A jacketed round works as well(a lower-velocity unjacketed one will, depending on the make and model of laptop, possibly surprise you by failing to work); but you don’t really want to give Johnny Jackboots the excuse he craves to riddle your corpse with holes do you?

I’m not quite sure where the law stands but I’m fairly sure it’s the publishing that would make this illegal anyhow (murky old fair dealings).

But we can bring this into the real world. Right now jackbooted thugs are going through the hard drives of a Mr R Murdoch. Does anyone want to make a case that he should have a 5th amendment right to not disclose any passwords on those drives?

BTW, folks, TrueCrypt is still free.

Do you guys all have heavily armored, stomp-proof laptops or something?

I’m sure someone will point me at kettling of some variety, but I’m referring to freedom of expression here. What could possibly be on the hard drive that would be kick down the door worthy?

For that matter what is on the hard drive that won’t eventually be published?

As a fun aside I’ve seen the inability to keep a crypto key private criticised before. I have yet to see much outrage that these powers are being used against our leading press baron.

I’m sure you’d all be praising him to the heavens if he’d had the forethought to embed some thermite in his email back up servers.

MMMmmmhurika! Sea to shinin’ purple sea!!

Well, now that you mention it, yes. Or I would if he was in a jurisdiction where the US constitution is actually part of the law of the land. Murdoch is a piece of shit, and the idea of him having a big fall makes me very happy, but if we’re going to start saying the 5th doesn’t apply in cases where the person is an asshole or has been charged with something everyone finds reprehensible (terrorists, child pornographers etc), *who gets to make that decision*? I’d rather it apply to absolutely everyone and be sure it’s going to apply to me than start on some slippery slope of ‘except when the crime is X’.

If I’m already a corpse I don’t think I’d care what they do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXnO_FxmHes this is a video that could have been prosecuted for multiple counts of unauthorized sampling/use of 1 video & 1 song. If you’re in a country like Thailand, criticizing the king is jail time.

Does that sufficiently answer your question?

=P

So does that clear things up for you? It isn’t a trick. Article 5 says I need not cooperate. And that includes turning over my encryption key. So now, on the court reporters record, and available for appellate review, is a valid objection to the proceedings of the court as set forth in either the rules for criminal or civil procedure(I’m obviously thinking criminal in this instance). It’s the duty of the court to make the charge plain. It’s also the duty of the court to make clear the nature of the charge. If the court can’t or won’t do that then that’s a procedural error that can and likely will overturn any verdict the jury returns assuming it isn’t grounds for a mistrial(which it would likely be). It would at the very least give an appellate court attorney a massive woody.
There are other, numerous, questions that court won’t want to answer. And if you’re smart enough to ask them you can torpedo the process before it even gets started. Lastly, you appear to have an extremely poor understanding of what the 5th Amendment says. I doesn’t apply only to testimony.

JD: [Now] “Do you understand the charge?”
ME: “No sir. I do not.”
JD: “Do you mean you don’t understand the charge, or you don’t understand how you could possibly be guilty?”
ME: “I mean I want to talk about how the 5th Amendment quite clearly says that I need not aid any agent of the government…”
JD: “That’s a matter for trial. Do you understand what I was just saying about the charge?”
ME: “But Your Honor, I want to instruct you about your duties under the 6th Amendment, and to do that you have to understand why I couldn’t possibly be found guilty since my understanding of the 5th Amendment says that…”
JD: “That’s not something we’re going to talk about during an arraignment.”
ME: “Let’s get back to the business of the hard drive. Can you explain to me how turning over my encryption key is not in violation of that fundamental Constitutional right?”
JD: “Probably not to your satisfaction. I’m citing you for contempt.”
ME: “Your Honor. Contempt is defined as any word or deed that brings about disgrace or discredit upon the court. Can you explain to me… hey, not so fast my good man, I was just explaining to the judge over here how you can’t take me to jail until he’s adequately explained himself… hey, now, listen, my purely voluntary tax-donations pay for those handcuffs, so perhaps now you have to explain why this egregious violation of my Fourth and Eighth Amendment rights is…”

Don’t get me wrong. As I said above, there might be something to the whole Fifth Amendment argument against compelling someone to turn over their encryption keys. Right now, in the absence of a SC or broadly applicable appellate court ruling, prosecutors seem to have an easier time winning those arguments, but eventually it’ll be settled law one way or the other.

But man oh man, one day you’re going to send some judge home from work with a big old smile on her face. Please, for the sake of judicial morale, when and if you find yourself in front of a judge, please be your internet self. For the sake of the Constitution, do not under any circumstances take any guff from them!

By the way, drilling any part of the platter will make the data not quite impossible to recover, but much more difficult. You can no longer spin the drive to get the data off it. If it’s glass, it is likely to shatter, making the job that much harder.

You’d have to do magnetic domain scanning and piece all the bits back together. Heck, I don’t even know if they do that. Seems very expensive.