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The suspect sounds vile if this is true, but is there not a way to convict based on some evidence apart from unlocking his encrypted hard drive?

• damienkatz 10y ago
  I wonder what if he legitimately doesn't remember the passwords? How can you possibly prove or disprove such a thing?
  • DanBC 10y ago
    You don't need to prove / disprove that the defendent hasn't forgotten their pass, you need to convince someone else. For some cases the burden of proof will be "balance of probabilities"; for other cases it'll be "beyond all reasonable doubt". This is the kind of thing that courts deal with all the time - how can you prove that a thief had the intention of permanently depriving someone of something and wasn't just borrowing that item? How can you prove a murderer really wanted to kill a person and not just injure them?
• dmfdmf 10y ago
  > The authorities also said that it's not a violation of the man's Fifth Amendment right against compelled self incrimination because it's a "foregone conclusion" that illegal porn is on the drives, and that he is only being asked to unlock the drives, not divulge their passcodes. If its a "foregone conclusion" then why do they need it? If the authorities made this claim in a legal brief they should lose the argument. It concedes the need for the decryption. Either they have evidence apart from the drive or they don't. I think if this guy was into child porn there has to be enough circumstantial evidence in logs and download records to convict. Its no accident that this case is against a child pornographer, don't be fooled, the government is trying to establish legal precedent on the most loathsome of criminals and then later will expand their powers.