There’s been an increasing call in recent weeks and months for encryption to have government ‘backdoors’ put into them. This is a bad idea. No really, it’s an incredibly bad idea. Even if we took the assumption that it is a push that’s made with only the purest of intentions, and the government universal key is kept 100% safe and secure and never leaked or misused, it’s still a really, unbelievably, stupid idea.
Honestly the current SCOTUS has largely been finding in line with those things explicitly and literally within the US Constitution. I could see them considering being required to provide a password being required to provide evidence against yourself, which is a Fifth Amendment violation, or compelling speech in violation of the First, like you said. It’s not impossible it violates both, and I’d expect to see that argument made in the decision.
If we extend this thought experiment to a physical key, then that argument falls apart. A physical key is ‘real or physical evidence’, while a password (and apparently combinations?) ends up being considered ‘testimonial’, despite both serving the same function. While I may not be required to provide testimony against myself, I can be compelled to provide real of physical evidence. If, for instance, I have committed tax fraud, and my accountant has already told the IRS as much, but I have the only copies of the tax documents encrypted, I can be compelled to decrypt them, because the ‘testimonial’ value of the password is negligible since the gov’t already knows that I have the fraudulent documents. But if they can’t already demonstrate that they know what–roughly–the real evidence that’s encrypted is, then no password for cops.
This seems inconsistent to me, since a password and a physical key serve the same function.