[gizmo686]

As shitlord mentioned, this is a mistake waiting to happen, (although a random USB/CD somewhere with a copy of the key could resolve that issue). The bigger problem is that I doubt the FBI are that stupid. My guess is they clone the harddrive before doing anything on it.

Even on a 'normal' computer, there is likely minimal benifit to booting normally as a first step; because you will likely run into an OS password. The simplest thing (I guess) is that they routinely remove the HD, clone it, and look at it on another computer, then probably remove the user password and boot it to see what the user would see.