Could it just come from our particular choice of words?

An encryption key sounds closer to a safe key than to a combination lock. A small broken analogy later, the judge rules that encryptions keys are keys, and the defendant may be compelled to provide them.

Just because we called it a a "key", instead of the more accurate "combination", or "code".

Law can be difficult because tiny nuances like this can sometimes matter. It's usually not because judges are too inept to comprehend the subject matter, but because they feel that the laws still on the books require them to undertake a stringent interpretation that has an effect most people would consider undesirable. In some highly technical cases, while judges can generally be taught the meaning, their unfamiliarity with the subject matter may cause them not to fully appreciate the effects and ramifications of some of their rulings.

Legal professionals tend to be technically minded and frequently accept conclusions that do not serve the interests of justice (except in the theoretical, abstract context of a perfectly-reflective, well-functioning republic) in order to comply with a strict reading of the text of the law.

That's a double-edged sword. It provides some protection against judges who would "legislate from the bench" (i.e., change the effects of the law based on their personal values instead of the values the community has codified through the legislature), but it also frequently restrains what would be considered a rational and fair implementation of the law in order to serve an ideological commitment to the particularities of wording.

Pretty much everything involved in attempting to create a generally applicable, fair legal system is a delicate balance. Too much familiarity with a subject and the judge can be accused of bias; too little and the judge may not understand the impact of their rulings. Too much commitment to legal wording can lead to some plainly undesirable conclusions where the real people and businesses before the judge become the collateral damage of a thought exercise, but insufficient commitment to implementing the community's values instead of one's own can lead to judges whose influence becomes oppressive or despotic. It comes down to needing judges with good judgment.

Constitutional reforms may be reasonable to modernize the system to be more responsive to the community's values and less dependent on the technicalities of outdated verbiage (the All Writs Act, which is referenced in this case, was codified into law 227 years ago), now that we live in an age of instant global communication and industrialism. Many such reforms could happen at the state level.

Gosh, compelled is such a nice euphemism for "psychologically and physically brutalized until complicit". I don't think it is right to "compel" you to produce anything, key nor combination.

I mean, yes, the thing that ultimately underpins all authority is the ability to exert physical force to see it honored.

I'm not clear on what you're suggesting.

I think it's pretty clear that the parent is accusing the state of using torture to coerce compliance, which is a strong indication that the state itself is no longer legitimate.

The state cannot exist without violence to back it up. Why would anyone pay taxes if you couldn't be thrown in jail for non-compliance?

I think you make the mistake of thinking that people oppose all state violence. Many people approve of some state violence in the name of maintaining societal order, but oppose torture. And I would posit that coercive incarceration is a form of torture.

It is a mistake to believe that people are ideologically consistent. And I would be hard pressed to believe that torture is not more extreme or less legitimate than other forms of violence.

Thank you. That pretty much sums up what I was getting at. I understand the need for violence when one man attacks me or my family. And I understand the need for violence when one man attacks any human around me.

These people break the Golden Rule and remove themselves from its binding contract of being treated equally. BUT, they still deserve to be treated fairly.

Sometimes, even you can get them to see the error of their ways, and use their past to create a better future for others, and all without violence. But asking someone to give you a variable to a mathematical algorithm that he owns is absolute horse shit.

This is just a very abstract way to say that you don't like some of the things that the state has characterized as crimes. That's fine, and you can utilize the organs of representative democracy to make your will on that point known (though a world where only violent crimes are recognized, like you're suggesting, is not usually considered appealing).

However, attempting to trivialize the issue by abstracting it out to "giving a variable to a mathematical algorithm" is not persuasive. Any sort of cooperation could be extrapolated to a similar point of abstraction that makes it sound absurd; in fact, furnishing a physical key to a physical lock could be described with no modification to your terms. In that case, you're ultimately asking for the pattern needed to actuate the pins such that they stick up in the lock mechanism and cause it to disengage. That's just "providing a variable to an algorithm"; the physical key itself is an implementation detail.

If you do not believe the court should have the power to compel some types of individual cooperation with the police, you should take that up with your local legislator. The Fifth Amendment itself provides no such protection. It prohibits the government's usage of only a very specific tactic: mandatory testimonial self-incrimination. Allowing the police to execute warrants and complying with lawful orders pursuant to the state's interest in enforcing its laws is not testimony.

The thing is, the person that attacks your family already broke the rule, so you can use violence against him.

You can be 100% peaceful and the state will still use violence against you based on its own criteria.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying.

This seems like more a flaw in the legal systems desire to make decisions based on analogies, rather than a reason for the right to exist.

There's a public good from the right to avoid self incrimination, it's less clear what the public good of protecting people's right to keep content hidden in the face of a court order.

Your first citation has nothing to do with disclosing combinations. It's a question of whether documents that would be protected by the Fifth Amendment if they were in the clients' possession are likewise protected when they've been transferred to the clients' attorney's possession. SCOTUS ruled that the documents would've been ineligible for Fifth Amendment protection because they are evidentiary, not testimonial, so it didn't matter whether or not the attorneys or the clients physically possessed them.

Quoth Justice White from that decision:

    > Within the limits imposed by the language of the Fifth Amendment, which we
    > necessarily observe, the privilege truly serves privacy interests; but the Court has 
    > never on any ground, personal privacy included, applied the Fifth Amendment to 
    > prevent the otherwise proper acquisition or use of evidence which, in the Court's 
    > view, did not involve compelled testimonial self-incrimination of some sort.

The second case also does not involve either the disclosure of combinations or compelled opening of locks. It affirms that compelling a person to sign a document granting banks permission to transmit any account records which may exist to the government does NOT violate the Fifth Amendment because it is not testimonial self-incrimination.

The third case appears closer to the mark in that it discusses the way in which produced documentation can be employed to incriminate a witness who produced it, but that case specifically seems to involve the interaction of the statute under which the accused was granted immunity. It also deals with a witness who produced documentation pursuant to a subpoena and a grant of immunity provided in connection with that, not an accused who is the subject of the investigation.

I'm not sure where you pulled these citations, but none of them appear to have any relevance to the assertions you've made.

Some research seems to indicate that the question of whether a defendant must supply the combination to a safe has never been directly considered by the Supreme Court, though it's been mentioned, tangentially, as a distinct thing from using a key to "open a strongbox", with the implication that disclosing a combination may be protected but opening a safe with a key wouldn't be. This analogy is employed in one place in the decision issued in the third case, but it's only for illustrative effect.

I'm sure that in the not-too-distant future we'll see a case about this make it up to the Supreme Court (possibly even this one). My expectation is that SCOTUS will rule that it is proper to compel the defendant to decrypt the disks.