Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years
When the FBI used the All Writs Act against Apple to attempt to force Apple to bypass the password functions of an iPhone or develop a backdoor method of access, the courts ruled that decryption was not a violation of the Fifth Amendment &quot;if the contents were a foregone conclusion.&quot;<p>So if &quot;foregone conclusion&quot; is the criteria that must be met, I have to ask how the contents of this man&#x27;s external hard drive could be conclusively a foregone conclusion.  Maybe he did download thousands of images.  What if he no longer possess them?  He could have deleted them.  The police have been known to make mistakes and have made high profile mistakes&#x27; i.e., the Atlanta Olympics bombing when they all but destroyed Richard Jewell.<p>What if he decrypted it and there was no child porn but there were records of say a store selling drugs etc on the dark net?  Then he would have incriminated himself for something they had zero knowledge about because the court issued this writ.<p>The government states that his sister acknowledges him showing her many explicit photos.  Did she turn in her brother?  Why would a man show his sister pornographic images?  Did she tell anyone around the time this happened that this occurred?  Seems to me to be unusual at the least for the government to hang their hat on something uncorroberated.  If the sister had access to the computer&#x27; who is to say that she did not download the images.  He could have seen them and deleted them.  Seems that a mere he said -she said is enough to have the government invade your privacy and demand you willingly set aside your consistutional protections or risk going to jail when you have not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime.<p>We have to be very careful when we start seeing civil liberties and constitutional protections erode.  Tech companies have been under siege from the government&#x27;s use of the All Writs Act in the last two decades and as long as they are successful, I do not foresee them changing their methods.