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And the inquisitors may have already proven that you are a witch, so what's a little harm in torturing you to confess. They may have evidence that this is your

And the inquisitors may have already proven that you are a witch, so what's a little harm in torturing you to confess. They may have evidence that this is your wallet, but by supplying them with the password, you are testifying that it is your wallet. "An act is testimonial when the act entails implicit statements of fact, such as admitting that evidence exists, is authentic, or is within a suspect's control." "By entering the password Boucher would be disclosing the fact that he knows the password and has control over the files on drive Z." Compelling Ulbricht to unlock the wallet would be compelling him to testify that the wallet is his. You may think this is a silly chain of reasoning, but I'm sure you will forgive me if I will continue to side with existing federal precedent. http://www.volokh.com/files/Boucher.pdf http://www.volokh.com/files/Boucher.pdf

anologwintermut 13y ago
Ultimately, Burcher was orderd to decrypt his drive because the government both knew it was his and knew part of what was on it.[0] In Ulbricht's case there is a compelling argument that the bitcoin's contained in the wallet on his computer(assuming it was on his computer and not the server) are his. The question is what does the government know about those coins. Clearly, if they know Ulbricht's bitcoin id/public key, then they can look up his transactions in the block chain. If they don't, I'm not sure what they could possibly know. Of course, given Ulbricht's apparently atrocious OPSEC, it seems likely his password is Ludwig von Mises and the FBI won't need his help at all. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Boucher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Boucher