It is an interesting question. I mean where does your right of privacy end, and when does your right to not incriminate yourself also end?
At issue here is the case where an ‘alleged pedophile‘ was caught with loads of images of really young children. However, the files are protected by an encrypted password, and the issue at hand, is can this person be forced to reveal that password, or is it a violation of the USA Constitution?
Now Boucher is caught in a cyber-age quandary: The government wants him to give up the password, but doing so could violate his constitutional right against self-incrimination by revealing the contents of the files. (source)
There are a couple of interesting twists to this as well. The ‘defendent‘ claims that he does download porn, but that on occasion, the downloads include ‘child porn‘ which he doesn’t keep, but deletes. Yet he is charged with transporting illegal pornographic images of Children across international boundaries. While they have no evidence, there are files behind an encrypted access, that may contain such evidence.
So the first twist is, does he have to reveal the password, which could incriminate him?
Here is the second twist, he is a Canadian Citizen, living in New Hampshire. And why I call this a twist, is that he is a Foreign National, being given protection Under USA Laws. Now while he isn’t a terrorist, you have to ask yourself, why does someone who might be committing vile crimes against children, warrant protection under US Laws, but those Terror Suspects are PREVENTED from such equal protection?
This basically is my whole problem with US Justice. It isn’t applied equally to ALL PEOPLE, but is applied in a rather RANDOM MANNER. Surely that isn’t what was intended by the founding fathers, was it? And then too, this guy lives in New Hampshire, while those being detained in Gitmo were BROUGHT TO THE USA. It isn’t like they walked on over across the Mexican US Border, so they were UNWILLING VISITORS.
Which begs the question as to why the USA believes it has the right to detain them, without any legal council, due process or anything. Yet is willing to give such rights to a possible pedophile?
Something is a bit out of whack here.
