Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

No, this isn't fine. If there is a lawful order to gather evidence related to the crime, the accused can be compelled to comply. For example, the accused can be compelled to provide documentation under subpoena, submit to police interrogations, be a witness in court, etc.

They cannot be compelled to testify against themselves. When someone invokes the Fifth Amendment, the presiding officer must decide whether there is a reasonable claim that responding to the question or demand as posed may incriminate that person. If the presiding officer is not satisfied that such a connection exists or that the inculpatory value of the response does not rise to the level of testimonial self-incrimination, they can, and do, order the person to comply. If the accused feels this order has been wrongly made and that their Fifth Amendment rights either were or could be violated, they are free to challenge the order in court, but that doesn't mean that there won't be consequences for non-compliance while the challenge processes (a judge overseeing the challenge may or may not issue a stay or restraining order to limit such consequences).

>Should you be also compelled by indefinite arrest to disclose location of the body of your victim (when other evidence against you is insufficient)?

No, because that unquestionably rises to the level of testimonial self-incrimination, whereas granting access to something found during the execution of a legal search warrant does not.

>Because it looks mighty similar to disclosing password to encrypted evidence of the crime.

Ultimately the courts will have to decide whether this is similar enough or not. Under the current law, the answer is non-obvious, and it must be established by the conventional legal process, which yes, is indeed pain-stakingly slow. But there is no exceptional injustice underway here. This is the way the system works. It's not always pleasant, but then, neither is the real world.

If you want to discuss reforms that could require all cases to reach a final resolution within 12 months of their initiation, I'm all for that. Dragging these proceedings out over 5-10 years is very frustrating. But again, the backlog and slow conventions of the courts are a different matter than whether or not this man's constitutional rights are being violated (except insofar as these apply to the 6th Amendment, which guarantees the right to a speedy trial; it does not, however, guarantee the right to a speedy appeal), whether his detainment qualifies as "torture", or whether some other grave miscarriage of justice is occurring here.

No, I don't think any private individual should be jailed for failing to decrypt data, regardless of whether they are able to, as part of a case wherein they are the accused. This should be a basic fundamental right of the accused, and I think the current working interpretations of the fifth amendment are unjust.

> How would any criminal justice occur if we let people off with flimsy excuses like that?

Justice in my view is the presumption of innocence, with the duty to demonstrate guilt beyond reasonable doubt placed on the prosecution. Forcing accused to decrypt data obviously helps the prosecution, but so would warrantless searches, and I oppose both for precisely the same reason.

Warrantless searches are unjust because the police can come in and execute them without oversight. In this case, the neutral overseer (the court) has directed the accused to comply with a request from the investigators.

Warrants are a check against rampant tyranny. They are issued or declined by an independent judicial officer whose incentives are, at least theoretically, not aligned to favor either party.

Warrants don't exist because we think it's unfair to comply with reasonable requests from the organs of the state in the their pursuit of justice, even when you're among the accused. Rather, they exist to make sure that the requests remain reasonable and fair and serve the interests of justice.

Like many things in our government, these are checks to limit and constrain the power of distinct government bodies and ensure that they do not get out of control. It is incorrect to assume that these restrictions exist for the convenience of criminal suspects, because they don't.

Also, it's extrapolating a lot from a case that's actually a fair bit less sinister than what you're suggestion. Facts of this particular case here are that:

  1. The guy was a suspect to begin with, and they had
     enough evidence of him doing something wrong (from
     the Usenet side of the operation) that they got a
     warrant to search his computer.
  2. The disks are encrypted with off-the-shelf OS-provided
     full-disk encryption, which is relatively easy to verify,
     rather than some "purely random data that might or might
     not be encrypted".
  3. At no point has he denied having access to the keys (at
     which point it would essentially stop being a 5th amendment
     case).