Seeking Fifth Amendment Defenders
Wisconsin computer scientist Jeffrey Feldman was arrested on child pornography charges and ordered to give his hard drive decryption password to the FBI. He refused, claiming a Fifth Amendment right to refuse to hand over his password. A magistrate agreed with Feldman, then later changed his mind, but then on June 4th a judge blocked the order demanding that Feldman decrypt the hard drive.
So I will give up some civil libertarian cred and admit that, compared to, say, the free speech guarantees in the First Amendment, I've never seen what's so great about the Fifth Amendment "right against self-incrimination" -- not just as it applies to computer passwords, but in general. (Hereinafter I'm just going to refer to the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent as the "Fifth Amendment", even though there are other rights encapsulated in the Fifth Amendment, such as the right against double jeopardy.) I'm not debating the legal technicalities of the judges' decisions, since they take the "right against self-incrimination" as a given; I'm questioning the value of that "right" in itself.
Before you read any further, this is a pseudo-contest in which I'm soliciting answers in the form of a specific, precisely defined scenario in which you think that the Fifth Amendment makes a positive difference (i.e. that the outcome in a world with the Fifth Amendment, is better than the outcome in a world without the Fifth Amendment, even if you hold all other assumptions constant). If you disagree with everything I say, then the way to show that is to post a scenario that follows all the rules of the contest.
