That happened because he chose to give the duress PIN. Cops are allowed to just grab your finger and scan it against your protest. You can say "don't do that, it'll wipe my phone" and they'll do it anyway and it'll wipe your phone, and now it certainly isn't your fault.

What does it matter? The state certainly isn't going to throw up its hands and say "you got us". They're still going to try to make it out to be your fault and even if you do successfully argue it wasn't of your volition, they've still robbed you of years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees.

Well that applies to anything you do that the state doesn't like, so may as well just give up and kill yourself? Or what's your plan?

My plan is to live a reasonable life and treat the state like I treat violent weather. If I happen to have the misfortune of drawing the attention of the state, then yes, your suggestion may be relevant.

> they've still robbed you of years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees.

Intentionally giving a duress PIN which you know will wipe evidence - information you were just asked for by some law enforcement - just robs you of more of years and money. The law is lopsided and gives some more power than others. There's no point debating why it's like that, try to change the law before you break it or find ways to not need to break it at all.

“One simple trick” stuff rarely survives contact with the court system. Tech people like to imagine law is code, but it’s not. Nor should it be.

One simple trick that's proven to work is to just leave biometrics disabled and refrain from giving your password.

There are all sorts of situations where people go free despite the wistful desires of prosecutors, due to the details of what happened and what the law actually says.

> Tech people like to imagine law is code, but it’s not. Nor should it be.

Of course it should be code. More specifically, it should be completely deterministic.

This idea that judges/courts can interpret the law however they feel like it in each individual case is what gives power to dictatorships. Then there is no way to know what is legal vs not, each scenario is different and the courts will inevitably choose what favors them. So yes, ideally, law should absolutely be "code" (deterministic).

Can you come up with a plausible argument for how that applies in this scenario? What they said doesn't hinge on some sort of "clever" technicality.

This may be true for hackers but courts have to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to the letter of the law.

The law here is destruction of evidence. The guy destroyed evidence by giving the wrong password to the police. If the police had destroyed it of their own accord, he'd be free. If the duress PIN was 1234 and the police just tried it, he'd be free.

see also: sovereign citizen approaches