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Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

Clever, but would likely add "obstruction of justice" to the charges against you, and reduce your chances at beating the original point of suspicion, should it ever result in charges, due to spoliation of evidence.

Why not instead just refuse, and use the technicality of violation of privacy, to beat the authorities by making anything they find inadmissible in the first place?

(I'm assuming US-centric here, of course.)

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That may work if you are covering up possession of illegal downloads or something similar.

But if you are protecting your privacy (personal documents etc.) or your companies privacy (source code, plans, etc.) then you've still lost.

The deletion password would work, as long as they don't image the drive first and use your software to decrypt.

The only way is to physically destroy the hard disk, like making confetti with it. For example, it's very hard to destroy data saved on SSD drives (last time I heard)

There's a clever way to destroy data on SSD: just overwrite your (encrypted) hard drive encryption key, then even though the data remains, the key is lost forever. I think most modern SSDs come with the feature.

More info in this question: https://superuser.com/questions/986387/why-does-my-ssd-inter...

But this is a request made prior to any charges being laid. I'm actually curious what the legal situation would be: if you had been charged on other evidence it would likely be obstruction, but is that a charge that can be laid without any reason to suspect a crime has occurred?

IANAL, but I have had the pleasure of having several in my family. One of the things I've come to learn is (again, U.S. centric) that you don't typically get out of legal trouble once you're in the authorities' clutches by "technical cleverness". You don't know at the time described by the parent poster what other evidence might exist, and that includes faulty witness statements. If you mislead the prosecutors to destroy harmless data that could have gotten the whole case dismissed through a technicality, the act could be used in the worst way against you. Don't help the prosecution. Keep your mouth shut and your data expressedly off-limits until you get your legal representation.

> that you don't typically get out of legal trouble once you're in the authorities' clutches by "technical cleverness".

Right, technical cleverness is the lawyer's job. If you get arrested on any serious charges in the US politely tell the police that you need to speak to a lawyer.

In the US you should almost always tell police, no matter what the question, that you decline to answer any questions without your lawyer. Don't talk to the police, they aren't your friends. They are trying to build a case to convict someone, and not necessarily a guilty person.

I feel like this advice, though not bad, always needs to have some sort of follow-up about how you procure "your" lawyer. Is it best to do it in advance (by having a list of local names and areas of expertise) or at the time of arrest (will you have access to Google?)? Should you take your chances with either a court-appointed one or whoever has the flashiest advertisements made available to you? Most of us don't have someone to call "my lawyer", so the prospect of invoking a non-existent figure makes it all the more tempting to simply answer the police's questioning.

If you are talking about the US, If you don't have a lawyer, one will be appointed for you.

You still don't have to answer questions and should never answer questions until you can consult with a lawyer.

The classic video from a law professor and former criminal defense attorney, with a response from an active police detective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

"I will never talk to a police officer under any circumstances"

Yes, I know, I watched that around when it was first posted. But how effective is a court-appointed lawyer going to be, controlled for various types of legal hassle, controlled for (in the case of an accusation) actual guilt and innocence? In a case of refusing to disclose a password (or even admit the existence of a password, saying literally nothing), are you going to trust the court appointed lawyer or (if you could procure them) someone at the EFF to better represent you? All lawyers have to meet certain obligations but that doesn't mean they're all equal.

Given that most people talk too much to the police most of the time without dire consequences (police have a lot of flexibility in what they can do with your volunteered information, it's a two-edged sword) a more careful cost-benefit analysis of saying nothing or saying certain things is irresistible to smart tech people. If you're going to take the principled 'never talk under any circumstances' approach you need to have thought of various situations so you can make that principle work the most for you and not let it become an unnecessary cost.

Whether charges have been made is completely irrelevant. If you prevent a LEO from doing is or her job that's obstruction, or spoliation, or one of a couple other charges depending on the specifics.

If this wasn't the case, you do these sorts of obstructions to trick officers into never laying charges for the crime you committed. You might respond, "well shouldn't they be charged with the crime they committed in that case, not the obstruction stuff?" And they can be charged for that as well, but often the obstruction, especially the destruction of evidence, makes it impossible to actually get a conviction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampering_with_evidence

... or destroys evidence with the intent to interfere with an investigation (usually) by a law-enforcement, governmental, or regulatory authority.

What would be the legality of stating " My password is not XYZ", when XYZ is the destruct password. Can you get the obstruction of justice charge if they try it and it destroys evidence?

Intent matters. If your intent was to trigger the destruction of data, you'd probably still be slapped with the obstruction of justice charges.

And judges aren't fond of people who are obviously trying to pull a fast one.

Here's an idea: write the self-destruct password on a post-it note and leave it on your monitor. It's the same sort of thing, but preemptively - it's not obstruction of justice if you're not under investigation when you do that.

How can the sentence "X is not Y" possibly specify the intent "I want you to try X anyway, to see what happens".

Because it's reasonable to assume that you know that a statement like that will arouse their curiosity. You're dealing with humans looking for some kind of actionable information, and with reason to believe that you may be trying to deceive them on some level or another.

When you have prior knowledge about what X does (deletes evidence) and there's no reason to say "the password is not X" other than to trick someone into trying X as the password, that's how.

I don't think this objection flies, because if you just turn up with a wiped phone and special login accounts they also can't do anything to you.

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