[late2part]

If indeed Uber personnel actively encrypted their data after it was seized, this brings up an interesting question!

If your property is stolen and taken without your permission, and you can control it - why aren't you entitled to destroy it?

I suppose it depends on the legality and force of the order to seize; but if it did not include an order to the owner, I posit they were within their natural rights to delete their data.

[greenyoda]

Property being seized under a legitimate search warrant is very different from property being stolen. Trying to hide property or documents from a legal seizure can result in criminal charges such as obstruction of justice.

[akhatri_aus]

And if it's not stolen and seized using a legal warrant and you're not permitted to control it?

[spacehome]

The really clever way to encrypt your drives is to make the passphrase for the drive decrypt a very small (512-bit) header that contains the decryption key for the rest of the drive. Then wiping the drive consists of just erasing those critical bits quickly.

[contingencies]

Except that erasure on modern drives rarely actually erases things...

[cnvogel]

Hence it is advisable to store the encryption key somewhere where erasure was properly accounted for during design, e.G. a TPM (trusted platform module).

[namlem]

Natural rights are fictional.