There is a certain romantic man against the world sort of idea where I support this kind of privacy. Some kind of 1984 like scenario.. I'm thinking like someone writes some particular brand fiction for his own enjoyment, somehow it becomes illegal and he's now a criminal for his private thoughts or the contents of his private writings. Or practicing an outlawed religion in private or something. The reality of the most recent cases regarding this stuff is you've got some fairly petty thefts, child porn, and similar crimes. An investigation reached the point where a computer was seized, they drew suspicion,crimes may have been observed and recorded, it's not like they were randomly going through customs or pulled over by a police officer and the contents of their computer were requested. Are there any cases of note where the suspect or defendant has some sort of cause to champion?
If we accept that this encrypted space is protected by the fifth amendment, then why won't we just regulate that encryption needs a "law enforcement access key" or make such encryption just illegal? You can make a very compelling case that it's not serving any public good if you can list off criminals and crimes that have gone free because of it. That would make the very use of encryption potentially becomes a crime regardless of the encrypted information content. Is that not the logical next step?
I'll assert what I've asserted many times, here and other places: if you're breaking the law for some ideological reason and keep encrypted electronic records of it, you're way better not going to court and not being on any police or prosecution's radar than just banking on the encryption holding. Pirating movies on bit torrent isn't exactly civil disobedience either, that would mean doing so openly and publicly.
> it's not like they were randomly going through customs
> or pulled over by a police officer and the contents of
> their computer were requested
That happened in one case. The problem with that case, is that the guy unlocked the computer for customs, customs found child porn, they turned off the computer, and later on the guy refused to unlock the computer of them again. The issue with this is that the border agent already saw that there was incriminating evidence in the encrypted volume, which muddies the waters a bit. Granted, if he mentioned child porn in passing to the border agent, they couldn't force him to testify against himself and make that same statement later on (e.g. in court, or on video).
>If we accept that this encrypted space is protected by the fifth amendment,
the encrypted space isn't protected by the 5th Amendment. The content of your brain is. If the police finds the password written on post-it under the keyboard, they would have all the rights to use it.
>then why won't we just regulate that encryption needs a "law enforcement access key" or make such encryption just illegal?
1st Amendment. A right to produce all kind of communication garbage, incl. XOR-ed image of your brain with Antarctica map or quasi-scientific reasons against tax increases or this my post.
If we accept that this encrypted space is protected by the fifth amendment, then why won't we just regulate that encryption needs a "law enforcement access key" or make such encryption just illegal? You can make a very compelling case that it's not serving any public good if you can list off criminals and crimes that have gone free because of it. That would make the very use of encryption potentially becomes a crime regardless of the encrypted information content. Is that not the logical next step?
I'll assert what I've asserted many times, here and other places: if you're breaking the law for some ideological reason and keep encrypted electronic records of it, you're way better not going to court and not being on any police or prosecution's radar than just banking on the encryption holding. Pirating movies on bit torrent isn't exactly civil disobedience either, that would mean doing so openly and publicly.
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