Judge orders laptop decryption to produce incriminating files

A judge on Monday ordered a Colorado woman to decrypt her laptop computer so prosecutors can use the files against her in a criminal case.

The defendant, accused of bank fraud, had unsuccessfully argued that being forced to do so violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against compelled self-incrimination.

‘I conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,’ Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ruled Monday.

This case is similar to a child pornography case back in 2006, but in that case, the authorities knew that the laptop in question had child porn on it, because they saw it on the screen while the machine was running, and thus had sufficient probable cause to search it. In this case, the details are a bit murkier, but it comes out at the end of the article that the authorities recorded some jailhouse conversation that indicated that the laptop had files that were incriminating. I don’t know if the Fifth Amendment really applies here; decrypting a laptop seems to fall more under search warrant procedure than witness testimony, and furthermore, the woman presumably knew her Fifth Amendment rights and still chose to blab about the files when she had to know she was being recorded. The moral of this story seems to be, if you’re going to do something illegal, shred the evidence rather than leaving it anywhere - even on an encrypted hard drive.