Wisconsin federal magistrate reverses on forced production of decrypted data after government presents new evidence

Late last month, a federal magistrate judge denied the forced production of decrypted data from a defendant's hard drives. Last week, the judge changed his mind after the government presented new evidence.

In the initial order, the court made the "close call" to deny the production because the government did not have enough evidence concerning the defendant's access and control, nor did they actually know what was on the hard drives, though some file names indicated the presence of child pornography.

Since that time, the FBI was able to decrypt one of the drives which contained over 700,000 files including "numerous files which constitute child pornography." It also contained "detailed personal financial records and documents belonging to" the defendant and "dozens of personal photographs" of him.

The judge determined that this new evidence makes it a "foregone conclusion" that the defendant has "access to and control over the encrypted storage drives." As such, the defendant was ordered to "enter the appropriate password ... so as to decrypt those drives" or to otherwise make "available for [law enforcement's] examination a decrypted copy of the data."