Question

Topic: Suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives jailed indefinitely.

Your reflection should include: A brief summary. The summary should mention the parties (Plaintiff and Defendant), the jurisdiction, the legal issue at hand, the court decision, and the court's reasoning for the decision. Your personal opinion of whether the court's decision was justified. Why or why not? Explain in detail. Any other thoughts you would like to express regarding this court decision

Answer 1

My reflection, in layman terms, including a brief summary, mentioning the parties- plaintiff and defendant, the jurisdiction, the legal issue at hand, the court decision, and the court's reasoning for the decision:

Assuming the hard drives (with legitimate data) of another or plaintiff, or innocent person's, indeed been encrypted by the suspect, him/her being the defendant, being accused, and who indeed has and had the bad intention of stealing, misusing, or destroying, or simply making the hard drives inaccessible to the innocent Plaintiff, the decision and punishment given to the defendant is indeed just. It is assumed there was at least one witness (person or a thing, or some other intelligence) providing an evidence or proof the hard drives indeed have some unethical and illegal data and at the same time, the defendant does not have any rights of ownership on the files, data, or any information, things, or persons, or actions mentioned in the data.

Per the Cyber Law, yes, the suspect has done something that is very ethical, illegal, crime, and very against government law and rule.

My personal opinion of whether the court's decision was justified:
Yes, the court's decision was justified. The reason being, had the suspect decrypted the hard drives immediately, his punishment or charge would have been less, probably, from few months to years in jail, and/or penalty, i.e., paying money. However, it is not the case, the suspect's attitude, and him being adamant before the court, government, and other authorities by not decrypting the hard drives, is on his part, rude, mannerless, indecent, disobedient, him challenging everyone, including the plaintiff, is the worst conduct despite him already been caught. Hence, his punishment could even be harsher, something that cannot be reversed or undone. However, there is still a chance of the suspect changing his mind over time and decrypting the hard drives one day. That is what the court is hoping, and that is exactly why the suspect is jailed indefinitely.

The hope is to make the suspect decrypt the drives to recover and retrieve important, sensitive, critical, medical, or financial data. The hard drives may have a single person's data or thousands or even millions of data in it. Since the topic is not detailed and without the data that is residing in the hard drives, may things, activities, businesses, operations, transactions, and others may be disrupted, causing losses, harm, hurting the plaintiff, or others, and may even cause death, if it the hard drives have defense-related data, medical records, treatment information, financial transaction details, etc.

In case, anything like the ones mentioned above happens because of the sole reason of the data not been accessible to process something, and caused, loss, harm, or even death, then clearly, the defendant, is also very well to be given a death sentence. However, the jurisdiction, the legal policies, the court, and related authorities should try in every possible way to make the defendant decrypt the hard drives.

Other thoughts I would like to express regarding this court decision:
The suspect should be pursued dealt in a harsh way, of course, done legally, by the government authorities, to try to make him decrypt hard drives.
The above case fits for anyone and for any data or type of data that is in the hard drives, or any other storage media. No individual person has any rights on another's property, assets, things, hard drives, computers, peripherals, data, information, etc. A plaintiff has every right to file a lawsuit and get appropriate punishment to the defendant, proven guilty and he/she indeed is guilty as a matter of fact.

The only concern now would be to retrieve the data from the hard drives and deal with the data accordingly and appropriately, depending on what that data is all about.