good to order him to produce it).
And, in recent times (as in within THIS month...) the Supreme Court of the US handed down a UNANIMOUS decision that they had to get a warrant to go digging about on a defendant's phone- this is the same thing.
No, this is NOT the same thing. This is a 5th Amendment issue. The cell phone thing is a 4th Amendment issue. They are not even remotely similar.
Your post talks about two very different concepts in a way that might be unclear. Someone might get the idea that the particularity of the evidence sought has something to do with the burden of proof. It doesn't, of course. Those are two different concepts.
Yes, they are different concepts, and it seems you are the one who is getting them confused.
Probable cause is sufficient standard of proof for a warrant. This, for example:
As an example, "we're looking for the email that Ms. Lerner sent to Mr. Smith on March 3rd" satisfies that condition.
... might qualify as probable cause.
However, probable cause is NOT a sufficient standard of evidence for an exception to the 5th Amendment self-incrimination rule. I've written it elsewhere in this thread, but I will repeat it. SCOTUS has ruled that the court must have knowledge, "with reasonable particularity", that the specific evidence IS present before they can compel "a product of the mind" like a password or combination. Only under those circumstances can the suspect be said to not be incriminating himself.
Neither reasonable suspicion or probable cause approach that standard of evidence. It is much higher.
In this case, the defendant admitted the encrypted data is communications with someone who is not his lawyer, and the state showed that those communications are likely to be evidence in this case. So, this time, the ruling is correct.
That's not quite true. According to SCOTUS, in order to get around the 5th Amendment self-incrimination limitation, they have to KNOW, "with reasonable particularity", that it is definitely there. "Likely" is not sufficient, and even probable cause is not sufficient. Only firm knowledge allows this exception.
In this case, a court would rule that a) you've just admitted the system contains information related to the government investigation, b) you created the system being used to obfuscate and hide that information, and c) even though you've made it difficult or impossible to produce that information at this time, you can be compelled to do so at the earliest possible moment the system physically allows, and d) the fact that you appear to have deliberately done all of this in a deliberate attempt to thwart law enforcement with full knowledge of the legal consequences can subject you to an obstruction of justice charge.
a) no b) no c) no d) no
[a] False because there could be many reasons for your actions, among them political. Encrypting or hiding information is not by itself evidence of wrongdoing. It CAN be, under particular circumstances, when certain other evidence is present. But by itself? No. And even if it DID contain such evidence, if it incriminated you, you could still not be compelled to disclose because of the 5th Amendment. The whole point of this thread.
[b] False because there is no law preventing you from encrypting anything you damned well please. 1st & 4th Amendments.
[c] False if by doing so, you could incriminate yourself (again, the whole point of this entire thread).
[d] False because it would not be possible to show this without having already convicted you on some other charge. It isn't "obstruction of justice" to do something unless it involves an actual crime. You aren't "obstructing justice" unless there is some kind of actual justice that you are actually obstructing.
That doesn't work. Otherwise, everyone who commits a murder should keep some cocaine handy. Then when they search your house for the murder you could argue that the cocaine constituted an illegal search because they weren't looking for that.
No, THAT doesn't work. I am discussing a 5th Amendment issue. You're talking about a 4th Amendment issue. They are very, very different things.
Nothing is wrong with that, but I am intelligent enough to see that you don't invalidate one shred of the original comment you reply to. What you write is orthogonal, meaning it's something unrelated, it neither supports nor invalidates the prior statement. :-)
I wasn't trying to "invalidate" anything. I was just presenting a point of view.
So if they force disclosure of a password and the data that was "known" to be on there isn't there, do you get to sue for violation of your fifth amendment rights?
Yes. Plus the witnesses who said it was there would probably face perjury charges a well.
That works, expect you get to sit in jail indefinitely for contempt as a result.
Cool. So we can expect to see Eric Holder, Lois Lerner, the directors of the NSA and CIA, and the heads of the EPA all in prison soon?
Yes, but how many people are using 4.1a from what....10 years ago? Almost everyone would be using a newer and (from the evidence provided by the Dev) compromised version.
Pardon me. Brain fart, as they say. I meant 7.1a. That's the one being audited, and it has turned out okay.
The only thing they have in common is an interest in knowing how smart they, and other people are, by one particular yardstick. As interest go, that's pretty shallow.
That's simply not true. I met someone in an L.A. MENSA group. Within their group they have a rocketry club, and a movie-night club, and a poetry club, and many more.
So what's wrong with that?
They already can open your TrueCrypt volumes - hence why the dev shut it down and issued a warning that it's not safe to use.
Actually, the sum of the evidence says otherwise. The security audit has found nothing wrong with Truecrypt 4.1a, and in fact they plan to carry forward the TrueCrypt project when Phase II of the audit is completed.
No, as the series of court rulings have gone, the Fourth Amendment does not protect you from lawful search and seizure (such as a safe or hard drive). The combination to the safe, or encryption key to the drive, is not incriminating evidence and providing it to allow for lawful search and seizure does not violate your rights.
In most circumstances, this is just plain false. As explained (but not very well) in TFA.
Unless it is already known "with particularity" that the drive or safe contains some specific illegal or incriminating material, a judge cannot compel someone to hand over a decryption key or combination. Because those are the only circumstances that would not compel him to incriminate himself. This has nothing to do with the Fourth amendment at all, it's just the Fifth.
Having said that: if they have probable cause or a warrant, they can force open a safe without violating either the 4th or 5th Amendments. The 4th only requires probable cause, and it doesn't require the suspect to incriminate herself, so the 5th isn't violated.
However, with decent encryption there is no way to do that with a hard drive, so the circumstances are very different and the 5th Amendment comes into play. The court cannot compel speech, or "a product of the mind" like a combination or encryption key, if in doing so the individual would incriminate himself. The exception -- the ONLY exception -- is when specific evidence or illegal material is already known to be inside, "with reasonable particularity" as the courts have put it. ONLY in those circumstances is a suspect not being forced to incriminate himself. (And of course if the court did compel disclosure, and the material in question turned out to not be there after all, then the witnesses who said it was would be in some very serious trouble.)
Simply suspecting something is inside is not sufficient. Probable cause is not sufficient. It is a far higher standard of evidence.
They can indeed compel you to unlock a safe, just like they can compel one to hand over documents during discovery.
Not if it has a combination lock. Under some circumstances, that is.
See, a lot of people here aren't getting what this is about. The 5th Amendment, and how it works.
You cannot be compelled to produce knowledge -- "a product of the mind", as the courts put it -- if that could incriminate you. That includes an encryption key or a safe combination.
But what many people don't seem to get here, and what many people find strange, is that this only holds if the contents are unknown. If the contents are already known, then the person isn't incriminating himself. So decryption / combination can be compelled. (It should also be noted that a safe isn't really a good example, though, because they only need probable cause to force it open, and the hell with the combination.)
Example: a few years ago, a man was crossing the border with his laptop. He had an encrypted volume active and open when customs looked at it. A customs agent saw some child pornography on the encrypted volume, and showed it to another agent. Then the man somehow managed to turn off the laptop.
In court, the judge ruled that because illegal material was already known to be on the drive, the judge could compel the man to hand over the decryption key. The man wouldn't be incriminating himself because he was already known to have illegal material there. (I would argue, though, that the man could have had other content on the drive, which was unknown, and which could have incriminated him for some other crime. In which case the ruling would be improper.)
But again, it was only because specific illegal content was already "known with particularity" to be on the drive, that the judge could so order.
"Making telephone calls is one. "
based on what?
Based on simple convenience and peoples' time-proven behavior.
The way it is now, you have a watch telling you that you have an incoming call, so then you have to dig out your phone, or at least have your phone with you so you can answer the call with your watch. And if you didn't dig the damned phone out of your pack or your purse on time, you still missed the damn call, didn't you? "Smart" watch or not.
Why? Why force you to have TWO devices when you only need one for those things?
People don't need a tablet all the time. They don't need games all the time. They do (often) need a watch, and a phone. And these days, the fitness trackers might also be called a legitimate thing you want on your arm all the time.
So... it's simple logic. Put the things you want to have on you all the time on your wrist, and make the other things optional. Instead of the ass-backwards way it is now.
The way it is now, you have to have BOTH devices on you at all times for the one to be useful at all. That's dumb. Put the essential, all-the-time-carry things in the watch (And hey! Look! They fit!) and leave the rest to the optional thing... a decent tablet.
Tablet is all fine by itself, unless you need wi-fi or 3g-4g. That's what the watch does. Watch is also all fine by itself, and if you want to take an incoming call, it's there. Even if you forgot your tablet in Trenton.
Then I realized only a fuckhead would join mensa for intellectual validation.
Then I realized I was one of those fuckheads and promptly re-examined my life.
Yep. If you joined MENSA for "intellectual validation", you were indeed a fuckhead. They ADVERTISE that's not what they're all about. so why did you think they were?