re hard drive security for fbi targets in article apr yuma acns colostate edu holland cs colostate edu douglas craig holland writes i m not a lawyer so correct me if i m wrong but doing that could be considered obstruction of justice which could land you in prison for quite a while the thing that s great about the secret key is it is idea encrypted so even if the fbi do get the key they re sol unless they know the magic word if they try to force you to give them your pass phrase just say oops i forgot since the burden of proof is still on the prosecution in this country if you keep your mouth shut how can they prove that you didn t forget your pass phrase ok doug is right it would be obstruction of justice blah blah blah but saying i forgot is a lie which is just as bad from a moral point of view if you think lawfulness is a good in and of itself which admittedly most people do not but there s an even better way out of this provided the government is prosecuting you criminally you can probably plead the fifth amendmeent and thus legally avoid revealing your key the government cannot demand information from a criminal defendant which may tend to incriminate that defendant though this has never been applied in the cryptography context at least as far as i can tell it seems an obvious application to me this may be a common suggestion in this group but if it s not i m new here i d love to hear what people have to say about it since i don t really read this group and since the subject matter is more legal than cryptoid maybe misc legal computing would be an appropriate place steve steve kramarsky university of chicago law school steve faerie chi il us or smk quads uchicago edu all i did was kiss a girl jake the night before his hanging
