Judge Orders Defendant to Decrypt PGP-Protected Laptop

A U.S. District Court judge has ordered the defendant in a criminal case to decrypt his hard drive by typing in his PGP password so prosecutors can view the files on his PC. The question here is whether or not forcing the defendant to give access to the data on the drive violates his Fifth Amendment rights.

"Boucher is directed to provide an unencrypted version of the Z drive viewed by the ICE agent," Sessions wrote in an opinion last week, referring to Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau. Police claim to have viewed illegal images on the laptop at the border, but say they couldn't access the Z: drive when they tried again nine days after Boucher was arrested.

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