Granted this is a parable to prove a technical point, but encryption and steganography issues aside, NO professional investigative journalist would risk keeping such sensitive material at home. It's kept at the office, or rotated across multiple safe deposit boxes, multiple safehouses, or, at the bare minimum, an offsite dead/dry dump--NEVER at home.<p>Additionally, why did he even open the door in the first place?<p>If they have a warrant, and if the information is valuable enough, let them expend time, effort, and resources to physically break in while the critical files are scrubbed (i.e. securely deleted with multiple over-writes).<p>If he's paranoid enough, these days, it will never be permanently stored on hard disk media in the first place. Instead the project files will be on easy-to-destroy and physically tiny flash media.<p>If the information is valuable enough (especially with corporate backing and 'sources' laws protections in the U.S.) it's worth the risk fighting an obstruction of justice charge.