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Comment by asah | Hacker News Reader

legitimate forgetting will rarely arise: law enforcement just captures the defendant entering the password (e.g. surveillance video).

Face ID is also hard to "forget" :-)

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I personally have at least one Truecrypt volume whose password I've forgotten.

It contains a year or so's worth of journal entries, so I keep it around in case inspiration strikes, but so far I've had no luck opening it.

Were I investigated for a crime, it's not implausible that the police might take my hard drive and come back saying something like "here's a list of encrypted volumes we found, open them", and in at least that one case, I simply cannot.

Having old devices/HDD sitting around seems to be common in tech and non tech circles. So, I suspect 10+% of people already have an encrypted device in their home where they forgot the password. Now, given a few dozen tries they might be able to recall it, but it’s not something they can just hand out.

I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the population actually ever owned an external drive... (excepting diskettes)

That 10% is including old phones, tablets, computers, USB sticks, and external backup drives. I suspect old tablets and phones are going to make up the bulk of forgotten passwords, but the government is going to request every password for every device.

Say, “hey Siri, whose phone is this?” It will require that your password be entered to unlock the phone; Face ID won’t work.

You can also hold the power and volume up buttons for five seconds on the iPhone X.

know something have someting. password and key file. compromised kill file.

face id is something you have but is not very secure in compelled situations which does not have to mean police.

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