Posted by bookofjoe 1/23/2026
If you open the BitLocker control panel applet your drive(s) will be labelled as "Bitlocker waiting for activation".
Microsoft themselves [1] say:
> If a device uses only local accounts, then it remains unprotected even though the data is encrypted.
There is a further condition: if you explicitly enable bitlocker then the key is no longer stored on the disk and it is secure.
When I run "manage-bde -status" on my laptop it says "Key Protectors: None found". If the TPM was being used that would be listed.
Have you tried plugging the disk or ssd from your old laptop into another computer?
[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/operating...
(1) false advertisement
Companies like MS and Apple are telling their clients they offer a way to encrypt and secure their data but at best these claims are only half truths, mostly smoke and mirrors.
This is not OK. I don't want to get into legal parts of it, because I'm sure there's a fine print there that literally says it's smoke and mirrors, but it's despicable that these claims are made in the first place.
(2) the real need of ironclad encryption
I was born and raised in Eastern Europe. When I was a teenager it was common that police would stop me and ask me to show them contents of my backpack. Here you had two options - either (a) you'd show them the contents or (b) you would get beat up to a pulp and disclose the contents anyway.
It's at least 5h debate whether that's good or not, but in my mind, for 90% of cases if you're law abiding citizen you can simply unlock your phone and be done with that.
Sure, there are remaining 10% of use cases where you are a whistleblower, journalist or whatever and you want to retain whatever you have on your phone. But if you put yourself in that situation you'd better have a good understanding of the tech behind your wellbeing. Namely - use something else.
Use LUKS instead.
Today, 2 out of 3 of my machines are KDE fedora. The last one is TBD because my kids are using it.
I didn't have a choice for machine 1 because it wasn't eligible for windows 11 and windows 10 security updates were EOL. Machine 2 quickly followed.
At the time, there had been disappointing windows news every few months. Since there have continued to be disappointing windows news every few months.
I expect more disappointing windows news to follow.
As far as I can see this particular case is a straightforward search warrant. A court absolutely has the power to compel Microsoft to hand over the keys.
The bigger question is why Microsoft has the recovery feature at all. But honestly I believe Microsoft cares so little about privacy and security that they would do it just to end the "help customers who lose their key" support tickets, with no shady government deal required. I'd want to see something more than speculation to convince me otherwise.
Yes, the American government retrieves these keys "legally". But so what? The American courts won't protect foreigners, even if they are heads of state or dictators. The American government routinely frees criminals (the ones that donate to Republicans) and persecutes lawful citizens (the ones that cause trouble to Republicans). The "rule of law" in the U.S. is a farce.
And this is not just about the U.S. Under the "five eyes" agreement, the governments of Canada, UK, Autralia and New Zealand could also grab your secrets.
Never trust the United States. We live in dangerous times. Ignore it at your own risk.