Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by erelde 3376 days ago
But passwords and hard drives are not documents. What's on it are "documents" but it's akin to refusing to pull memories out of your brain.
1 comments

The purpose of the prohibition against testifying against oneself in the 5th amendment is not a protection of one's privacy (as many here seem to believe). It is to precent coerced false confessions. The difference between false testimony and a falsely revealed password is that the testimony is not obviously false but the password will be.