If you interpret "deleting" data as making the data inaccessible, would discarding the encryption key of encrypted data count as it being deleted? For example,

If you interpret "deleting" data as making the data inaccessible, would discarding the encryption key of encrypted data count as it being deleted? For example, let's say I encrypt each of my users data with a different, unique encryption key. In order to access the data, I need to fetch the contents of that user and then use their decryption key to decrypt them. The data can be regularly backed up and archived. If I ever need to delete a particular users data, I could simply discard and lose that users decryption key. While I do have mangled data that can be transformed back to the users data, I no longer have the ability to read the information and I wouldn't be able to access it (assuming you don't have the power to easily crack the encryption).