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Comment by reedf1 | Hacker News Reader

This would still be destruction of evidence - virtually your only defense against that would be if it was not triggered by you.

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Since you seem to know about this, what are the actual rules about "destruction of evidence" in your jurisdiction? What does the accused need to have known for a crime to have been committed?

(Common sense tells me that the accusation might make sense both in cases in which the accused knows about a crime and in cases in which the accused knows about a police investigation, even in the absence of a crime, but deleting nude photographs to stop a customs officer from seeing them, for a random example, would that be a crime?)

Generally any material you intentionally delete after you are told to hand over evidence is considered to be the most incriminating version of that material in a court of law.

That rule wouldn't work very well if the person who destroyed the evidence isn't the person suspected of the crime and it is unclear whether the person who destroyed the evidence is a friend or an enemy of the suspect. So I think a sane legal system would want to punish the person who destroyed the evidence rather than jeopardise the fair trial of the suspect.

Imagine dozing off in the interrogation room, and the not-so-sharp officer seizes the moment and decides to use your thumb to unlock the phone, with the camera recording.

"You dumbass! You use my thumb to trigger duress mode! Don't you know thumb is always wipe, and PIN is always unlock? Moron!"

How can they reason that evidence was destroyed when they can not prove it ever existed in the first place?

How can they in the GrapheneOS duress pin case?

They don't need to reason that evidence was destroyed. They just need to reason they there was an attempt to destroy potential evidence, whether or not there was actually any evidence. Any kind of interference with an investigation in any way is likely subject to prosecution.

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