[akerl_]

Real talk: I feel like the demographic of people who read and comment on HN is primarily people for whom "painful threat" is purely theoretical. Downstream folks are talking about preventing information leak if the adversary is literally willing to kill you via torture.

In the real world, torture is a fairly effective way to make somebody divulge information, especially in the case where it can be readily checked (by trying the password they divulge). It's a fairly well proven fact that living beings will do pretty much anything to make the pain stop. For recent reference, this HN article, where he repeatedly complied with demands, even including lying about being tortured, in the hope that it would make the torture stop:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9213753

[jotm]

Not gonna lie, under threat of severe physical damage or death, I'd give away everything I know. Granted, I don't have access to nuclear weapons or anything, but I wouldn't care who gets effed up as long as I'm intact...

[tomjen3]

Torture is one thing, a government warrant something else.