> Courts have generally found that compelling individuals to provide their numeric or alphanumeric passcode is potentially testimonial under the Fifth Amendment, as it forces the defendant to reveal “the contents of his own mind.” In Re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum 670 F.3d at 1345; see also U.S. v. Apple MacPro Computer, 851 F.3d 238 (3d Cir. 2017). It is analogous to compelling production of the combination to a wall safe, which is testimonial, as opposed to surrendering the key to a strongbox, which is not. See Doe v. U.S., 487 U.S. 201, 220 (1988). However, even if a court finds that providing the passcode is “testimonial,” it may still fall under the “foregone conclusion” exception

https://www.nacdl.org/Content/Compelled-Decryption-Primer

In short, you can't be compelled to give up the code in a dragnet attempt to find evidence against you (e.g. a boarder guard can't riffle through your text messages to see if you might have done something illegal), but if it's already certain that particular evidence exists on the device as a result of other evidence, they may be able to compel you to give up your passcode.

Note though that the cases where this has come up are very few and far between, and there isn't a super clear overriding precedent to follow.

In general though, the best choice here is to say nothing at all and work with a lawyer to figure out how to proceed.

See: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-402

It comes up fairly often here since the HN audience tends to be mostly programmers/computer people, but it's really important to remember that the law is not a series of rules a computer can directly evaluate to determine whether something is or is not legal; judges frequently use their judgement to balance the assumed intent of laws and the competing interests of various parties. I don't say this to you specifically but really just the HN audience as a whole :)

Making it illegal even without having a realistic means of enforcing it still chills behavior, and so just because it isn't practically enforceable in the general case doesn't mean it isn't without consequences.

> setting your computer on fire for (sparkle) self care (sparkle)

This is essentially what Google has done, and it's a shame the US is so weak on enforcing antitrust laws.

If the benchmarks are non-predictive, well, you can't use them for much of anything, which is of course a recurring problem with every benchmark ever.

At the end of the day, it seems more practical to focus on ensuring that they picked the appropriate value product/service. If they picked appropriately, does it matter if the company gives them employee a kickback? Sure, the employee will then be incentivized to get the most expensive thing they can, but this was already the case because it's not their money and they want the best thing they can get away with.