Judge rules man does not have to give up password >> Scott Klarr

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Judge rules man does not have to give up password

Dec 15, 2007 at 2:34 pm - 0 Comments

A Vermont judge has ruled that a man cannot be forced to provide an encryption password that could unlock documents that would be used against him as evidence. This particular story brings up many interesting points.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.

Now, I have some mixed feeling about this. First, i hate the fact that real criminals in this country have all these protections and in essense, loopholes to get out of the judicial system if there is even the slightest flaw. However that being said, I really like to see our rights such as the fifth amendment, hold up in court. Kind of bittersweet isn't it?

Boucher was initially arrested when customs agents stopped him and searched his laptop when he and his father crossed the border from Canada on December 17, 2006. An officer opened the laptop, accessed the files without a password or passphrase, and allegedly discovered "thousands of images of adult pornography and animation depicting adult and child pornography."

Now, even though this is kind of irrelevant to the whole point of this store, I find it very disturbing that customs agents can go through your computer with free will with no prior bias of suspicion. Not only is this hugely invasive, but it could be a security risk if there are unencrypted files there that contain very highly guarded trade secrets, or perhaps some personal information that you dont want anybody seeing, that now any customs officer who sees it, can go home and blog about their findings.

Despite this guy supposably having child pornography on his computer which I do not support at all (which is questionable in the first place, how were the agents to know the age of the "models" in the pictures? Ive seen lots of 18+ year olds who look a LOT younger), I hope that he wins in court because it will set precedent in court that will further enhance protection of our rights for those who are honest citizens.