>Justice in my view is the presumption of innocence, with the duty to demonstrate guilt beyond reasonable doubt placed on the prosecution. Forcing accused to de

>Justice in my view is the presumption of innocence, with the duty to demonstrate guilt beyond reasonable doubt placed on the prosecution. Forcing accused to decrypt data obviously helps the prosecution, but so would warrantless searches, and I oppose both for precisely the same reason. Warrantless searches are unjust because the police can come in and execute them without oversight. In this case, the neutral overseer (the court) has directed the accused to comply with a request from the investigators. Warrants are a check against rampant tyranny. They are issued or declined by an independent judicial officer whose incentives are, at least theoretically, not aligned to favor either party. Warrants don't exist because we think it's unfair to comply with reasonable requests from the organs of the state in the their pursuit of justice, even when you're among the accused. Rather, they exist to make sure that the requests remain reasonable and fair and serve the interests of justice. Like many things in our government, these are checks to limit and constrain the power of distinct government bodies and ensure that they do not get out of control. It is incorrect to assume that these restrictions exist for the convenience of criminal suspects, because they don't.