Comment by MBCook
1 hour ago
That’s semantics. For all intents and purposes he destroyed it, no different than if he stomped on the phone or deleted all the files traditionally.
I don’t think a judge would care about splitting that hair.
1 hour ago
That’s semantics. For all intents and purposes he destroyed it, no different than if he stomped on the phone or deleted all the files traditionally.
I don’t think a judge would care about splitting that hair.
Kind of? Let's say he has a detached header on another device and deleted the one on his phone. It's not at all destroyed now. Is what he did still illegal?
This is important because this is a feature of some crypto systems like LUKS. You can have your header on another physically septate device. If this is ruled on in an insufficiently nuanced way it could have very significant implications for carrying encrypted data without the key.
I think I misunderstood your original scenario. This one makes a lot more sense. Although I wouldn't want to be in the position of being the test case.