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I don't think it's an unfair argument. The assault by the trucker happened and evidence of it existed on the phone. In the post-iOS 8 world that evidence would be unavailable. It's the difference between him getting off or not (or likely getting off depending on the circumstantial evidence).

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Sure, but this is not being disputed. It's just such an obvious proposition that I'd argue making it adds nothing to the discussion, while taking attention away from the counterpoints that would (and slowly conditioning the reader to think that "who does it allow us to convict that we would like to see convicted?" is the most important benchmark to apply to legal principles).

I don't understand why it would be reasonable to require that the phone have a backdoor which allows them to access the data if they have a warrant for that specifically, but not reasonable to require someone to give up the the password under contempt of court if they have a warrant for that specifically.

Not that I necessarily think either is reasonable, but I don't understand in what way the second would be worse? I suppose if a person turned out to have not committed a crime, and there was a warrant against them, if they were required to give up their password, they might fail to remember it?

Is that risk worse or lesser than the risk of authorities being able to e.g. get data without a warrant via the backdoor?

I'm not really sure?

Because if there's something really bad on my device, I'd be better off telling the cops "I forgot the password" and risking possible contempt of court rather than them seeing the actual evidence and getting a far worse sentence.

The evidence also wouldn't be available if he simply hadn't recorded the videos in the first place.

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