Edit: this doesn’t help in cases like terrorism where the owner of the device has already been killed of course.
So no, some judge may try to hold you in contempt of court, and it may work for a while, but at some point -- if you have a good lawyer it will turn in to a civil rights issue.
Also, you could plead the 5th as well.
NOTE: I am not a lawyer, and these are just my opinions on this matter.
Judges can certainly hold you in court indefinitely on a contempt of court charge as well. Considering the nature of the charges that this typically comes up in (see Francis Rawls) I wouldn't count on trying to make it a civil rights issue doing much in your favor.
Police can’t compel you to provide a combination to a lock (encryption key) to go on a fishing expedition, but if they KNOW the safe contains illegal contents then you can be held in contempt for not providing it (they already know it’s in there).
Without spending forever delving into the case record I can’t comment on whether they should really have a high enough certainty that the drive does contain CP, but the argument in this specific case does match our interpretation of the 5th amendment when it comes to physical locks.
This is a good argument WHY encryption is important, however. Backdooring crypto would allow law enforcement to fish through everything they want with wanton disregard for the fifth amendment, instead of needing to build up a suitable case for illegal acts being committed with standard investigatory techniques. This right here is how the system SHOULD work.
