> break the law You misunderstand the law. The police can collect evidence in their jurisdiction. They are free to grab papers, phones, laptops, servers, etc.

> break the law You misunderstand the law. The police can collect evidence in their jurisdiction. They are free to grab papers, phones, laptops, servers, etc. If the hard drives are encrypted, they can ask a judge to compel decryption, after presenting evidence and subject to rebuttal by legal counsel. What the police often want to do is an extra-legal search of materials outside their jurisdiction, i.e. in the cloud, in remote servers, etc. I would posit that this is almost always the case, since raiding any tech company would otherwise yield a few printouts and a stack of encrypted laptops. > Are you advocating that employees have the obligation to break the law Absolutely not. The IT employee is probably several time zones away, and is just securing assets not on-site. His team mate will probably provide discovery if/when the police actually request things through a court process. The staff on site should cooperate, whether or not their cooperation has been rendered moot. You aren't suggesting that the police should be able to sit in that office, accessing anything they want on remote servers, indefinitely, right? Why can't the police kick the IT guy's door in and demand an admin login?