rest assured, will not happen from Prosecutor's part
again in this or any other cases
When asking for something, such as a key, the prosecutor has to have at least a reason behind the request (like retrieving the contents of that safe, or hard-disk).
Also, if the legal system is so dumb about semantics such as this, there's now a powerful precedent anyway.
He is unwilling to comply with court, bottom line.
But he has the right to not comply with the court, as then he would incriminate himself. The prosecutor first has to prove that the defendant is actually guilty, otherwise that's just fishing for evidence and crimes committed which may or may not exist. And that's exactly what the 5th Amendment is about.
If, for example Government has ISP logs of
tons of torrent data downloaded by defendant router,
one can fairly assume that illegal files are stored there
That's just stupid. I download everything big from torrents, like Ubuntu Linux distributions ... should that give anybody the right to inspect my hard-drive?
> Also, if the legal system is so dumb about semantics such as this, there's now a powerful precedent anyway.
what do you mean? Prosecution should be asking specific questions, judge should address them. In this example they didnt ask for keys, they asked for the content of the hard drive.
Anyways, yes Prosecution asks stupid questions; even more: they will try to persecute you and put behind bars based on their frivolousness thinking process. This case is a great example: they dont know whats on the hartd drive, but there may be illegal files so yeah lets put the guy in jail.
> The prosecutor first has to prove that the defendant is actually guilty, otherwise that's just fishing for evidence and crimes committed which may or may not exist.
well they had to build a case somehow. something must have gotten them to this guy's door, right?
> That's just stupid. I download everything big from torrents
no, by "tons of torrent" data I did not necessary mean big in size. if his IP was found on plenty of illegal torrents then this was a good enough reason to assume he is downloading illegal stuff [but let alone not good enough to sentence him].
Also, if the legal system is so dumb about semantics such as this, there's now a powerful precedent anyway.
But he has the right to not comply with the court, as then he would incriminate himself. The prosecutor first has to prove that the defendant is actually guilty, otherwise that's just fishing for evidence and crimes committed which may or may not exist. And that's exactly what the 5th Amendment is about. That's just stupid. I download everything big from torrents, like Ubuntu Linux distributions ... should that give anybody the right to inspect my hard-drive?