<P> While no such case has yet arisen, the Supreme Court has indicated that a respondent cannot be compelled to turn over "the contents of his own mind", e.g. he cannot be compelled to reveal the password to a bank account if doing so would prove the existence of the bank account under his control . </P> <P> Lower courts have given conflicting decisions on whether forced disclosure of computer passwords is a violation of the Fifth Amendment . </P> <P> In In re Boucher (2009), the US District Court of Vermont ruled that the Fifth Amendment might protect a defendant from having to reveal an encryption password, or even the existence of one, if the production of that password could be deemed a self - incriminating "act" under the Fifth Amendment . In Boucher, production of the unencrypted drive was deemed not to be a self - incriminating act, as the government already had sufficient evidence to tie the encrypted data to the defendant . </P> <P> In January 2012 a federal judge in Denver ruled that a bank - fraud suspect was required to give an unencrypted copy of a laptop hard drive to prosecutors . However, in February 2012 the Eleventh Circuit ruled otherwise - finding that requiring a defendant to produce an encrypted drive's password would violate the Constitution, becoming the first federal circuit court to rule on the issue . In April 2013, a District Court magistrate judge in Wisconsin refused to compel a suspect to provide the encryption password to his hard drive after FBI agents had unsuccessfully spent months trying to decrypt the data . </P>

The fifth amendment to the american constitution says among other things that no person shall be