> To me, this whole thing smells of the classic tactic of telling the guy, "We know you're guilty; just confess, and we'll go easy on you." Which, of course, is a lie...If the hash information isn't enough to try him with, then I'd rather he go free, than set a precedent that it's acceptable for a court to compel someone to decrypt information because someone in law enforcement just "knows" the evidence is there.
I'm sympathetic to why you'd be cautious, but that's not fitting in this case -- this is a highly specific case with a number of circumstances that meaningfully differentiate it from the generic case of providing decrypted media. He's guilty and the checksums are enough to convict him (we're talking many checksums, metadata, partial confessions) and this is about him frustrating the discovery process.
> Because once this order is allowed to stand, the level of certainty required to compel decryption is going to continually be lowered.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. I had some leaning towards this perspective, but then I read the source document, which goes into far more detail. There's a definite nuance to this case.
I'm sympathetic to why you'd be cautious, but that's not fitting in this case -- this is a highly specific case with a number of circumstances that meaningfully differentiate it from the generic case of providing decrypted media. He's guilty and the checksums are enough to convict him (we're talking many checksums, metadata, partial confessions) and this is about him frustrating the discovery process.
> Because once this order is allowed to stand, the level of certainty required to compel decryption is going to continually be lowered.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. I had some leaning towards this perspective, but then I read the source document, which goes into far more detail. There's a definite nuance to this case.