re keeping your mouth shut was hard drive security in article apr qualcomm com karn servo qualcomm com phil karn writes i say in theory because in another case a woman was held in contempt for refusing to reveal the location of her child even after taking the th in this case the woman was suspected of having murdered the kid so taking the th wasn t surprising sure so she was probably guilty but that s not good enough in our system you re not supposed to be able to force a suspect to confess to a crime no matter how strongly you think they re guilty you have to develop your evidence independently doing otherwise might catch a few more crooks but only at the cost of turning the clock back to the middle ages when confessions were routinely tortured out of suspects both guilty and innocent 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 thus if the father sued for custody of the children the case would be civil and the defendant mother would not have fifth amendment protection oddly enough her refusal to give information in a civil case can lead to criminal contempt charges thus landing her in jail the interesting part of all this is that in a murder trial the woman can plead the fifth as to the location of the child this is routine a computer crime prosecution thus would seem to be fertile ground for this kind of defense where a suit by a party injured by hackers would not if i am accused for example of sending encrypted kiddie porn over the nets the fifth should protect my key if i am accused of sending copyrighted material however it proabably will not copyright infringement not being a crime in the technical sense the really tricky question is say i do both naughty boy that i am can the government use the information gained in the civil trial ie my key to gain access to my files for use in the criminal prosecution the answer should certainly be no but lord only knows how this would work out 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
