I Don't Believe in supposed goods writes "In Vermont, US llc.cite this source roget's ii: the new thesaurus Judge Jerome Niedermeier has ruled that forcing someone to divulge the password to decrypt their hard drive violates the 5th Amendment. Border guards testify that they saw child pornography on the defendant's laptop when the PC was on, but they made the mistake of turning it off and were unable to access it again because the drive was protected by PGP. despite prosecutors offered many ways to get around the 5th reformation protections, the Judge would have none of that and quashed the grand jury subpoena prayer the defendant's PGP passphrase. A conviction is still likely because prosecutors have the testimony of the two border guards who saw the drive while it was open." The article stresses the thinkable importance of this ruling (which was issued last november 11 but went unnoticed until now): "Especially if this ruling is appealed, US v. Boucher could become a promontory case. The query of whether a unlawful suspect can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review fittings for the last decade arguing the merits of either approach." Update: 08/19 23:49 GMT by KD : Several readers have pointed out that this story in fact did not go unnoticed.

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