re keeping your mouth shut was hard drive security in article apr midway uchicago edu smk quads uchicago edu steve kramarsky writes ok i should have read the thread before posting my own i would just add to phil s very infomative discussion the following caveat the fifth amendment applies only in crinial cases nor shall any person be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself maybe you are using the wrong amendment if someone were to seize a safe containing your paper records and demand that you produce the combination the applicable defense would be on grounds of unreasonable search and seizure the police would be entitled to subpoena documents relating to a specific matter but any broad search such as implied by impounding all your records would be unconstitutional in the case of the safe they would probably get a locksmith and assert that they only examined documents covered by the warrent sure in the cryptographic case their only resort would be rubber hose cryptography this would also make a good mental experiment to use in choosing escrow agents would you trust this proposed agent with a key to your hard disk or half the key for that matter robert i eachus with standard disclaimer use standard disclaimer function message text in clever ideas return better ideas is
