This is an interesting story with wide-ranging implications.
Police suspected a woman of fraud and, with a warrant, siezed her computers. One of these computers was password protected and running PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) security software so the police IT experts were not able to ese the usual back doors to crack it. The police believed that this computer contained data that would incriminate their suspect, Ramona Fricosu.
What to do?
The Colorado police went to a judge and got an order compelling Ms. Fricosu to reveal the password to the police.
This is highly problematic, on several fronts. The PopSci article quotes the DOJ’s :
“Failing to compel Ms. Fricosu amounts to a concession to her and potential criminals (be it in child exploitation, national security, terrorism, financial crimes or drug trafficking cases) that encrypting all inculpatory digital evidence will serve to defeat the efforts of law enforcement officers to obtain such evidence through judicially authorized search warrants, and thus make their prosecution impossible.”
The other side – both the defense and the civil liberties groups whose attention was turned to this case – has, in my never-humble-opinion, a much more solid position:
“The Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination is not necessarily a right to prevent you from giving bad things over to the government, but you are protected from disclosing your thoughts,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in this case. “We argued that providing access to the contents is the equivalent to her ‘emptying the thoughts of her mind,’ because it would require her password.”
What a can of worms this one is…
Thoughts?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 