Email a copy of 'Fun With A Decoy Drive' to a friend
Loading ...
RELATED POSTS:
- Protecting Identity Theft Victims: Business Credit Card Holders
- Safely Sell Or Donate Your Old Computer
- My Privacy Library Part II
- My Privacy Library
- Police Search Cell Phones On Massive Scale
Email
Print
 |
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s interesting that you mentioned the UK. It doesn’t quite surprise me that the law requires you to disclose encryption keys. I have traveled to many countries (including countries with poor human rights record such as Syria and Egypt) and I have to say that the UK border control is BY FAR the most abusive I’ve come across. I’ve been to that country 4 times and every time I’ve come, the border officers have drilled me with ridiculous questions. I am a law abiding US citizens with no criminal record. However, I am not Caucasian. Upon the latest entry, the officer reviewed every stamp in my passport, asked about my job, asked to see a copy of my bank statement (didn’t have that with me, but who does?), asked to look at my credit card to see the expiration date, asked for my driver’s license, and lastly wanted to make a copy of my ATM card. I am not making this up. After an hour of interrogation, the officer let me enter.
Did I miss the part where you describe what to do with the REAL hard drive? If crossing a border and subject to a rigorous search, I would think that the presence of a hard drive with no computer attached would raise more suspicion than just going through with the real drive in the laptop.
My own solution to snoopy government thugs is to use steganography. I can hide data inside a music file or photograph in such a way that it’s impossible to tell anything is hidden there.
Good suggestions. You can also use a USB flash thumbdrive or an SD flash card to boot your computer with Puppy Linux and bypass the Windows Hard Drive installation. Puppy, and other distros like Knoppix, Slax, etc. have a full suite of web browsers, file viewers, players, and editors so you can do the same things you do on windows. When you’re finished, just turn off the PC, take out the flash drive, and stick it back in your wallet. I always keep the Windows drive cleaned up and ready to go for guests or if I have work to do using an app that only runs on Windows. Also, you can put a selection of portable apps on the same flash drive. You can find a good description of such programs at portablefreeware.com or at portableapps.com and I’ve found the selection at both sites to be excellent. I especially like the comments made by other users comparing different programs that perform similar tasks, such as browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Iron, Tor?) Portable apps are good for situations where you can’t boot from a different device, since you run programs on the installed Windows and not leave alot of junk on the PC you’re borrowing.
Hope this helps,
Bob
Great suggestions! Thanks Bob in California.
Bill
Bob in California, is it unusual to be asked to empty your pockets when crossing borders? Is the information on the flash drive hidden or password-protected? I can see that if only the laptop itself is inspected, having a separate flash drive is advantageous. But are the odds of getting through without the flash drive being scrutinized really that good?
JdL,
The last time I crossed an international border was when I went to Mexico and they didn’t ask me to empty my pockets then, but maybe things have changed. I like your idea of using steganography. If I had some text with usernames, passwords, business info, or other private data, I could put in a picture, zip it up with some other pictures, and then send it to an email account for later retrieval when I reach my destination.
With the USB or SD flash approach there are some interesting angles. The micro SDHC is used in cameras, mp3 players, ereaders, smartphones, etc. I don’t know whether or not border-crossing personnel take apart and closely inspect the contents of each electronic device you happen to be carrying. The flash devices come formatted in a standard file system: Fat32. That means you can easily put a “live-distro” (Puppy, Slax, Knoppix, etc.) and a folder of “/apps” and a folder of “/data” together on a little chip slightly bigger than your thumbnail. It’s been amazing to watch prices drop in the past year: you can buy micro SDHC flash in capacities ranging from 4GB to 32GB for about $1/GB from places like Amazon.com or newegg.com or Fry’s or Best Buy, etc. The little micro-SD to USB adapters give you the flexibility to use whatever ports happen to be available on the device you have handy.
Check out pendrivelinux.com for an automatic setup program called YUMI that automatically sets up Puppy and/or dozens of other live distros on your flash device from Windows with only a few clicks of your mouse.
You’ve probably already done this, but it’s useful to explore the results of a web search for “encryption and plausible deniability” and to check out http://www.schneier.com and the good ideas from a guy who is arguably the modern master of the topic.
The usb solution with a bootable distro or virtual machine is the easiest to implement. Steaganography is great so long as your machine doesn’t get corrupted. Besides… it’s downright insane to keep vitally important, and potentially life threatening, material on such a thing. Using something simple, and encrypted, and at least two copies, should do the trick in making sure you don’t lose everything. Just keep your laptop for gaming and idle nonsense. Email address? Make sure only throwaway addresses are used on the main drive. There are scanning devices out there now that can pull your personal info straight off of smart phones etc., without so much as having to dig around for passwords, so the trick is in being as wise as serpents and as gentle and innocent looking as doves.
Mr. Rounds,
What about the following case, wherein a judge ordered a woman to decrypt her hard disk? What if she simply said no? A simple obstruction of justice charge?
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/23/10219384-judge-orders-woman-to-give-up-password-to-hard-drive