Who knows what he does have in that hard drive. Maybe 4 months in prison is significantly better to what might happen if they do get to his data. Hell 4 months in jail because he refused to give a password sounds a lot better than a sexual offender conviction for 4 years.

In any case, if I was him I wouldn't worry about them decrypting the data in my lifetime. Do you know how many millions of years would it take to decrypt a 50 random char pass phrase decent encryption. Lots of those. So unless there is a breakthrough on computing power several magnitudes bigger than what we have experienced and the money to dedicate millions of computers to the cause, or someone finds a loophole in the encryption algorithm (highly unlikely if using any type of military grade encryption), his data won't be decrypted.

And yet, I'm surprised by technological advancement every day. If you'd asked me several years ago if I thought we'd have artificial limbs controlled by thoughts, I'd have said it was far far away.

It's a race between the statute of limitations and encryption/computing technology. (I do agree it seems unlikely).

Back-of-the-envelope math:

50 characters x 8 bits = 400 bits of entropy

Even if you account for not having backspaces and linfeeds in the password, he could still easily have 256 bits of entropy.

Even with Moore's law, a strong algo like AES-256 is generally considered to be uncrackable, assuming the algorithm and the implementation don't have any flaws.

As MC Frontalot raps: "You can't hide secrets from the future with math."

The crypto doesn't have to outlast his lifetime, only the statute of limitations for the alleged crime.