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Ask Slashdot: Securing a Journalist's Laptop Against a Police Search?
Bruce66423 writes: In the light of the British police's seizure of a BBC laptop what is the right configuration and practices to ensure that such a seizure provides zero information to the cops? This post from Thursday might be a good place for some ideas, but that one's expressly about securing a Chromebook; what would you advise for securing a more conventional laptop? (Or desktop, for that matter.)
Easy: Store nothing sensitive anywhere on the laptop. Make sure all browsing history/data is wiped before the laptop is every put to sleep/hibernate.
Unlike common criminals, try cooperating with the police. You'll be better off in the end for it generally.
What if the police have become criminals themselves?
On your Laptop there is a normal Windows installation which is not used for work. Only for stuff like browsing the web in the evening at the hotel. mails to the kids, etc.
On a USB stick on the keychain there is a copy of Tails https://tails.boum.org/index.e...
You rent some VPS or root server in a country of your choice, under a different name, preferably paid via cash. This is the place where all the data for work is stored. encrypted.
This server you only access via Tails which uses Tor by default.
If you can't do this, you put an encrypted VM onto your Laptop which happens to have the data for work and you write your stuff or access the web for work related research only in this VM. Again using a distro like Tails.
The key is to have no way to decrypt the laptop, then they can't force you to. Make sure someone else has the key, preferably in another jurisdiction (i.e. country).
That could land you in prison in the U.K. Legislation in that country required you to decrypt data for authorities on demand. Losing or destroying the keys is no excuse.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
TrueCrypt probably triggered their warrant canary and the dev team decided to call it quits, since NSLs are so much fun to fight for people living in the formerly free country known as the US. In the mean time, code forked and picked up here: https://veracrypt.codeplex.com...