The Fifth Amendment in the US has been used by defendants to protect themselves from divulging information that could incriminate them in an investigation — passwords and passcodes included.
However, suspects can be forced by law enforcement to reveal their passwords for electronic devices as it doesn’t violate the amendment, a court from Denver ruled following a mortgage fraud investigation in Colorado when the suspect refused to reveal her laptop password, claiming she couldn’t remember it.
Yet the ruling is debatable. US judges have different opinions, sometimes even in the same state, as was the case recently in Florida.
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