Orin Kerr writes:
I blogged a lot about this topic a few years ago when the Boucher case was pending; although an appeal was filed in that case in the First Circuit, the appeal was dropped so the appellate court never decided it. In any event, several readers point me to a new decision on the topic, United States v. Fricosu, out of the District of Colorado.
Based on a quick read of the opinion, the legal analysis in the Fricosu opinion is not a model of clarity. But it strikes me as a replay of the district court decision inBoucher: The Court ends up ordering the defendant to decrypt the hard drive, but only because the court made a factual finding that in this specific case, the government already knew the information that could be incriminating — and as a result, was a “foregone conclusion” that dissipated the Fifth Amendment privilege.
Read more on The Volokh Conspiracy.