Well, combinations to a safe are viewed quite differently from a physical key to a lock. Compelling the latter has been viewed as permissible, while the former

Well, combinations to a safe are viewed quite differently from a physical key to a lock. Compelling the latter has been viewed as permissible, while the former has not. Where compelled disclosure of a password falls on that spectrum is, indeed, a matter of debate. However, this is not the same. This is compelling a company to turn over either a user's password (which the user [debatably] could not be forced to turn over without potential infringement of 5A) or specific technical details necessary to business, security, and privacy operations to help them decrypt an encrypted password. My examples were specifically not about compelling a person criminally charged or investigated to divulge combinations or produce keys. It was about compelling the safe-makers and key-makers to do the job as an end run around users being unwilling or unable to provide the demanded result. Tangentially, this revelation makes me think a bit more about the CISPA requirements that were discussed regarding protecting employees from being forced to surrender passwords to their employers. Can't help but wonder if backdoor conversations on that proposal were engineered by executive wishes to be able to compel employers to turn over employee passwords because they haven't been successful with service providers directly. [edit: mixed up my former/latter statement. added last comment. fixed spelling/grammar mistakes.]