Interesting questions that (to an an extent) are still being worked out in U.S. case law. You're right that there's no 5th Amendment problem if you're not a sus

Interesting questions that (to an an extent) are still being worked out in U.S. case law. You're right that there's no 5th Amendment problem if you're not a suspect and likely also because surveillance footage isn't "testimonial" evidence (have fun going down that case law rabbit hole when you have a few days to waste). How keen are judges to sign off on a search warrant to make you turn over the equipment? Pretty keen as long as the equipment itself or information on the equipment is evidence of the commission of a crime. Whether they can compel a third party to decrypt footage stored on their equipment is a little thorny as a legal issue [see here for a short discussion: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/can-the-government-force-suspects-to-decrypt-incriminating-files/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/can-the-government-force-...]. It's not a perfect analogy, but think of a person who keeps evidence of some crime (say some stolen documents) in an unbreakable (for hypothetical purposes) lock box with a (hypothetically unbreakable) combination lock. The lock box contains the evidence, but isn't evidence itself. Similarly the combination isn't evidence of a crime. In general a court won't order the disclosure of something like the combination though they might order a person to use the combination to open the box so the police can seize the evidence. So depending on the court and the judge, some investigators might find a judge who would be willing to sign an order to compel a person to decrypt surveillance footage, though I'd also expect someone who's determined to fight such an order would have a doozy of a constitutional law question on his hands.