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But... it's the same password/encrypted data here.


Disclaimer: IANAL. Disclaimer: IANAA (I Am Not An American)

Assaulting the same person twice would still be two different assaults. Stealing a truck, getting caught and punished, and stealing the same truck again would, to my understanding, not be risk-free, legally speaking. I suspect the same would probably apply here, though given how unintuitive the law is, especially in this area, I may well be dead wrong.

Edit: To clarify, my point is that if the law amounts to "Refusal to turn over requested passwords => jail time", this would seemingly constitute a second refusal, even if the requested password was the same.


By the same logic, if the authorities had asked him one hundred times in the first interview for his password, and he'd refused one hundred times, then he could be charged with one hundred counts of the offence and put away for 30 years.

The courts aren't run by robots. If it's substantially the same instance of the offence, he couldn't be tried again.


That is not how it works...




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