If police get a search warrant, does it have any limitations? Must the person turn over all passwords?

Question

I'm not sure how to phrase this question and I guess it depends on circumstances. Say the police suspect you of building a bomb and a judge issues a warrant.To what extent can they search you and your belongings? Can they search your entire computer? If they find encrypted files can they detain you until you decrypt them? If they find a password safe can they force you to give them a password and then can they log into all accounts you have stored in it? If you don't give them the password but they find it written down somewhere, can they still use it?Out of curiosity, do police ever actually do this? Find a password protected file on a computer and go through all the papers in the desk and try all possible passwords until they find one?

Answer 1

Hello! This all depends on what is on the warrant. The warrant usually needs to provide an idea of what the police expect to find/ are looking for and where they will look. If they were looking for a bomb suspect, likely the person would look up places to find materials or look up "how to make a bomb" on a search engine. Police know this and would have a computer on the search warrant. If this information is password protected it is likely the prosecution will ask in court to give up the password. If there is personal information contained on the computer of someone else's property like a spouse (which is sensitive), the spouse or whomever could file to have the computer given back. The judge has to decide all of this, of course, but most likely you'd have to give up the password for the scenario outlined. I don't believe they can detain you for not providing a password. You would be held in contempt of court (which they technically can arrest you and put you in jail for) and if you were to not show up to further court hearings due to the avoidance of providing a password they might be able to issue a bench warrant for failure to appear. So in theory, they eventually would be able to detain you, but only as a result of not wanting to provide a password and thus avoiding court.