Would you like to go to trial and attempt to persuade 12 non-technical jurors that "hashcodes" unequivocally demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that there is child porn on the external hard drive?
It's a foregone conclusion technically that the illegal content is on the hard drive. His guilt is not a foregone conclusion (not in the US anyway).
The file hashes basically takeaway any good self-incrimination argument he could make and there might also be evidence of further criminality on the hard drive.
Sorry, but legally, the latter should be the only standard of truth. If he exposes himself to a higher standard of guilt, then he is incriminating himself.
But are we not just in the world of normal warrants here?
To my mind private spaces (be that my house or my hard drive) should have some protection, but it seems reasonable that that is less than my personal freedom.
I have no issue with a warrant being issued on a balance of probabilities basis in order to find evidence to convict a person based on beyond a reasonable doubt.
And all this ignores the possibility of discovering further crimes and accomplices by investigating the contents of this drive - if there is a balance of probabilities likelihood of find those on the drive I don't see any problems with compelling this to be revealed.
> I have no issue with a warrant being issued on a balance of probabilities
The problem with this is it isn't consistent with how the law works in other cases. For example, A judgment of 'guilty' is considered absolute, not probabilistic.
This is only part of their motivation. The other is that the prosecutor likely wants to avoid setting a precedent that future defendants can cite in their defense.
It's a foregone conclusion technically that the illegal content is on the hard drive. His guilt is not a foregone conclusion (not in the US anyway).
If you visit https://www.justice.org/sections/newsletters/articles/fifth-... and search for "foregone conclusion" you will get some good info.
The file hashes basically takeaway any good self-incrimination argument he could make and there might also be evidence of further criminality on the hard drive.