4 ms·
The fifth amendment provides a right not to testify against yourself. It has little to do with documents, whether they are in your possession or someone else's.
by eurleif 4y ago
The fifth amendment provides a right not to testify against yourself. It has little to do with documents, whether they are in your possession or someone else's. The fourth amendment is the one that applies there. If her phone were recording location data locally (or if she were keeping a paper diary of her location, for that matter), the government could have obtained that information with a search warrant, and it would have been perfectly admissible.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoWhat you're saying is true only if the data is unencrypted or not password-protected. If the data is encrypted, the government would have to crack it (which is not usually possible with decent encryption and anything short of the NSA breathing down your neck). They could not just ask you for the password.
- eurleif 4y agoThe case law on compelled decryption is less clear-cut than you're describing. (Possible exceptions include: biometric, as opposed to password/passcode, encryption; and the government being able to prove that the defendant knows the password.) Moreover, even when the government can't obtain the decryption key from the defendant, cracking the encryption is not the only possibility. They could also seize the device while it is running, with the decryption key and/or decrypted data already in memory. That was done in the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, for example. Also, this is entirely different from your original claim, because it has nothing to do with where the encrypted data is stored. If you store encrypted data in the cloud, then the fifth amendment provides you with the same degree of protection from disclosing the decryption key as it would for locally-stored encrypted data.