alt Hacker NewsThat’s semantics. For all intents and purposes he destroyed it, no different than if he stomped on the phone or deleted all the files traditionally.
I don’t think a judge would care about splitting that hair.
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fedpost • yesterday at 10:14 PM
Kind of? Let's say he has a detached header on another device and deleted the one on his phone. It's not at all destroyed now. Is what he did still illegal?
This is important because this is a feature of some crypto systems like LUKS. You can have your header on another physically septate device. If this is ruled on in an insufficiently nuanced way it could have very significant implications for carrying encrypted data without the key.
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I dunno, now that you phrased it this way I feel like it does matter.
Image he took a blow-torch to a safe and the door welded shut. The contents are still there but the door is broken.