Judge Orders Decryption

Fox News published an article about a woman in Colorado being ordered by a Judge to decrypt her laptop hard drive.

The Judge is off his rocker.  People have the right to encrypt their information.  No judge should EVER have the authority to attempt to force an individual to undo such protection.  If the information is sufficiently important, let the government go to the expense of decrypting the data the hard way.

While the judge disagrees, this does appear to be a Fifth Amendment issue.  There is the real risk that the data will incriminate the woman in question.  Her guilt or innocence is irrelevant here.

What is relevant is that our form of government was created to make it difficult for the government to abuse the rights of The People.  It was never supposed to be simple to prosecute any individual.

William Blackstone, the author of "Commentaries of the Laws of England," wrote: "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

The gist of this simple statement is that it's better for a few guilty parties to escape justice than for one innocent individual to be punished.

Hopefully, Ramona Fricosu will either appeal or simply tell the judge to get stuffed.