Post
Topic
Board Wallet software
Merits 1 from 1 user
Re: BITCOIN WALLET
by
o_e_l_e_o
on 25/09/2021, 19:48:24 UTC
⭐ Merited by Pmalek (1)
When it comes to Federal Courts, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a defendant had to unlock multiple computers and devices.
So, this case is a little more nuanced than that.

If you read the court documents, you'll find that they specifically mention that the Eleventh Circuit found that the defendant should have their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination applied in such scenarios. The difference here is that the courts already knew what was on the encrypted hard drives (partly from testimony from another person and partly from records from the associated computer they were attached to), and they already had enough evidence from other sources to convict the individual in question. For those reasons, the court said that forcing the individual to decrypt the hard drives would not amount to self-incrimination since it would not change the outcome of the court case or their final ruling.

This scenario could potentially apply to bitcoin if law enforcement knew you had a bitcoin wallet and also knew the addresses in it, as unlocking it does not incriminate you any more. If you had a bitcoin wallet and they did not know which addresses were in it, could you argue for your Fifth Amendment rights? I don't know the answer to that.