A standard attitude among LEOs is: "if you're not guilty of something, what are you hiding?" Skilled ones use this lever to get suspects to allow searches of their property on the flimsiest of pretenses.

sigh. it seems I am still being misunderstood. SO WHAT??? so a nasty policeman thinks I stole something from my grandma. SO WHAT??? look, in life, if you are someone who can be walked on, it doesn't take a POLICEMAN to take advantage of your lack of backbone/spine. you are going to be exploited by a lot of people other than a policeman. if you don't know your rights, OF COURSE you can be taken advantage of. I can't comprehend all this silliness in response to my messages. "sure, you can do [x], but the police may still SUSPECT YOU". well, @#%$%^&* so what?!?!? doesn't anyone understand that if we are in a civilized society, that's completely irrelevant to the law???

"Innocent until proven guilty" is at best an abstraction to most police. Given the amount of time they have per case, on average, they're more interested in slorking up whatever evidence they can against a suspect and making a bust. Didn't Ed Meese say something along the lines of, "if they weren't criminals, they wouldn't be involved with the police"?

but don't you understand? their ATTITUDE is completely irrelevant. in regard to the law, we are considering only what they have authority to do. a policeman cannot get a conviction if he breaks the law in obtaining evidence. this is my basic point. this is a very powerful factor in favor of anyone who wishes to use cryptography without harassment. now, there are all kinds of cypherpunks who are going to write me back, because the mere fact that I used the word "police" in this message, which attracts flames here with approximately the same magnetism dead carcasses do flies. my posts are not about Nasty Police Urban Legends about how the Pigs are oppressors and have done [x] to my friend [y] who did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to provoke it. in fact I am attempting to pierce some of these Urban Legends of Police Fear, but instead they continue to pop up around my posts, somewhat spurred by them.

ObCrypto: Having a fair amount of encrypted stuff around makes any given piece stand out less. A couple dozen PGP-encrypted files with names like "1994 1040 Schedule A" and "Business Contact List, 1Q 1995" is a hell of a lot less suspicious than a single encrypted file called "detonate.pgp." :^)

Furthermore, if they don't believe me and I choose not to give them the plaintext, isn't that my Fifth Amendment right? Or has that been waived in cyberspace for our convenience?

these are pretty much the point I'm making that is obviously not making it through to everyone who responds to me.