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A comment on Man jailed in UK for refusing to give police USB stick password. Parent comment

Re:Man jailed in UK for refusing to give police USB stick pa... by polymatter on Wednesday January 15, 2014 @11:34AM (#7064253)
In this case, I agree they are justified. Though if it really was a serious terrorist investigation, and they suspected plans for other attacks, I would hope that they could crack the password if they wanted to. My concern is the underlying precedent. What does it mean for me and you?

And it seems to mean that any password can now be presumed to be incriminating evidence. What happens if my company gets investigated for some financial fraud and they find a forgotten password protected usb stick in the back of a drawer. Now the prosecutors can threaten me with jail time unless I prove that I do not know the password to that usb stick. How can I begin to mount a defence to that? That presumption of guilty until proven innocent is whats wrong here.

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Re:Man jailed in UK for refusing to give police USB stick pa... by at-fates-hands on Wednesday January 15, 2014 @12:12PM (#7064505)
With any investigation, I would hope there is a certain level of probable cause before authorities start threatening jail time.

You leave a lot of details out of your example. Such as, where you low level developer or a financial officer responsible for the company finances? If you were the latter, there would be ample suspicion to think a locked USB stick in your drawer would be useful evidence in the case. If you were a low level developer, probably not so much. You have to build context to determine if someone should be considered suspicious.

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