Consider this:
You’re an average couch potato, you spend your days surfing the web and playing online. *Ok, sounds about right.* You’ve got your Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, and Hulu accounts up and running all the time. You have some personal information on your computer. *personal information? That’s my Life.* As the days go on, one day the police show up on your doorstep. They tell you they have some questions for you, and want you to come down to the station. You graciously accept this request.
Then they grab your computer. *Wait, what?!?* They take your computer in to be scanned. *This can’t be good, I don’t know what I did, but that’s never good.* Luckily you have everything password protected. *WooHoo!* So they take you to court and order you to provide them with the password. *Huh? No way!* After refusing to provide the password, they convict you of refusing to provide your password and sentence you to a correctional facility.
That’s essentially the story of Oliver Drage in Liverpool – So far we have yet to see laws like this in the United States. But how far off are we? We have laws to convict people that refuse to provide tests (DUI Test Refusal), and new charges are popping up against those that video tape police.
Lets hope we can cut back on some of these laws. How about a law that states that all criminal offenses must be reaffirmed every 10 years?