But if the police found a document written in what looked like gibberish, they couldn't compel you to translate the document to English. In this case, they have executed the warrant, and found an electronic document filled with gibberish.
Can you be compelled to labor to help the prosecution?
What if I had a huge stone vault. To get to the inside of it would take the fed 7 years of digging. The crime they have a warrant for has a statute of limitations of 5 years. If I help them dig, they can get there in 4 years. Can they force me to dig with them?
I think the All Writs Act as written would say yes. There's nothing in it about amount of work. The government does, I think, have to pay you.
Now, in response to the use of the All Writs Act about iPhone decryption, a couple of people raised the argument that the 13th Amendment, which prohibits "involuntary servitude," might prevent the government from just telling you what your job is (even if you're paid for it). I don't know that any court has had an opinion on the validity of this argument.
Also, I think the All Writs Act only applies to things that the Western legal system considers "writs," which is not clearly defined in statute anywhere. So you'd have to ask an actual lawyer who understands Western caselaw about whether "decrypt your hard drive," "write and sign firmware for an iPhone that doesn't lock you out on incorrect passcode attempts," and "dig stone for four years" count as writs. I have no idea.
Interesting question. In my opinion, no, they could not obligate you to help dig, because they could get someone else to help with that. If you had a key, however, it might be different?
Furthermore, what if you didn't have the key, but had a photographic memory and could draw out the shape of the key for them to make one? Could they then compel that?
> But if the police found a document written in what looked like gibberish, they couldn't compel you to translate the document to English. In this case, they have executed the warrant, and found an electronic document filled with gibberish.
Out of curiosity, is there any case law establishing this (i.e. a document written in code)? With a document in gibberish, I can't see any reasonable reason to believe that it means something (unless, say, the defendant was suspected for espionage). In this case, however, there is other compelling evidence to believe this drive is encrypted and has data on it. It would be curious to see if something like this has been prosecuted before.
