

Defendant Ordered to Decrypt Laptop May Have Forgotten Password - pwg
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/forgotten-password/

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samarudge
Are there any guidelines on incorrectly guessing the password? With my
laptop's encryption if I get the BIOS or disk password incorrect 3 times the
encryption key is destroyed and some other stuff happens to the drive making
it very hard (maybe impossible) to recover the data, even with the correct
password. One could "attempt" the password 3 times and, deliberately or
accidentally, get it wrong each time and permanently destroy the data. Of
course if deliberate this could be seen as destroying evidence but how would
they prove it was deliberate rather than just trying to comply with the courts
orders?

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witherAway
Will be interesting to see where this goes. Non-lawyers who discuss these
things are usually just entertaining an overly-simplistic, idealized view of
law that favors defendants. A federal judge will have no trouble finding a way
to hold her in indefinite contempt.

