On return to America

Posted Jun 19, 2017 22:47 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: On return to America by farnz
Parent article: Ryabitsev: Travel (Linux) laptop setup

While the burden of proof is reversed (it's up to the recipient of the order to prove that they did not have the key) […]

I don't think that's actually what this says. “A person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key […] if the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt” means that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person was in possession of a key, or it will be assumed by default that the person wasn't. Alternatively, the person can actively provide “sufficient evidence to raise an issue” with respect to the prosecution's claim that they have a key, which is basically reasonable doubt from the other end.

Proving a negative is always difficult, and here the “person” does not have to prove conclusively that they don't have a key; they just need to poke a sufficiently large hole into the claim that they do.

On return to America

Posted Jun 20, 2017 0:16 UTC (Tue) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link]

> Alternatively, the person can actively provide “sufficient evidence to raise an issue”

I don't think it's "alternatively". The sentence you're talking about contains an "and," not an "or":

For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if—
(a)sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and
(b)the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

So indeed, your parent is right: the onus is on the defendant to produce sufficient evidence that they are not in possession of a key, and this is _in addition to_ their possession of a key not having been shown beyond reasonable doubt by the prosecution.