this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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It's not meaningless.
I know that it's pretty easy to pick the lock on my front door. Or to break the window and get in. But still, there are a non-zero number of burglars who would be stopped by that lock. Same with my bike lock, which is a bit harder to pick but still possible. Nevertheless, the lock itself does deter and prevent some non-zero number of opportunistic thefts.
There are a non-zero number of law enforcement agencies that would be stopped by full disk encryption, even if the device is powered on and the encrypted media is mounted. There are a non-zero number of law enforcement agencies that would be stopped by all sorts of security and encryption strategies. And I'd argue that simple best practices would stop quite a few more than you're seeming to assume: encrypt any data at rest on any devices you control, and then use e2e encryption for any data stored elsewhere.
You don't even have to be that technically sophisticated. For Apple devices, turn on FileVault (as it is by default if you log into an Apple account when you set up the device), turn off iCloud. For Windows devices, use Bitlocker. For Android, turn on the "Encrypt Phone" setting, which is on by default. If you're messing around with your own Linux devices, using LUKS isn't significantly more difficult than the rest of system administration.