[megous]

> That would be the same thing as storing the Private Key in a safe.

Same thing with LUKS. Password just unlocks the encrypted master key stored on the disk, which is then used to decrypt actual data.

Not sure why this one layer of indirection would matter to purpose of the law.

If you erase the LUKS header (by some tamper detection mechanism), then you will not be able to provide any means to decrypting the actual data, even if you give up the password. That may matter to the law, since nothing it does may ever yield the decrypted data.

But this same effect can be achieved with direct password->key transformation. Tamper detection can erase the data itself instead of the master key.