Would this be prevented in the USA because of the fourth and fifth amendments of the current US Constitution?
My theory (untested in the courts) is that providing decryption keys would be providing testimony. This is because the government is asking you to say something, write something, or otherwise communicate information to the investigators. Forcing testimony you consider self-incriminating is prohibited by the fifth amendment. The analogy is my shed in the back yard which is locked by a combination lock and the police have presented me with a valid, judge-signed search warrant. I am under no obligation to unlock the shed nor can I be compelled to recite the lock combination. If the police want to search fine, they can get out the bolt cutters and search the shed named in the warrant. This is analogous to when the search warrant calls for the seizure of my hard disk and the data therein. I am under no obligation to decrypt the data nor am I under any obligation to recite the description key. Let the police use the access technology and programs (electronic version of bolt cutters) on the market to access the hard disk named in the warrant. But, as I said earlier this theory is untested by the 9 demi-gods in black dresses, so relying on the protection that their interpretation of the fifth amendment is substantially similar to mine is a dicey proposition at best. BTW, did you notice in the article that Blackberry seems to be the only internet PDA device which routinely encrypts your email traffic while the message is en route? Does the section 49 directives only target Blackberry because the other PDA software (e.g. iPhone, eMailMan, etc.) send your email traffic in the clear so all the police need to do is go to your ISP for the emails of interest? -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Saqib Ali Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 12:58 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [FDE] Contested UK encryption disclosure law takes effect British law enforcement gained new powers on Monday to compel individuals and businesses to decrypt data wanted by authorities for investigations. ...... Failure to comply could mean a prison sentence of up to two years for cases not involving national security or five years for those that do. Read the entire story at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/01/AR2007100100 511.html _______________________________________________ FDE mailing list [email protected] http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde _______________________________________________ FDE mailing list [email protected] http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde
