Reply to post: Re: Comparing real and virtual world

'Sorry, I've forgotten my decryption password' is contempt of court, pal – US appeal judges

dan1980

Re: Comparing real and virtual world

@hoola

There is indeed a concern with laws made for the physical world needing to cover the 'digital'/'virtual' world.

One pet peeve of mine is that the government is all-too-happy to use outdated laws designed for a purely physcial world to do things in the digital world that were never envisioned. Thus digital surveillance is so very broad because it can be, while physical surveillance was, of necessity, targeted.

And yet they (the politicians and the law agencies) will happily claim that what they are doing is no different to the physical equivalent, despite the vastly increased breadth and scope of what is now possible, once it moves to the digital world.

It's something of the same thing here and yet the government is trying to argue the exact opposite: that the quantity of data now able to the stored (and therefore hidden from the government) in a 'digital' safe* means that you can't compare that to its physical equivalent and therefore the same protections shouldn't apply.

But think what that increased quantity of information in the digital world includes - think of all the data you have that is protected (however weakly or strongly) by a password.

If you're an average person, it includes a vast amount of your personal communications for many years, in the form of e-mail history. Thus, with a single password, the government could get access to all that. Sure, in the physical world, a warrant would provide access to any letters you have in your house, but there is no way that you would have kept all your letters for years back. Thus, with a password, the government can access data it never would have been able to access were that data transmitted via a physical medium.

That means that protection for your 'digital life' is potentially more important for your Fifth Amendment rights than is protection for (e.g.) a physical safe.

* - I.e. an encrypted hard drive.

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