document from https://goldsteinmehta.com/blog/can-the-police-force-you-to-give-up-your-computer-password, archived on the 11th of January 2025

The main point of the case is whether the government can compel an individual to relinquish credentials such as computer passwords while acting under a search warrant as well as the consequences of not revealing the credentials when asked.

The 5th Amendment, in its original text "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." makes it clear that nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself which allowed the defendant in the case of United States vs. Apple MacPro Computer to refuse to offer up the credentials to the machines (computers and phones) and presumably because that evidence would be self-incriminating. The Court decided to use the 66 M.J. 114 "All Writs Act" that gives a fee hand to the government to expedite court cases by allowing more intrusive measures, in order to overrule the defenses appeal to the 5th amendment rights. During later trials at the Third Circuit, the Court considered that any evidence that would have been obtained from the defendant, that would have complied with the order to supply the rest of the credentials, would have been a "foregone conclusion" and would have added little to the case given other case materials that would have greatly overshadowed the result of the defendant's compliance with the Court order to supply his credentials and unlock the machines.

Logically speaking, if the context for a judgement is deemed too weak, then the judgment itself may not hold such that any judgement must be supported within the context that the judgement takes place. In this case, the problem is that if an investigation does not reveal any evidence, then the fact that no evidence exists, cannot be used to judge that any material produced would be incriminating. If you're coming from natural sciences, this logic follows the Schrödinger's cat problem, where cat is deemed to be both alive and dead at the same time when a bullet is shot through an obscured room (an anti-Oracle of sorts), but in this case by enunciating that lack of knowledge cannot prove the existence or (even) the non-existence of something in particular.

In other words, not being able to obtain the hard evidence that a hard-drive contained offending materials, cannot be used to judge that the hard-drive somehow indeed contained offending materials and even hinge that judgement on some paradoxical notion of precedence that would state that the defendant refused to provide access because they are guilty and their refusal is an indication of guilt. Assuming guilt based on materials that just do not exist, leads to a violation of "habeas corpus" leading back to the Magna Carta, and, go figure, expressed within the 5th Amendment of the U.S.A. quite literally, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. In many ways, compelling the defendant to reveal or not reveal credentials might even be an infringement of the Miranda rights, namely the "right to silence" that deem that silence or abstaining from a response is a legal right and that just by "compelling" or "ordering" a defendant such rights are infringed upon. The latter "right to silence" is tied to Habeas Corpus, in the sense that the defendant cannot justly be "made to take action" regardless of what action that may be, until they are trialed and judged guilty because taking any action in particular as a defendant would or might implicitly violate their 5th Amendment right to not self-incriminate.

Trivially, in case the Court finds the defendant guilty, whatever punitive measures are in effect for a given jurisdiction could take place, including "compelling" people or the use of force, such as incarceration, yet up until the defendant would be declared guilty, force cannot be justly used against them. Following the argument, the onus is onto the prosecutors that raised the case against the defendant to find the necessary evidence and testimony necessary to present their case but the defendant does not owe any "help" to the prosecution to perform actions in order to self-incriminate. Ultimately, in case the prosecution has a case that the judge deems worthy, then the defendant can answer to the prosecution's claims, however the defendant is never required to "prove their innocence" and the burden of proof always lies with the accusers, never with the defendants.

A higher Court further judged that iff. the defendant complied with the court order to disclose their credentials, then any evidence that would have been obtained would have been much less incriminating, or, in technical terms, "a foregone conclusion", than the evidence that had already been collected during the investigation via other means (witnesses and other devices), which is an exception to the 5th Amendment hinging on the notion of "double jeopardy", such that the defendant was punished and held in contempt of the initial local Court. The problem here is that the argument is cunning yet paradoxically circular and hence a fallacy; namely, in case the evidence that would have been revealed is much less incriminating than the evidence collected via other means, then for what purpose would the Court have ordered the defendant to reveal the credentials in the first place? Here are the only possible branches, namely iff. the evidence that would have been produced by revealing the credentials:

• is not more damaging nor more incriminating, then there would have been no need to compel the defendant, hence the defendant cannot be held in contempt of Court
• is more damaging or more incriminating, then the "foregone conclusion" thesis falls apart, such that the defendant cannot e held in contempt of Court

such that in any branch of the problem, based on the former, the defendant cannot be held in contempt of Court by refusing to reveal the credentials.

That being said, the "All Writs Act" seems to just be a statement on "the ends justify the means" that permits overstepping some legal conservatism in building a case, that can indeed be used to infringe on the rights conveyed by the 5th Amendment by subordinating executive powers to the Court instead of being just a judicial authority. Griffin Boyette Bell, the 72nd attorney general of the United States, makes it the opening of his article "The Federal Appellate Courts and the All Writs Act" (Griffin B. Bell, The Federal Appellate Courts and the All Writs Act, 23 SW L.J. 858 (1969)) that preemptive judicial levers have led to the erosion of court power and that in performing judicial tasks, some form of "restraint" is required, hinting to the very opposite that rather "the ends do not justify the means" and that proper procedure should be respected. The main spectre in the rear-view mirror would be the tacit regression from terse disputes on "probable cause" as a justification for searches and up to mediatized show-police and show-trials (or "competitive policing", a few fries short of a suicide pact) where whatever sells the most will always been the gainly means to a victory. Bell, remarkably coins this summary, in the very same introduction of his article, by stating "The issue is no longer one of power, but rather one of propriety".

Of course, there are tertiary discussions where the defendant could claim that whilst they are not afraid about potentially revealing an illegal porn stash, they are actually afraid because the drives might just contain their international drug cartel data such that by complying with the court order to reveal the credentials would have indeed at the very least placed them in great danger when the ton of material on drug shipments might have come to light.

Humor aside, if it has now been made clear that "no evidence" can "imply anything", and even "anything you want it to imply", the Court's assumption that the other machines protected by encryption would have contained materials related to "just the case United States vs. Apple MacPro Computer" is truly a (very) long-short assumption, given that hard-drives are general purpose storage that can contain right about anything.

Even legally speaking and "as it is", in case the defendant would have offered the decryption keys and the hard-drives would have revealed to contain documents for a very large international drug cartel, let's say, the largest of all, then it is ironically true that the investigators would have been legally compelled to ignore all of that for the sake of possession of photos of child abuse.

From a computer and IT perspective, it is entirely possible to embed photographs (deemed to be illegal material) into a website that cannot even be seen by the person browsing the website, yet the photographs end up being downloaded by any browser into the cache. Any low-level search through such a hard-drive, will reveal the illegal material as being on the hard-drive, even if that material was (keep this one in mind, because this will be cool) not the main focus of the operator of the computer. It is a finer point but without even providing motive for the possession of the images, nor following a court case where the intent is revealed such as this case where the John Doe that was compelled via a Court order to allow access to their storage was never talked about in terms of intent, or rather, for what purposes those images were collected and then stored on the hard-drive, the Court sounds like it is going after an object rather than mediating a dispute between parties. Given that it is technically possible to posses photographs that are deemed to be illegal, by clicking ads and then ending up on shady websites, and not even be aware about it, the only party that is "vilified" in this trial seem to be the photographs themselves.

For that reason has it been the long standing rule that possession of illegal material carries a much lesser penance than the usage of the illegal material for a given purpose where the intent of possession is to be revealed. However, along with modern means, the pitfall of making "images" themselves illegal material, is one sure ticking time bomb that could affect anyone ranging from the actual criminals and downright to the older lady that never really understood technology and got infected by viruses. Trivially, if you declare the air to be illegal, something that is as abundant as photographs, images and sketches on the Internet, then you are bound to generate a whole lot of criminals, each with their scientifically quantifiable and measurable guilt. And yet, you shouldn't, even for the simple fact that the constitution is not a suicide pact coined by Abraham Lincoln himself as a response to charges that "habeas corpus" is to be suspended during the American civil war.

Sounds uncanny, doesn't it? In other words, some things you do not do, not even in war.

More "mainstream" and "popular" belief, off the same shelf as nihilistic views like "privacy is dead", is that providing credentials would have been the better action instead of refusing to do so. However, given the logical fallacy explained previously, not providing credentials will always ultimately be the better of actions. Even if the defendant would have been ruled guilty, then the ruling would have been unjust, due to the fact that the judgement was based on "an assumption of evidence such that any succeeding ruling based on an a precedence that does not exist, cannot logically be made. As an allegory, the present cannot exist without the past, a snake has a head but must also have a tail, etc, which is more or less what the predicative linear logic detailed in the former section is all about. In other nuances, taking no action, or, remaining silent, is always and will always be the better tactic, that is logically sound, in the absence of something that would stand a better avenue of success.

Using the same rationale as for the 1st Amendment that involves the fencing (or even, compelled) of speech, and to cite the "six ways to Sunday", the paradoxical situation is easily "solved" simply by breaking the law, knowingly, or illegally obtaining evidence (as in, through espionage) and then simply quelling any dissent that would scream "foul" using force. Not ironically, the former is the actual realistic run-down of such a case, especially given logical absolutes that cannot be overturned, or can, but then that would turn a "state of law" into rather a "state of religion" where rationality is not a requirement anymore.

In other words, there is an additional degree of worry where iff. the only point of the case was to incriminate some individual for possession of some illegal material, then going the long way around the block to press charges and organize a Court seems fairly redundant when arbitrary incarceration becomes a state-endorsed action. In short, why bother? Perhaps, one could organize some medieval trial of ordeal that does not listen only to rationality but also panders to the goodness of their soul, in a feast of "the ends justifies the means".

To that, there are similitudes to the 1st amendment on free speech, and also, because it has to be mentioned the lyrics of "Die Gedanken sind frei" by Konstantin Wecker, where arbitrary choices lead to arbitrary results and the decision on what has to be said or what cannot be said, or what has to be done and what cannot be done, become by far more bothersome instead of the usage of direct coercive measures. After some point, the fencing-in becomes self-defeating and self-consuming, just like the Ouroboros, where any decision is just as valid as any other decision due to the obliteration of boundaries.