Comment Re:I don't recall... (Score 1) 887
If suspected evidence is locked in safe, the suspect can be forced to divulge the combination of the safe. This is not violation of the 5th amendment because it is the contents of the safe that is incriminatory; there is nothing discriminating about the combination of the safe itself. Whether you divulge the combination of not, the contents of the safe and whether it is incriminating evidence or not, does not change. However the situation is completely different with encryption. Depending on which key you provide, the outcome of the decryption could be literally anything, as demonstrated above. The password itself, then, becomes the incriminating evidence, which is why passwords should fall under the protection of the 5th amendment.
If a suspect can indeed be forced to divulge the combination to a safe then you have changed my mind about this matter and I now think that, legally, being forced to divulge a password is completely legal and not in violation of the 5th amendment. However, I am not too sure that you can indeed be forced to give up a combination to a safe. It's always been my understanding that you could be asked for said combination and upon not divulging the information the safe would be broken into. I still think that the best solution is to say that you had the password written down and cannot seem to find the post-it since the police tore my house in two looking for evidence.