This represents a dramatic escalation of side-channel attack vectors and surface area. It’s an unfortunate inevitability that this will not end well. Secure platforms never provide affordances for backdoors, especially backdoors tightly coupled to externalities. Bitwarden is further attracting unnecessary attention to itself from actors who have an interest in the collection of the volunteered emergency-trust relationships. Bitwarden would be well-advised to reconsider this feature.
I disagree. This is an extremely important feature. If something happens to me, I wouldn't want my family to have to jump through insane hoops to get access to my accounts for a bit of extra theoretical security. At this point something traumatic has already happened to them and this would just be another emotion burden. This could be for financial reasons, or say if I were missing, to communicate with my friends.
Let people who don't need it and don't want it turn it off, but for me I'd definitely have it on.
