this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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They can only get it with a search warrant. If everything is encrypted with a sufficiently strong password, I think the court precedent is that they can't compel you to reveal the password.
To get a warrant, they need to convince a judge that it's necessary to prove guilt in a specific crime, which means they need at least reasonable suspicion before even asking for the footage.
Yeah, really my question should have been about encrypted footage and my 5th amendment to protecting the password to the footage.
Hopefully no one needs to test this to find out.
The question for smartphones has been tried in court IIRC. Basically, police can compel you to unlock your phone with biometrics, but cannot compel you to unlock it if it's a password, and the difference is your fingerprint is something you have, whereas a password is something you know. Your fingerprint is subject to the fourth amendment and your password is subject to the fifth.
So when it comes to video footage, the password is protected, so they'd need to break the encryption or the password, they couldn't compel you to reveal it.