


    Lets carry this one step further. Suppose the text of the key is
in itself conclusive evidence of the SAME CRIME for which the
encrypted material is further evidence. I find myself envisaging a
scenario like this:

You have made some scans of Peanuts strips. You encrypt them. The key
is a phrase.

The Comic Police haul you in. They seize your system. They find the
encrypted file.

CP:    "Whats that file?"

You:   "I take the fifth."

CP:    "What's the keyphrase to that file?" 

You:   "I take the fifth."

Judge: "You have to reveal the keyphrase" [I disagree, but I'm not a judge.]

You:   "Your Honor, revealing the keyphrase, in it's own right, would 
	tend to incriminate me of breaking laws, independent of what 
	may or may not be in the encrypted file."  

Judge: "I grant you immunity from whatever may be learned from the key
	itself"

You:    "The keyphrase is: "I confess to deliberately evading copyright; 
	the file encoded with this keyphrase contains illegal scans of 
        copyrighted Peanuts strips.""

Judge and CP: "Oh."

     How will they get you now? I'm not saying that they won't, or
can't (or even that they shouldn't :-), but what legal mechanism will
they use? Should we be crossposting this to misc.legal?