"Well boys I sure hope you can get in to this because I lost the password ages ago I remember it was a set of 15 random words with capitals in random spots but just can't remember the order..."

Then your lawyer gets to tell the jury that you complied.

How so? You cannot be forced to accuse yourself. If your self-hosted data is on encrypted hard drives then they can't do anything about it.

Except in the UK where you can be forced to provide decryption keys.

And that’s where good encryption comes into play. At least in the US, (where this case is happening), they can compel you to turn over the encrypted data blob. But they can’t compel you to give them the password to access the data. Because forcing you to give up the password would violate your 5th amendment right to remain silent.

Also, they probably wouldn’t subpoena you and give you a chance to respond; they would just bust your front door down and take your server. You wouldn’t have an opportunity to peacefully turn the data over to them. Only the wealthy get subpoenas. The rest of us get no-knock search warrants, dead pets, (because cops will shoot any dogs that are present when they execute the warrant), and traumatized/injured/killed family members who happened to be home at the time.

They’ll just come in and take ALL your PC/server hardware and hold it as evidence. Preferably with a warrant, but if they “fear” that you may destroy evidence, they can seize everything regardless of warrant. If you’re legally ordered to decrypt and refuse to do so, you’ll be held in contempt of court and probably jailed/fined for who knows how long.

I imagine it'd still be preferable to make them go through you and your lawyer for that info, where you could still have some measure of control.

You’re half right, in that ultimately they can compel you to hand over your data, but there is a higher bar to clear for them to get your personal data stored locally.

For one, they can’t compel you to turn over your data with a subpoena, they’d have to actually go in front of a judge and get a warrant.

I think the real takeaway is to not put all your eggs in one basket, so they would need separate subpoenas.

Getting access to just his Google Account could contain Google Voice text messages, voicemails, and call history. Google search history, Google Maps location history, everything in Google Docs, Gmail, YouTube, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. That's all with a single subpoena, which includes a lot of things irrelevant to the case.

That's not correct