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Stash Your Hard Drive In The Attic
RegardsSJ writes "Robert X. Cringley on his PBS website mentions a $479 wireless, fanless 120gb network storage/file server appliance (running linux) in his column. He thinks the killer app for this one is for keeping your porn storage hidden, if you're busted by the cops. I think his concept is weak, given the wireless signal is traceable (security through obscurity?), WEP is breakable, and the fact that you have to have the thing plugged in somewhere... The company selling the device is martian.com. Anybody use one?" Now that it's possible to stream audio and video through various boxes originally serving other purposes (like TiVo and PlayStation2), this looks like a good companion piece, too.
This could pose some interesting questions. Say (for instance) your computer resides in Texas, on the very edge of the border. Then you take one of these and put it over the border in Mexico at your friends house acroos the other side of the border. Who can press charges against you for your illegal MP3's? The US? Not really, no physical evidence of the files. Mexico? Again not really because no computer is connected to the drive. Any answers anyone?
Visit www.seriouslythough.com
If you can wire a plug to a electrical box in the basement, enclose the box beams after mounting this to the floor add an 802.11g interface with an 802.11g access point above it, (and add a bit more storage to the device) you could do set up a wired network with thin clients throughout your house, and never have to worry about anyone taking off with your systems.
Granted you would probably want to use the most recent and strongest varient of WEP, and if possible waveguide your area between the AP and the server to reduce attacks, but if you build it properly, they can set up everything they take from your house, and won't have a bootable system, and you can go to a swap meet or computer recycler and pick up enough hw to go back and wipe your server before they start tearing apart the finish of the house.
That's if you are paranoid.
-Rusty
You never know...
My attic gets very hot in the summer. There's no way a hard drive would survive a month there. The basement is a much better place since it'll stay cooler all year round.
I've always thought that a custom ethernet connector that looks exactly like a power outlet would work well. Hide the HD in the wall, run the Cat5 to the 'outlet'. Then you just need a length of cat5 with bare ends to plug into the 'outlet'. Cops raid your place, you yank the network cable, and it lays therelooking lik, well, a cut up cat5 cable. As long as no cop trys to plug in a lamp...
As I Briton I am constantly confused as to whether I am American or European. What does Tony think this week???
Either way, "Only in Briton" would be a more suitable subject line. I doubt that in either Denmark or the USA, arseholes have had to be airbrushed out of pornographic magazines.
Happened here until the mid 90s. No wonder we're so fucked up.
Don't hide one in your house. Instead, find a nice hidden spot with good reception and a power socket in random places - at work, at the local mall, underneath bridges, in parks, etc. Mark the location with a GPS, and use them as random access points/neighborhood file repositories.
The idea is to create a decentralized, accessible, but non-connected freenet centered around a sort of "dead-drop" concept. If you want to distribute something, drive around town uploading to these file repositories, and hopefully leechers that frequent these spots will pass the data on.
Of course, if you wanted to network these units, all you have to do is plop one somewhere, then train a box with a wired connection at them and set up a bridge - so you can use them either way. I like the cloak-and-dagger method myself... it seems cooler 8)
I built something just like this for my parents. They are both wireless now with laptops for each of them. When my older bro and I went home for xmas a few months ago we each brough all the parts we needed to make it happen. Our xmas gift to our parents was this file server (among other things).
The rationale was this: as my parents move to digital cameras and start scanning in older things, our family albums will increasingly be digital, rather than a chest full of pictures. Since preserving this data is important to me I decided that we should have a 'Family Digital Library'. Now they store all kinds of stuff on there, and I expect that we'll be adding more disks to in the coming years.
Secret file storage? Nah... Family Library? YES.
The US? Not really, no physical evidence of the files.
Sure they can. Remember: in the end, you'd be judged by a jury, and to a jury a computer is a "magic box" anyway.
And, theoretically, the US and Mexican police could just cooperate.
Semi-off-topic story:
Friend of mine lived in an apartment that caught fire. He had a couple of PC's at the time, including a high-end (at the time) 1Ghz Athlon. He and his roommate were able to get most of the valuables out of the place, including the Athlon PC, but most of their possessions were lost. The fire investigator came across the roommate's shotgun (they were hunters) that had a shorter than normal, but legal, barrel. The police were called in, all weapons were confiscated, and amazingly so were the computers. Even if the shotgun were illegal, I still can't figure out what relationship a computer would have to it. Chalk it up to post-Columbine paranoia I suppose, although these guys were in their early 20's. No charges were ever filed, but the computers were never returned despite several iniquiries. The kids were pretty scared after the whole ordeal and never really pursued the matter.
This could be an absolute godsend for recording hobbyists and professionals. Fanless laptop in one room, hours and hours of tracking space in the other.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Digital cellphone are fairly low powered (couple hundred mW max). Wi-Fi devices are max 100mW. I worked with guys that have been around radio tranmission equipement for 10+ years and they have had zero incidents of cancer (which is actually lower than statistical average for the pool size). Basically I spent the last 2.5 years in a building with hundreds of AP's and had no fear for my safety.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Does this mean you're importing illegal music? Wouldn't that be worse (legally speaking?)
Normal people worry me!
There are a few studies. Most are inconclusive. The one guys who's studies were conclusive was discredited for faking those results. Oops.
But much of it comes from annecdotal evidence of people who have brain tumors shaped like their cell phone antenna, and there aren't very many annecdotes at that.
I'm not a molecular biologist or anything, but I would guess the low frequency radiation which can penetrate a little way into the body isn't damaging because it ionizes anything, but because it might trick some cells into setting up shop. So it wouldn't be the energy of the signal so much as the asymetry with which it is delivered. And it wouldn't so much cause a tumor, as choose it's location. But that's my layman's supposition. And I don't think I've seen any articles or research that support that viewpoint.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Bury a fanless computer six feet down in the back yard. Run power and cat-5 into the garage. Add physical intrusion detection. By the time the police figure out where the cable leads, the thermite charges packed around the hard drives have done their work and there's nothing to find but a glass-encased lump of slag.
If anyone's interested, thermite is actually very easy to make. Igniting it from the computer would probably require a multi-stage ignition, though - say, electric match to black powder to magnesium strip to thermite. And you'd want to make sure the ignition signal didn't get accidentally flipped on reboot or core dump or anything. =]
Encryption's all well and good, but you've got to keep the keys somewhere. Just try recovering data from a hard drive when you can't identify which lump of metal IS the hard drive.
Humans are use to light in the visible spectrum so I wouldn't worry about a light bulb. The Sun puts out a lot of nasty stuff that our atmosphere and magnetic belt protect us from.
If we are not use to the specific spectrum in play, we can't guarantee how cellular biology will react.
It's not the absolute wattage that worries me although I believe that signal strength is governed by an inverse square law so the closer a source is, the greater its local effect.
"If only it came with a self-destruct mechanism, it might overcome the shortcomings you mentioned :) "
I belive military hardware has self destruct, or we destroy it. Like spy planes computer stuff that is. I belive they smash the drives and toss acid on them.
Now this would be a neet feature in a harddrive. Have a mod you can trigger that causes the pickup head to grind the plater in pre chosen spots to be destroyed or just have a capsule of acid in the drive and when needed you can trigger it and she kills the drive. I can see hads now for the western Digital Canibal drive series, the drives that eat themselves (intentionaly).
To tell you, in basic terminology, the looseness of correspondance the 5th ammendment of the Constitution of the united States of America:
You are not required to provide an answer to a Police Officer(s)' request for information.
You are not required to give them information!
You are not required to answer a question!
You are not required to incriminate yourself!
You are not required to incriminate another person!
You are not required to provide any information about another person!
IF THEY SAY YOU MUST GIVE THEM INFORMATION, TELL THEM THEY ARE BREAKING THE LAW AND SHOVE THAT RED PEN UP THEIR ASSHOLE!
BE AWARE OF ANY AND ALL INFORMATION YOU _VOLUNTEER_ AND BE AWARE OF YOUR PERCEPTION TO THE "POLICE OFFICER" (they are slandering and libelous bastards at taking notes on your physical/emotional appearance).
NEVER SPEAK WITHOUT THE COUNCIL OF SOMEONE WHO KNOWS THE LAW!
TO SEIZE PROPERTY, THEY MUST FIRST PROVIDE A NOTICE/REQUEST TO SEIZE THE PROPERTY ALONG WITH A _PROBABLE_CAUSE_ (not just "Probable Cause"), AND IF YOU DO NOT _VOLUNTEER_ TO THEIR REQUEST FOR EVIDENCE THEN YOU TELL THEM TO GET A WARRANT. THEY CANNOT ISSUE A WARRANT BEFORE FIRST INQUIRING TO YOU WITH AN INITIAL REQUEST/NOTICE.
If they do otherwise than what the LAW OF THE LAND, Common Law and Constitution of the united States of America, then you will understand that they are NOT operating under the LAW OF THE LAND. Do not confuse municipal corporation laws (local, county, state, etc) with the LAW OF THE LAND (Common Law and Constitution of the united States of America).
When your secured rights are violated, then you will obviously wonder where the fuck all your slanderous neighbors went. Why do they turn a blind eye to your private property and humanity, and always suspect:
"Gosh, that always looked suspicious and was quite...he must have done somthing to deserve the police on his doorstep. Hope they turn him strait! Heil Commander-In-Chief!"
YOU AND I ARE THE PRINCIPLE, We the People, THAT OF WHICH CORRECTS THOSE THAT BREAK LAWS THEY HAVE CONTRACTUALY OPERATED UPON. PERHAPS NOW YOU KNOW WHY THERE IS A "FREEMEN OF MONTANA".
if you're american don't read the following since it could be used to hide information from 'the man' and such is terroristic activity.*bad humour to half mode*
because most of the time the cops won't bother snooping around totally, and in other countries than usa they might not have the right to stay at the computer and look whats going on once they bust you (basically, they can't alter the data, so they can't keep it on, or don't even have anyone available who would be able to figure it out). and i would bet that still most of the busts(the actual seizing of the machines) are held by not very geeky officers. and such hw is easy to place at your neighbours house or where ever, just make sure you got lots of other suspicious computers to seize. why would one want this privacy is his own thing(for one, it's not certain you will get your hw back as it is, even if you are innocent)..
not that hiding cd's was that difficult either, but that would involve too much running around the house.
though, using home-pna could prove out to be more convinient/cheaper and wouldnt involve wireless sniffing possibility, and you could place that out of sight pretty easily too.
i would put the machine inside a cast-beton case that had it's own ups inside that(that when disconnected would start to wipe the hd), and that would explode the innards if opened or wrong button pressed(while at it have the hd's spinning open without top covers and have some good goo/acid flow on them..), and while at it have it built into houses base too.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So hide it out in the open. The damn thing looks like a VCR. Put it in another room, away from the computer. Set a 13-inch TV on top of it. Stack a dozen VHS cassettes next to it. With no wires connecting it to the TV, you might just get away with it.
And it doesn't have to cook in your attic.
"As a result, whenever a server fails at Google, THEY DO NOTHING. They don't replace the broken machine. They don't remove the broken machine. They don't even turn it off. In an army of drones, it isn't worth the cost of labor to locate and replace the bad machines. Hundreds, maybe thousands of machines lie dead, uncounted among the 10,000 plus."
Is this common knowledge? Great concept. In the long run I'd think they would be better off running blade computers to save power and reduce heat etc.
Tieing back to the subject... Network Attached Storage is the way of the future. Ultimately I'd rather have everything online somewhere where is it getting backed up properly. If I have to keep the data in my house at all I'd certainly rather it be on a specialized device that does one thing and does it well rather than on a Windows machine where it is at the mercy of the latest service pack.
> Since when is having porn illegal?
:-) Or, unless you're in the business of amassing kinderporn, which is quite fortunately illegal in most Western countries.
That was my reaction. Unless you're in one of the several countries governed by semi-theocratic laws where pr0n of any sort is illegal, and showing a little ankle is considered risque.
However, you may have other things to hide. Your real accounting books, so you can keep the IRS at bay while keeping more of your income. Your "cracker tools" and the fruits of your cracking efforts. Your copies of all those public documents formerly available on CD-ROM which the U.S. government ordered destroyed shortly after Sept. 11th in the name of national security. Your list of contacts and informants as a reporter. Your MP3 and OGG files, so that if the RIAA comes knocking...
As you can see, some things you could use a secret storage device for are pretty bad, while some are completely good. Everyone should be entitled to a measure of privacy, and the ability to protect it. In fact, it used to be a matter of law in prior centuries that a man's personal papers, books, diaries and such, could not be used against him as evidence--because we're supposed to have freedom of thought. Sadly, this has eroded...
This device has many waknesses which the submitter points out. However, one could very easily build a similar device without those deficiencies in security. For one thing, wireless is out--too traceable, sniffable, and breakable. So, you'd have to go wired--and disguise the wired connection as something innocuous and unconnected to a "secret network". Hmmm... The many possibilities include phoneline networking, as long as you're willing to do a little remodeling and don't mind the slow speed. If you really think about it, there are many ways in which one could adequately disguise a wired network, as long as you're willing to do a little remodeling or build custom, disguised dual-use devices. Hell, as Cringely mentioned, even TiVos have USB ports these days... The possibilities are literally endless.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
I experimenting with various uses. It was a poor DVR DVR, due to the limited CPU and the small HDDs back then; it was an okay MP3 server but sometimes hiccuped if playing songs locally while streaming to other machines; NT-150 hackers still use the smart card slot for satellite card hacking, but that wasn't my gig.
It eventually became the least powerful CPU in my junkbox, but I liked its small, silent form factor and hated to trash its other capabilities. With a few components, I added an IR data reciever. the transfer rate never reached 10Mbps, but it was faster than the wireless networks of the time.
In the 70's, when lasers diodes ran $10+ surplus, hobbyists routinely used IR LEDs to communicate 100s of meters. A cluster of today's high-powered IR LEDs might reach a km or more (the transmitter needn't be directional if it's bright (illuminate a 6" translucent plastic cap and make the reciever directional with a cheap lens+tube focused on the emitter. Imagine, for example, a detector with a 1" dia "directional" tube fixed high in a tree on a distant hill, connected by RF or camouflaged wire to a buried server.
To be really clever, plant a second set-top box, filled with legal but embarrassing material in your backyard. When the cops "persuade" you to surrender the device, they won't suspect the existence of the real one.
As a matter of fact, I never got around to getting it back from the distant tree I used for range testing. If the battery weren't long since dead, I might give it a spin. Sure, rain, fog, and foliage would be problems over time, but depending on your location, you might be able to find a suitable location (e.g. the roof of a distant building). Power is also a problem, but the NT-150's current 10W draw could easily be handled by a small solar cell charging a battery (it'd charge 8-16 hours a day, but would probably only be used a few minutes a day) and even building technicians are hesitant to mess with unknown devices.
(The Stazi kept a covert surveillance station in Prague's old clock tower, but never gave a second thought to a wiring box along the power lines they ran up the tower stairway. It recently was found to contain a radio relay believed to be have been used by the KGB to relay small local KGB bugs to a Soviet office downtown. The KGB stole Stazi power because the tower -perfect for a relay- wasn't otherwise electrified, and they did not want to inform the Stazi about their local bugs)
This was, and is, beginner-level hardware hacking. It costs more in ingenuity than cash.
PORN.
This is what I did to combat the police problem. I bought several industrial demagnetizers and installed hard drives on the demagnetization surface. The demagnetizers are all attached to a solenoid. Pushing a single switch, which is hidden in a convenient place, immediately and irretrievably destroys all information on the hard drives. (That's because the demagnetizer stays on for the entire time the police are searching the place.) By the way, the information stored on these hard drives is as follows:
- Photographs proving that the women in my family have walked in public without being covered by a tablecloth. (We live in Afghanistan.)
- Videos proving that we have taught children how to read and write.
- MP3s, purchased from the Internet per the intellectual rights requirements of the content provider. (Music is illegal here.)
- Documents that criticize the actions of our local politicians.
No other information is stored on any of our hard drives.