It’s chill, I redid my maths my maths A-level and got an A, I basically had a one on one maths tutor for a year in the prison learning complex, came in very useful now I am a software engineer.

The ironic thing is that the police waited about 2 years after they seized the laptop to ask me for the pass phrase. I’m not sure I even actually remembered it as it was so long. PGP Whole Disk Encryption ftw. At the time WDE wasn’t available on the mac and the police got loads of data from my pals text editor temporary files. No one got anything from mine hahaha

Did you have any trouble getting a job with the sentence on your resume? Just curious

I do not have a criminal record. The wonderful conservative/liberal coalition updated the rehabilitation of offenders act 1974 so my conviction became spent. That said I currently work for a 1000 employee plus employer and they never did a criminal record check but others have.

Yeah, I've never known any tech job actually do a background check in the UK. It'd have to be something very specific. Even when I worked for a financial company.

This person is in the UK. The rights afforded to criminals in other places may not be so good.

I think this is a better story than most one gets asked about a 5 year gap.

I found this entertaining. Since you cannot legally refuse to give up the password, insult them while you giving up is probably the most appropriate revenge you can do at that situation.

"Tell me, what's your password?" says the adversary, "It's 'kissmybloodyhemorrhoidsassyoudumbshithahaha!', all lowercase, no space, ended with a exclamation point".

The password is cryptographically secure too since it's long. And it's easy to remember, relatively easy to type in. All around, simply a good password.