Comment by yosito

Comments are full of gunpoint scenarios, but I think a far more likely scenario for most HN readers is law enforcement / customs agents asking you to unlock your device during travel or some other random checkpoint so they can scan it. In that case, I doubt the officer would even have a clue about the use of a duress password to selectively and silently delete some private data. I think the biggest risk would be that a scan of your device could detect the PAM config and duress script which could be a flag to monitor you more closely, or might possibly be considered illegal itself in some jurisdictions.