This is important because this is a feature of some crypto systems like LUKS. You can have your header on another physically septate device. If this is ruled on in an insufficiently nuanced way it could have very significant implications for carrying encrypted data without the key.

To put it in protective, just opening a web browser or some other app can delete/alter more data than was deleted in this case.

But...

The issue at hand is the "locality" of the encryption header. He merely facilitated its deletion, not the data.

If he had a backup at home, is that still a felony?

What about if he had a backup on a flash drive with him?

What if he never had the header on the phone to begin with and used a detached header on a flash drive?

Are detached headers (a thing you can easily do with LUKS) now de-facto illegal?

This whole thing is making me feel rather uneasy about the bigger picture.

Side tangent, why is fable so weird about questions involving "Welch's method"? Even really trivial ones it'll shut down frequently. CFAR and STFT are both totally fine but Welch's is apparently taboo, it's wild.

Well... We can hypothesize that these things are largely trained on internet dialogue so there's probably some correlation between threads where people are not flaming each other and the quality of the replies. They're just statistical engines so anything you can do to raise the odds of a helpful next token...

I'm essentially just making shit up here, maybe it's right, maybe it isn't, but rather than saying "it's human and we should treat it so" we're trying to get to the ground truth of how it works.

Like, yes, the system works at the level you're assessing it. The problem is that it's based on a mountain of flawed premises and so we've ultimately created a literal torment nexus with a smiley face taped on top of it and everyone gets to wash their hands of it and go home: justice served.

People are giving them everything. Their thoughts, feelings, intentions, company IP... It's a fucking gold mine.

There's just too much value in retraining on that data and even if there wasn't, the feds lean so heavily on Google search histories to get convictions I am certain there will be pressure to prevent any mass market services from adopting this.