The word "witness" is a legal term with a specific meaning. It requires providing testimonial evidence. The landlord that unlocks the defendant's apartment where the bodies are stored in the fridge is not a "witness" even though he helped the police get evidence.

And here we are, talking about a guy presumed to have some information on his head, arrested for refusing to disclose that information, in a thread about legal professionals creating BS, with somebody arguing that "witness" has a legal meaning that does not cover people disclosing information they have on their heads... Or, at least not on this case.

> arrested for refusing to disclose that information

The information in the guy's head is the password. They're not asking him for the password. They're asking him to perform the action of decrypting the drive. They explicitly told him he could keep the password secret.

Yep, that's really a very good non-BS interpretation that does not harm common sense in any way.

In related murder news, murder suspect detained indefinitely until he shows hidden body to the police. They don't want him to tell them where is the body, they just want him to drive them there so they can dig it up.

Your comparison between decrypting a file and locating a body neatly demonstrates the conflict at the heart of this case. The conflict is formally known as the "foregone conclusion doctrine."

There was an excellent discussion of this case and the principles behind this doctrine in the Washington Post last year:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

Orin Kerr does an excellent job explaining why he thinks the doctrine applies to decrypting files. You might enjoy reading it.

The appropriate analogy to this case is not "until he shows hidden body to the police" but "until he opens the door to his garage where they have reason to believe there is a body".

Yet another article assuming that telling a decryption key is the same as delivering a document you possess.

The defendant in question here is not being asked to tell anyone their encryption key. They are, in fact, being asked to deliver a collection of documents they possess.

No, they are being asked to transform a collection of documents they possess, using information they allegedly possess in their mind about those documents, and deliver the product of that transformation.

That's a characterization I can agree with. But that transformation still isn't, in my mind, testimony. It's an action.

How can disclosing some data that is a function of information you have on your mind not be testimony?

Because it isn't revealing information that only exists in your mind. Keep in mind the reason the 5th Amendment exists: the prevent the government from having an incentive to coerce false testimony through torture.

An evil government could coerce someone to falsely say "I did it!"

An evil government cannot coerce someone to falsely type a password into a terminal to decrypt files with incriminating evidence. Because if it's false that evidence simply won't exist.

> Keep in mind the reason the 5th Amendment exists: the prevent the government from having an incentive to coerce false testimony through torture.

Thats not the sole purpose of the self-incrimination protection (which is, also, far too focussed in it's protections to meaningfully effect that end, since historically false testimony coerced through torture was very often sought from people other than the person it was used against.)

> An evil government cannot coerce someone to falsely type a password into a terminal to decrypt files with incriminating evidence.

Sure they can, or, rather, if they claim to know already what is on the drive and reject any decryption which does not match their claimed knowledge, they can punish someone for non-compliance until they either tire of punishment or the target somehow manages to produce a result that matches the expectations.

You know what would be handy? If you were to codify these reasons and purposes unambiguously in a single, agreed upon, authoritative place (say, a law book or something), so you don't need to divine meaning from ancient texts and have the same silly discussion every time the subject comes up.

Take a look at the legal system of just about any non-English speaking country, to see how this could possibly work.

(Admittedly, it makes for great film scripts and courtroom scenes, which are valuable and important export-products of the US, but having clearly defined and agreed upon laws and rules is kind of important too)

True. It's also to prevent someone from ever being put in the position of having to choose between lying and self incriminating.

But again, that doesn't apply in this case.

or the target somehow manages to produce a result that matches the expectations.

This is an impossible end state. You might have a point if the password was a one time pad or something like that but that's not the case for the case in question.

You are correct in that as a non-lawyer (I am a non-lawyer as well) you cannot read the law and reliably, confidently understand what it means, much in the same way a non-programmer cannot read read code and understand what it means.

There is a problem with this which is that non-lawyers are required to comply with the law but that's not really the issue here.

If you're trying to argue courts have gone through mental contortions to derive radical insane re-interperetations of the law that completely change its intent and meaning 180 degrees, and that the entire legal orthodoxy has gone through the same contortions in order to be able to practice law in its current state, you can do that and it's reasonable, but you should use better examples like e.g. the commerce clause, not slavery. Slavery was most definitely intentionally allowed, no interesting interpretation necessary.

>Slavery was most definitely intentionally allowed, no interesting interpretation necessary.

Legally yes. I was talking referencing how the founding fathers were not consistent in matching the government they created with some of their prior statements which were part of the reason they were in a position to create the government. Largely I said this to preempt the oft response that the founding father's weren't consistent with their own view of rights.

Well, they were consistent; its just that their definition of "men" is different from yours, and its been shifting with time.

And hence we have lawyers and judges interpreting the law. Because the whole foundation (the people, and their opinions) is unstable over time.

Have you ever read up on why Jefferson chose those words?

They thought British would beat confessions out of people which still somewhat happens.