Sure, but the judge can hold you in contempt for anything. There was one judge who put his entire courtroom in jail because someone's phone rang and nobody admitted to it. He is no longer allowed to be a judge.
Anyway, this is why there exists deniable encryption. The example cases usually involve someone beating you with a rubber hose, but contempt is a much more realistic outcome. So you spend a day or to in jail, "decide to remember" your key, and everyone thinks you have done them a big favor. In reality your cache of bomb-making plans and maps of the white house are still several enctyped volumes deep. It looks like you were coerced into cooperating, but you actually didn't.
The contents of your mind are a bitch -- nobody knows them but you.
But really, in real life, the state would have to prove that you don't actually have an unformated drive containing random data. I have a few disks like this; they once contained useful data, but I since upgraded them, and now they are useless. They were overwritten with random data, but at one point had real data. Do I risk indefinite imprisonment for this? Hopefully not. (The government mandates that government agencies keep their unwanted disks in this state.)
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/a-judges-inexpl...
Anyway, this is why there exists deniable encryption. The example cases usually involve someone beating you with a rubber hose, but contempt is a much more realistic outcome. So you spend a day or to in jail, "decide to remember" your key, and everyone thinks you have done them a big favor. In reality your cache of bomb-making plans and maps of the white house are still several enctyped volumes deep. It looks like you were coerced into cooperating, but you actually didn't.
The contents of your mind are a bitch -- nobody knows them but you.
But really, in real life, the state would have to prove that you don't actually have an unformated drive containing random data. I have a few disks like this; they once contained useful data, but I since upgraded them, and now they are useless. They were overwritten with random data, but at one point had real data. Do I risk indefinite imprisonment for this? Hopefully not. (The government mandates that government agencies keep their unwanted disks in this state.)