&gt; The other was a forensic examiner who testified that it was his &quot;best guess&quot; that child pornography was on the drives<p>I&#x27;m curious how on Earth one arrives at that &quot;guess&quot; for an encrypted drive other than reasoning &quot;why else would he not decrypt them?&quot;  In which case his expertise as a forensic examiner is irrelevant.<p>Edit: I&#x27;d love to see the original testimony, but I haven&#x27;t been able to find it.  This article has more information though: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20160428&#x2F;07395434297&#x2F;so-much-fifth-amendment-man-jailed-seven-months-not-turning-over-password.shtml" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20160428&#x2F;07395434297&#x2F;so-mu...</a><p>&gt; The government’s second witness was Detective Christopher Tankelewicz, a forensic examiner with the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office. He testified only that it was his “best guess” child pornography would be found on the hard drives. (Ex. J at 346). According to Tankelewicz’s understanding of the Freenet online network (in which he admits having no training), there were signs on an Apple Mac Pro computer seized with the hard drives of a user accessing or trying to access message boards with names suggestive of child pornography. (Ex. J at 306, 311-312, 339-340). In rather ambiguous testimony, Tankelewicz did not appear to say this meant any image traded over these boards was on the hard drives. (See Ex. J at 303-317, 336-340, 345-350). Instead, he identified a single image he believed there to be a “possibility” was on the drives. (Ex. J at 308-309)<p>However this appears to be the testimony in which the All Writs order (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;assets.documentcloud.org&#x2F;documents&#x2F;2783581&#x2F;Granting-All-Writs.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;assets.documentcloud.org&#x2F;documents&#x2F;2783581&#x2F;Granting-...</a>) establishes the following:<p>&gt; Here, the Affidavit of Special Agent David Bottalico, supporting the application for a
Search Warrant, establishes that (1) the Government has custody of the electronic devices; (2)
prior to the Government&#x27;s seizure, Mr. Rawls possessed, accessed and owned all the electronic
devices; and (3) there are images on the electronic devices that constitute child pornography.
(Affidavit iii! 13-31.) Therefore, under the &quot;foregone conclusion&quot; doctrine, requiring Mr. Rawls
to assist in the decrypting of those devices does not violate his privilege against selfincrimination.<p>In other words (in my understanding), under the foregone conclusion doctrine, the government needs to show that they know the document exists and what it contains.  In this case I believe that would mean that they have to provide evidence that they know there is child pornography on the devices.  And the testimony above seems to be the only thing they are putting forward as evidence to invoke the doctrine.<p>One of those cases where you kind of want the government to look inside the hard drive <i>in this case</i> (since the accused is only objecting under Fifth Amendment grounds, meaning there probably is legitimate evidence against him on those hard drives), but I can&#x27;t support it because of the precedent it sets.