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The Legal Purgatory at the US Border: Detained, Searched, and Interrogated
An anonymous reader writes "America may be the land of the free, but upon arrival millions of visitors cross a legal purgatory at the U.S. border. It is an international legal phenomenon that is left much to the discretion of host countries. In some cases, this space between offers travelers far fewer rights than some of the least democratic and free countries on Earth. Limited access to legal counsel, unwarranted searches, and questionable rights to free speech to name a few. One of the more controversial — and yet still legally a contested grey area — are the rights travelers have in regards to electronics and device searches."
But first off, don't be stupid. Sanitize/Sterilize ALL of your data PRIOR to starting your trip.
They cannot find what you are not carrying.
Just living within 100 miles of a US border gives them the right to conduct those searches of you and your property.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/02/09/0054212/dhs-can-seize-your-electronics-within-100-miof-us-border-says-dhs
Extensive checks and searching goes back centuries. Keep in mind that import duties (taxes on imported goods) used to be the major source of funding for the US government. Making sure everything was declared and combatting smuggling was a major effort.
Some people think the term "bootlegging" is from the 1920s prohibition era but it is much older than that. Those prohibition era folks with a liquor flask in their boot we copying sailors from earlier centuries where the sailors tried to sneak small expensive goods past customs officials. Having a federal agent tell you to take off your shoes is something as old as the country.
this space between offers travelers far fewer rights
No.
Rights aren't offered, they're innate (or God-given, if you prefer) and can only be infringed. Until everybody is (again) well-educated enough to say, "this space is one where governments infringe rights with reckless abandon," then little progress will be made.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
TrueCrypt can help. Put your encrypted hard drives somewhere else in your luggage.
Very bad advice indeed. These things can be found in the luggage searches, and then they have clear signs of deception and can give you the special treatment.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
and don't visit countries that abuse visitors, unless you absolutely have to. Back when I was 15, I dreamt of moving to America, the land of opportunity and individual freedoms. By age 24-25, I no longer had the rose-tinted glasses. Now at 30 I am no longer even interested in coming for a visit.
Interesting your experience with the US side is bad. I'm also Canadian, and have traveled to the US a number of times. I've generally found the US guys to be fairly professional and reasonable. I've traveled a few times with young kids and no mother. Naturally the US customs were concerned with this, and spoke with my kids individually trying to make sure they were not being kidnapped.
Now on to Canada customs, i am waiting for the day they measure how much gas is in your tank so they can make you pay GST/PST/HST on any amount they deem to be "excessive".
I once had Canada Customs stop me on reentry and ask about the kids (which all have Canadian passports) as if i was kidnapping them (in reverse)? I thougth that was REALLY weird.
My view is the Canadian customs officers tend to be a lot more concerned with importing smokes or alcohol and being an arm of RevCan and their other duties come secondary.
Maybe you don't understand how truecrypt works?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I was going to meet a gf working in an art concervation lab in massachussets for the july 4th weekend in the mid-80's.
I took a bus from Toronto to Albany as I was a grad student and did not have a car as I could not afford such a beast.
The border guards held up the bus because I had a few textbooks on materials -- which I was reading on my long bus trip -- I was also taking a side trip to the GE R&D center in Schenectady to meed somebody who could help with my research in plastic fracture mechanics. I am Canadian born and have never been a member of a communist party -- needless to say was run thru the wringer. I made the mistake of admitting I was stopping over to meet a researcher at GE research facility wrt to my PhD research. OMG can you say ripped apart my luggage, all my materials and held up the bus which all other passengers thought I was a criminal. Thus bus was delayed by 1 hour because I admidted I was off to visit a researcher at GE HQ R&D in Schenectady NY. Well doughhh
20 years later learned to tell border guards I am going to visit car parts manufacturerers for sales calls.
Big difference. Back in 2000 the following happened:
My VP of the time was crossing 20-30 minutes after us and was bragging he was a VP of a Hydrogen fuel cell company. I told the border security we were selling auto parts to GM which was true -- my VP bragged he was selling Hydrogen Fuel Cells to GM and the detained him, ripped the car apart because all they heard was hydrogen and associasted with a hydrogen bomb -- morons -- needless to say they ripped his car apart.
Moral to the story is keep your info to a minimum and assume the people you are dealing with are morons as they are.
I happen to be an expert on the use of cryptography. I know in detail how TrueCrypt works and its design is a sure recipe for getting you into extremely hot water if your devices are searched at the border. It may also get you thrown in prison for a while, because you refuse to hand over the keys to your hidden partition (never mind that they cannot prove you have one and that you may actually not have one in the first place...).
And there is the thing that you "hid" storage devices in your luggage, which already makes you suspicious. Having TrueCrypt on them will just finish you off.
The only good advice to TrueCrypt users is to actually have a hidden partition and to immediately hand over the keys for it when asked at a border inspection. Anything else is is pure folly. http://xkcd.com/538/ applies without restriction.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, you can be childish all you like. When you sit in border-jail, remember me.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
His point is that everybody knows truecrypt does hidden partitions so if you don't hand over the key for a hidden partition they are going to make your life hard - even if you don't have a hidden partition.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Really, this is old news. Just ask Jacob Appelbaum.
Far, far more frightening though is the possibility that you may find yourself shipped off to a foreign country (Syria say) to be tortured and imprisoned. What happened to Maher Arar (and others) is more than enough to make me avoid crossing the US border for any reason.
You may believe you're innocent, and that there's no reason why you would have problems, but so did he.
Three Squirrels
Indeed. Quite obvious. Thank you. This idea seems to be well beyond Zero__Kelvin however.
The problem is that not only can they not prove that you have a hidden partition, you cannot prove that you do _not_ have one. The design of hidden partitions in TrueCrypt prevents both very effectively. So if they just assume you have one, because "it is a standard feature of TrueCrypt as everybody knows", you are screwed, unless you can give them the key to that hidden partition. But if you did not give them the keys to both the normal and the hidden partition when they asked for your passwords, you are already screwed, because giving them the key for the hidden partition only when they specifically demand it has you already guilty of deception.
The concept of hidden partitions has some merit. It specifically keeps your adversary in the dark of whether there actually is something or not, but only if you are willing to withstand considerable pressure, including jail-time and torture. If you are not willing to do that, hidden partitions do more harm than good, because they create a false sense of security.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
My wife came back recently from a vacation to her home country. Green-card permanent resident alien. Detained at customs in the airport for three hours. She sat by herself in a room with no knowledge of why she was being detained. After three hours, an officer came into her room and said, "You're clear to go." She asked multiple times to multiple personnel why she was being detained, and everyone said, "We're not at liberty to say."
Six years ago, my sister-in-law was immigrating to the United States for the very first time. She came over on a fiance visa. Prior to her arrival, they had decided to wed in her host country before coming over to the United States. My brother called USCIS on three separate occasions to see if this would be acceptable.* Three times, the helpline said yes. When my sister-in-law arrived at her port-of-entry, the customs official casually asked where they were going to get married. My brother said that they had already wed overseas and had plans to visit the immigration office the following day to file the change-of-status paperwork. The officer immediately detained my sister-in-law, made a few calls, then provided her and my brother one last opportunity to exchange luggage, say goodbye, and then placed her on the same plane on the return flight back to her home country. There was no opportunity to argue, make phone calls to lawyers, senators...nothing. Another ten months, 32 pages of government paperwork, and $800 dollars in immigration fees later, and she finally stepped foot on American soil.
You show me a customs officer, and I'll show you a sadist. Nothing gets these people more excited than the opportunity to concurrently fight terrorism and inflict misery in the process.
* For those ignorant to the immigration process, the line between a spouse and a fiance is not as defined as you may think. In fact, most spouses immigrate to the United States on a fiance visa, because it's faster to file and process. (Google "Immigrating a spouse using a fiance visa" and find out for yourself.) But legal-story-short, the way my brother did it was not the way the customs agent accepted it, despite three different representatives at the USCIS saying otherwise.
You don't have to know anything about how encryption works at all to be aware that normal citizens have been compelled to turn over their passphrases just because encryption just makes it look like you have something to hide.
In fact, the more ignorant about encryption itself, the more you are likely to come across stories that resulted in the "plausible deniability" encryption, where you take one container with innocuous but private material, like bank accounts, and an alternate container with the good stuff. Which is exactly what gweihir recommended.
It drops off at some point, at the zero point of encryption knowledge you would be unaware of any story.
As a general rule, if you have to qualify yourself or give a personal anecdote, you are undercutting your message. It doesn't make it any less true, just harder to believe without looking, or knowing. But having read slashdot since 2000 or earlier, I've seen a goodly number of stories. Search the archives and read in wonderment.
Um, the GP knows about hidden partitions and plausible deniability. Here, I'll quote: "never mind that they cannot prove you have one and that you may actually not have one in the first place". The GP also knows that, yeah, usually some bored border agent will take one glance at your booting laptop and wave you through with a yawn.
The GP also knows that if, for whatever reason, you do get flagged for extra attention, and they then realise you've got encryption capable of plausible deniability, that they will not give one iota of a shit about your protestations that you don't use it.
It's not about how technology works, it's about how people work, and people tend to react badly when they think you're hiding something - regardless of whether you're actually doing so.
So, yeah, you may eventually leave the interrogation room after the maximum legally-allowed eight hours and fifty nine minutes later (depending on jurisdiction and assuming they haven't found some pretext to "indefinitely detain" you), having missed your flight, your luggage thoroughly ransacked, your every last piece of electronics down to and including the xbox controller confiscated, your name permanently engraved on their hassle lists, your house searched, your neighbours and employers queried and your every phone call tapped for the next two years, but hey, you sure showed them, right?
that's why all my encrypted volume are named things like.
Justin Beider's greatest compilation album.mb3
Celine Dion My heart goes never where.mb3
security through obfuscation while overall weak is usually the easiest fence to use. you don't only use it. but as part of a multi layer security system it is always easy unless you are being specifically targeted.
Bury those 2 files in collection of legally owed music and you will have to see the odd file size(if your OS shows bytes and not megs) to know something wasn't quite right. and even then you can fit a lot of data into a couple of megs even encrypted.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
How quickly we forget 9/11.
How many hundreds of thousands of additional lives did subsequent US policy claim under the banner of never forgetting 9/11? Was it worth it?
If our government had been more vigilant in who crosses our border, it would have never happened.
This is simply hand waiving. You have no way of predicting what would have occured.
I could just as easily assert had CIA been more vigilant in not hiring asshats like OSBL in the first place 9/11 would have never happened.
One fact is not disputed by anyone. In the next 3 months as many people will have killed one another right here in the US as were killed on 9/11 and every 3 months like clockwork since.
How quickly we forget... oh wait I forget that nobody gives a fuck about that.
Border searches are one of the few powers I am happy to grant my overgrown, bloated, ineffective federal government. If you come to the U.S. with bad intentions, I hope they catch you.
Most likely cuz you don't travel or care about foreign visitors who must go thru extraordinary lengths to get visas and once here too often treated like shit at the border by assholes with badges as I have observed on at least three separate occasions. I feel ashamed of the way we treat our guests to say nothing of the billions in revenue lost each year by people deciding its not worth the trouble.
You're out of your mind. Rights exist only because and to the extent that people recognize them, particularly governments that are in a position to defend or deny them. There are no god given rights and if there were, you weren't offered any right to privacy according to any religion that I know of. As for their being innate, that can't be true. If the were innate, people would have had the same rights everywhere and throughout history. They manifestly have not and do not. Your rights depend on where you are and who you are with. Thinking otherwise is simply asking for trouble you can avoid by recognising the facts.
True, I was grilled extensively by a UK customs official the last time I took the chunnel train from Paris to London. And the German customs official berated me because other countries' customs agents had stamped my passport in an unorderly fashion (of course).
For Linux, use plain dm-crypt. No headers whatsoever.
BUT: If they are after you, they may reverse the burden of proof, and suddenly you have to prove that this data is not encrypted. Tough luck. Also you seem to think that a mathematical proof trumps a legal suspicion. Not so, unfortunately. The judge in question may not even be able to understand the mathematical proof, but he will surely understand the legal suspicion. You cannot assume your adversaries are rational.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
They sell 32gb USB drives that are about the size of a US quarter. They look like those tiny bluetooth receivers that you plug into your laptop.
It can easily be hidden to pass any primary and secondary search. If they're going to do anything more thorough, you probably have bigger problems than the data you're carrying.
If you're really determined, the trick of creating a vanilla sector to hide the real sector is well known. So even if they find it, all they get is love letters to your girlfriend which can make it look like you're hiding the fact that you're cheating on your wife, who is in on the gag.
I've crossed a lot of borders in my life, and the people who man those crossings are of a certain type. Not hard to deal with if you give them something small to find. They are human and have human limitations.
If you're an international criminal or trying to do something bad, guess what? You're human too and likely to fuck up. Too bad, so sad. If you are not those things, you have a very good chance of maintaining your privacy with a little bit of forethought.
We still have a window of opportunity to roll this police state insanity back. It's really important that we don't give in to it, even if you believe you have "nothing to hide". Shit, hide it anyway. Even if it only keeps you feeling free, it's worthwhile. If you don't feel that little bit of personal inviolability, it's going to be hard to fight the larger battles to stop this insanity. Remember, the people you encounter at those borders also have families, lives, they know well how insane it all is. Don't be a jerk, but don't give in. The worst thing you can do is say, "I don't care because I've got nothing to hide". If that's what's in your head, you are already defeated and of no use to a free people.
Having said that, if your case gets escalated up the chain to the point where you start to meet the "True Believers", you're fucked. At this point, an average person encrypting data or refusing to use email or even encrypting your regular communications (it's not hard at all), is not yet enough to get you escalated. God help us if it gets to that point.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've often thought about doing that, using plausible deniability, and making the password for the "safe" partition: GoFuckYourselfYouFascistPig . The first time they ask for the password I would answer "Go Fuck Yourself You Fascist Pig", and after that I would simply ask them if they had problems hearing me the first time. When I got to court and they tried to screw me for failing to reveal the password I could state all innocent like: ... but your honor. I told them! It's GoFuckYourselfYouFascistPig . ;-) Of course, that was back when we had due process :-( [not to mention it is obviously pure fantasy, and not something I would ever actually do ... but I sure wish someone would ]
You realize that under the Patriot act, you don't necessarily get to go to court. You piss them off all, particularly with something that can be considered antagonistic and hating of America in their eyes and you could have a very nice Carribean vacation at Gitmo.
Two things to keep in mind. Never joke about hijacking a plane at an airport and don't piss off the border guards. Doing either one can make what you used to consider your worst day ever not seem that bad after all.
You do not that there are non-US citizens that cross the US border, right? All this talk about "US citizens" misses the point. Sure, they claim to be doing all this stuff only to non-US citizens, but once the capabilities are in place, that goes out the window. Wanting to complain about being denied rights you thought you had as US citizen? Here is this nice national-security letter (or equivalent) that forbids you to talk about it. This has quite obviously been done to a number of people already.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
My wife is a dual citizen. Not a big deal. Just show the US passport when entering the US. She travels to her home country all the time. Never had a problem with the US.
Just remember that border police are not paid that well and therefore may not be very bright, so don't make things overly complicated for them.
The only time I've ever heard of dual US-XXX being an issue is when applying for a high level security clearance. Then they start wonder exactly where your alliances really lie. As they should.
Which is precisely the reason those Rights are spoken of as innate and inalienable. The only position one can take to force a government to defend a right is to argue its innateness because clearly ever other method is consistently infringed by government who would like nothing better to infringe them in pursuit of the politics of the day.
You should look into deism, then. It seems pretty clear that the human condition demands things like the right to speak, the right to travel, the right to privacy, and the right to justice system based on fairness--but a small list of things. Deism exemplifies the idea that a non-interfering God has left man to explore and expound upon the very things that are human rights and make up a person's humanity. The whole Age of Enlightenment very much was upon this discourse and spoke in terms of such things. Now, if you want to argue that Deism is a philosophical construct because it's not an organized religion, well, that's another matter.
And you confuse the idea that something that is innate cannot be infringed. Well, I innately can see, but I can be blinded. Is sight not innate? Because mail delivery didn't exist since the dawn of time, does access to mail delivery suddenly not become an innate right in a society where mail delivery can, is, and can be a common thing? If you think that because there are parts of the world, even today, which are so tyrannical or so impoverished to not the high standards expected of the enlightened that such things cannot be innate, then I'd argue you don't understand the concept of how a positive right can be innate. This is because the innateness of rights comes not from being inborn or being from the dawn of time. They stem naturally from the experience of man in seeing the world and understanding exactly the things that innately are without interference from a tyrannical government or corporation or such and hence are inherently rights.
And you think the trouble is chicken and egg. The trouble runs deeper. To argue something is innate and inalienable is to believe, at one level, that something cannot be infringed, broken, or removed. Yet is clear that the argument for innate and inalienability is precisely such that rights are recognized so they will not be infringed, broken, or removed. To frame the discussion as if your rights are all but that which are written down chains you not only to the very finiteness of past experience and imagination but chains you to alterations to the paper they are written on. It is why the 9th Amendment as written is so clear and dear: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The words "innate" and "inalienable" rights are a rallying cry that we do not step down the dark path we now tread. And trying to semantically dissecting the words only further dissects are freedom.
I think that's the reason for the rallying cry of "kill all the lawyers". In the end, though, it should have always been "kill all the legislators".
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
I likewise have found the US border guards in Canadian airports to be extremely professional and intelligent. However I used to fly between the US and Europe and the US border guards in the US can sometimes be very different. I think the difference is that the powers of the guards in US pre-clearance areas in Canada is far more limited. All they can do is deny you entry to the US, they have no power to detain you and you can leave at anytime. Everything you submit to is voluntary - the only compulsory rule is that you must answer their questions honestly. I would guess that not being able to order indefinite confinement and compulsory strip searches means that such a posting would not appeal to those guards which ironically terrorize people in the name of catching terrorists.
They have to prove intent to get a conviction. There is a lot they can do without bothering to take something to court to make a person's life miserable.
This sig intentionally left blank.
I've travelled all over the world and the following is the complete list of border security issues I've endured over the last 10 years:
1. Brisbane, Australia, 2003: They made me throw out a brick of cheese I'd purchased in New Zealand. They told me that, had it been in the original unopened factory packaging, they'd have let it through.
2. Penang, Malaysia, 2006: They had me open up my laptop and start it. The guard then picked it up, held it up high to look at the bottom, then lost his grip and dropped it. It bounced off the conveyor, and landed on, then cartwheeled down the flight of steps immediately behind the conveyor all the way down to the next floor. The guard looked absolutely horrified and practically fell down the steps himself going after it and bringing it back up to me, apologising profusely all the while, then waited while I made sure it still worked. I'm posting with that laptop now, BTW, which I still keep around for reading stuff online when I'm too lazy to get the good one out of my bag.
3. Beijing, China, 2010: Got read the riot act for having "smuggled" a cigarette lighter with me on a flight from Frankfurt. I told them, truthfully, that they saw it at the security checkpoint in Frankfurt and did not offer to take it away from me. The border guard in question accused me of lying. I responded, "Please go give them a call and ask them if they take away cigarette lighters from outbound passengers on international flights, because I am pretty sure they will tell you that they don't. I'll be happy to wait while you check." He came back about 5 minutes later and said, "You can go." He kept the lighter, though.
4. Newark International, USA, 2011: Had a half-metre ethernet cable confiscated as a potential weapon. Me: "Weapon? Huh?" Bitchy old TSA lady: "You could strangle somebody with that thing." Me: "That would have never occurred to me in a million years, until you suggested it just now. Well done." She started to say something after that, but her 2 colleagues both started chuckling, and she gave me a look that could have curdled vinegar. After about 10 seconds, one of the others said, "Maddy's having one of her good days--On your way, son", and off I went.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Neither. It's because the US insists on these procedures for flights that will enter US airspace.
I was in Doha earlier this year, and I walked past the departure gate for a flight going to the US - looong line of people, shoes off, waiting for the full-scan etc. On my flight to the UK there was the walk-through metal detector and x-ray scan of my carry-on bag, but my shoes stayed on and nobody asked to pat me down.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
I have an encrypted loop back file that auto-mounts upon log in, requesting first the account password via getty, then the disk password in .bashrc
Interesting thing to note kids:
Never use mass transit without pulling out your "Sunday go to meetin'" laptop. You know the one I mean.
The one that, first thing you do, is to DOD wipe the drive (Thanks DBAN!), then load the OS (Linux, of course.)
If you mount a drive over a directory that already has files in it, you can't see the files in the original directory. .pdf showing the credit card transaction, banal stuff like my tax returns, the in box for the email address I hand out when I -know- they are going to spam me, browser history when I don't care when someone sees what I'm browsing, megabytes of files created by /dev/urandom and dd. That sort of thing. If I'm asked about the "gibberish" /dev/urandom files, I tell 'em the truth. They are there to confuse people that somehow get access to my system. They are completely worthless, and in fact, can be deleted. Here, let me delete them for you just to prove the point. Oh, you don't want me to? OK. But really, it's just
So, in my encrypted directory, I have many many files of Porn that I bought the files. Carefully recorded in an invoice.txt file in the directory
along with the bank account
gibberish. Nothing to see. Honest Injun!
On the base directory, I used to have my "real" files. Now I do something far sexier than that dodge. I used to just not give the loop back encrypted drive
a password, it would fail to mount, and I'd have my real files.
The key takeaway here is "Give 'em something to titillate them while at the same time hiding your real private files. Sensitive files belong in a encrypted cloud drop box outside of ANZAC treaty partners. Remember to delete history on that kiddos. Not ALL history, just that which shows you accessed a drop box."
I have to wonder though. Why am I more afraid of my own government than I am of "terrorists"?
I don't want to hurt anyone, and I don't have a "statement" to make that requires more than a few harsh words to select people behaving badly.
The below has been my tag line almost since I opened a Slashdot account. Sad to say, it's more true now than it ever was before.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I always travel in border areas with my laptop, information and all. I have it well encrypted, bios, login and screen saver password protected. When they ask for the passwords (and they almost always do) I gently and politely tell then to fuck off. I don't carry anything that sensitive, mostly my personal information....but that's not the point. The more we willingly give up the more they will take. Yes, they are willing to take, er...try to take no matter my level of cooperation and I have lost many hours defending my own freedom, as well as yours. DO NOT cooperate. DO NOT make it easy on them. DO NOT give in or give up. If we all did this we would make it clear to those in power that we will not be abused so easily. We will not be complicit in our own freedom's demise. It all reminds me of a famous quote. No, not that tired Ben Franklin quote about liberty and security although that does apply. It reminds me of Dylan Thomas. Not so much about the dying of a man but the death of freedom and democracy's light in the world.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
what would you even charge them with?
Terrorism and obstruction of justice.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
So how do you boot the laptop to demonstrate that it's a real laptop? I've been asked to do that at a US border before (leaving, at the time). They didn't care what was on the laptop, but they did care that it was actually a laptop and not a bomb made to look like a laptop. Getting to the 'enter password' screen was enough for them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Solution: make more than one hidden partition. Make it so that providing the key to one does not make any other visible. Put some soft porn on one of the hidden partitions and the stuff you actually want to keep secret on the other(s). When you are asked for the keys, provide the key to the soft porn partition.
You're out of your mind. Rights exist only because and to the extent that people recognize them, particularly governments that are in a position to defend or deny them...
Your idea of rights is the complete opposite of the ideas upon which the United States was founded.
From the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
People who agree with these principles believe that their rights exist with or without the existence of any government. Many people, including non-Americans like myself, consider this Declaration to be among the most eloquent and profound documents ever written. To label its adherents as "out of their minds" seems a rather dim point of view.
The point you forgot to mention is that encrypted files are easily spotted by analyzing the entropy of the decrypted disk blocks. That's why hidden containers WILL often stand out like a sore thumb. And this is precisely the reason why Truecrypt is just a poor tool at steganography.
However, unlike Truecrypt, some encrypting file systems do an excellent job at hiding data in a much more effective way. Of course, using such an OS/Filesystem combo is in itself a dead giveaway that you've got something to hide. So your point has merit still.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Yes that's true. They were arguing a political agenda and using whatever they could think of to justify their act of rebellion against a tyrannical authority. And most of them believed in a God that I do not believe in. Like all religious people at every time and place, they projected their own desires into the mind of god. Likewise the king imagined God had given him the right to rule over them.
You should be aware that the self-evidentness of rights was a novel concept in the Enlightenment. Up to that point, it had been anything but self-evident which is to say that it wasn't. The political theory that governments derived their powers from the consent fo those governed was both new to the enlightenment and contrary to the facts of thousands of years of history in which foreign goverments imposed themselves upon unwilling populations. It was even contrary to the regime that half the States imposed on a considerable portion of their own populations. The preceding theories were (1) that God had appointed certain people to rule over others and (2) that certain people imposed government upon the willing and the unwilling by force of arms. As much as I would like to believe differently, I think #2 is the truth because we see it happening in every age.
The point you forgot to mention is that encrypted files are easily spotted by analyzing the entropy of the decrypted disk blocks. That's why hidden containers WILL often stand out like a sore thumb. And this is precisely the reason why Truecrypt is just a poor tool at steganography.
Ah, no. TrueCrypt overwrites the whole primary encrypted partition with cryptographically generated randomness, i.e. every sector in there already has high entropy and that remains true for never used (!) sectors after decryption. For a hidden container, it places a header-less secondary container within the primary one at an offset. That container is only identifiable if you have its passphrase. So no, entropy analysis does not help.
There is another problem though: Writing to the primary encrypted container can damage the secondary one. For this, TrueCrypt protects an opened secondary container by intercepting writes to the primary one and blocking them if they would go into the secondary one. That leaves traces. Also, you will always see that there is a (more-or-less) large part of the primary encrypted partition that does not have files in it. If a FAT/NTFS filesystem is new, it is normal that no data is stored towards the end of the partition, as they both cluster data at the start. When it gets older, the used area wanders towards the end though. (These filesystems try to overwrite deleted data as late as possible to allow recovery, in contrary to typical UNIX/Linux filesystems that just use the whole disk. One reason UNIX/Linux filesystems have significantly better performance.) Now if the used area wanders, at some point it will either damage the secondary (hidden) encrypted partition, or the write restrictions become obvious. If you just do not write to the primary encrypted partition, that also is obvious.
Hence, a TrueCrypt hidden partition can be glaringly obvious unless you are careful and use it right. Basically, you have to create the whole set-up a short time before crossing that border.
However, unlike Truecrypt, some encrypting file systems do an excellent job at hiding data in a much more effective way. Of course, using such an OS/Filesystem combo is in itself a dead giveaway that you've got something to hide. So your point has merit still.
Indeed. However, I am not aware of encrypting filesystems that do a better job. Hiding data is just not something that encryption can do well. What it can do is provide access control. But as soon as they can force you to hand over the privileges (keys in this case), access control is meaningless.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.