Judge: Man Can't Be Forced to Divulge PGP Passphrase
Declan McCullagh writes on the C|Net "Iconoclast" Blog:
A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.More here.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.
Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury's subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide "any passwords" used with the Alienware laptop. "Compelling Boucher to enter the password forces him to produce evidence that could be used to incriminate him," the judge wrote in an order dated November 29 that went unnoticed until this week. "Producing the password, as if it were a key to a locked container, forces Boucher to produce the contents of his laptop."
U.S. v. Boucher promises to be a landmark case, especially if this ruling is upheld on appeal.
Note: I hate that this case involves some scumbag who may have been involved with kiddie pr0n, but if this ruling is allowed to stand, it has broad implications which could indeed be viewed as a positive for privacy rights. -ferg
posted by Fergie @ 12/14/2007 06:04:00 PM
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Famous quotes time: "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” (H.L. Mencken)
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