Actually if you read the ruling, it states that they have a recording of a conversation, transcribed in the ruling, where she basically admits what they are looking for is on the laptop. They then use existing Vermont case law where some perv had child porn on his laptop that an officer and ICE agent witnessed before getting locked out of the laptop. The case law the judge quotes says "where the existence and ___location of the documents are known to the government, no constitutional rights are touched, because these matters are a foregone conclusion." So basically the established case law they are using is where they already knew for sure the perv's laptop contained the evidence they are looking for because they saw it firsthand. In this lady's case, they know the laptop contains the documents they are looking for because they have her recorded saying so. The judge states as much in the ruling: "There is little question here but that the government knows of the existence and ___location of the computer’s files."
So as much as people are freaking out about this, I don't think this is definitive case law that says the 5th amendment doesn't ever apply. The Vermont case and now the Colorado case both hinge on the government knowing that what they are looking for is on the encrypted drive because they saw it and have an admission to it respectively. This is what the ruling states in my opinion.
The 5th amendment may still apply if they don't know for sure the encrypted drive contains what they are looking for, that is to say they never saw the contents nor you admitted to it containing the contents which they seek.
The laptop does not "contain" what they are looking for. It contains gibberish.
If they had her on tape saying "the evidence is in my house" and then they searched her house and didn't find anything, could they force her to tell them where the evidence was?
No.
Any position based on an analog to a vault, is ignorant of the facts. Encrypted data is not locked in anything. It's scrambled.
Here's another analogue:
A locked safe on your portch carries an expectation of privacy. It can't be opened by the police without a warrant. A dropped disk in plain site on your steps does not. The police could copy the disk, break its encryption and use the data as evidence against you.
Why? Because encrypted data isn't "locked", it's scrambled. If a credible expert can unscramble it, then reading it was not a "search". It's equivalent to reading a paper taken from your garbage.
The tape recording of her changes nothing about the facts of what the contes of the drive are (gibberish), nor what the nature of decryption is (testimony). Any judicial holdings to the contrary are erroneous violations of the constitution and should be vacated.
Actually if you read the ruling, it states that they have a recording of a conversation, transcribed in the ruling, where she basically admits what they are looking for is on the laptop. They then use existing Vermont case law where some perv had child porn on his laptop that an officer and ICE agent witnessed before getting locked out of the laptop. The case law the judge quotes says "where the existence and ___location of the documents are known to the government, no constitutional rights are touched, because these matters are a foregone conclusion." So basically the established case law they are using is where they already knew for sure the perv's laptop contained the evidence they are looking for because they saw it firsthand. In this lady's case, they know the laptop contains the documents they are looking for because they have her recorded saying so. The judge states as much in the ruling: "There is little question here but that the government knows of the existence and ___location of the computer’s files." So as much as people are freaking out about this, I don't think this is definitive case law that says the 5th amendment doesn't ever apply. The Vermont case and now the Colorado case both hinge on the government knowing that what they are looking for is on the encrypted drive because they saw it and have an admission to it respectively. This is what the ruling states in my opinion. The 5th amendment may still apply if they don't know for sure the encrypted drive contains what they are looking for, that is to say they never saw the contents nor you admitted to it containing the contents which they seek.