On: Compelled Decryption and the Privilege Against Sel...

[bcgraham]

Providing the combination to your safe seems like a closer analogy, and I believe it is protected from compulsion by the Fifth Amendment.

[ams6110 → bcgraham]

A safe can always be opened by force.

An encrypted file cannot, assuming a suitably complex password.

[philjohn → ams6110]

Until you get to an encrypted file that has such a complex password it would take all of the energy and longer than the heat death of the universe to compute, it's just that you can't open it by force within a suitable timeframe.

[DuskStar → philjohn]

An encrypted file cannot, given P!=NP (and a host of other assumptions, but P!=NP is the foundation), be decrypted.

So require proof that the file is not decryptable by other means before you can compel entering a password ;)

[cvwright → ams6110]

So citizens are being asked to give up fundamental freedoms because law enforcement is failing to do its job?

[TheCondor → bcgraham]

does the fifth guarantee some universal concept of mental privacy or does it prevent that information from being used in court?

You can’t take the fifth before a grand jury. I think there is a certain presumption that the actors are gentlemen that the law assumes. If you feel really strongly about that sort of privacy, you’d be well served to not find yourself in a criminal court trial.

There is both ambiguity and case law here.

[NoblePublius → bcgraham]

It’s not