You can actually eliminate phones entirely from your second example.
If you had incriminating info on paper at one point, and memorized it and deleted it, it would now be legally protected from being accessed.
One reason society is okay with this is because most people can't memorize vast troves of information.
Otherwise, the view here would probably change.
These rules exist to serve various goals as best they can. If they no longer serve those goals well, because of technology or whatever else, the rules will change. Being completely logical and self-consistent is not one of these goals, nor would it make sense as a primary goal for rules meant to try to balance societal vs personal rights.
This is, for various reasons, often frustrating to the average HN'er :)
With that in mind...
> Being completely logical and self-consistent is not one of these goals, nor would it make sense as a primary goal for rules meant to try to balance societal vs personal rights.
Do we really know that it wouldn't make sense, or is that just an assumption because the existing system doesn't do it? (Alternatively, perhaps a consistent logical theory simply hasn't been identified and articulated.)
This reminds me of how "sovereign citizens" argue their position. Their logic isn't consistent, it’s built around rhetorical escape hatches. They'll claim that their vehicle is registered with the federal DOT, which is a commercial registration, but then they'll also claim to be a non-commercial "traveler". They're optimizing for coverage of objections, not global consistency.
What you seem to be telling me is that the prevailing legal system is the same, just perhaps with more of the obvious rough edges smoothed out over the centuries.
brb, going to try encoding the USC in Rocq.