Court Urged To Find Forced Decryption Unconstitutional
Self-incrimination, dudes
You shouldn't have to surrender your constitutional rights in order to safeguard your electronic privacy. In a new amicus brief we filed today, we told a federal court in Wisconsin that ordering a man to decrypt the contents of computers seized from his apartment would violate the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
The case involves the FBI's attempts to decrypt the contents of more than ten storage devices and hard drives found in the apartment of Jeffrey Feldman in the course of a child pornography investigation. After spending months trying to decrypt the drives, the government applied for a court order forcing Feldman to provide the government with the decrypted contents of the drives.
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What would happen if the key no longer existed?