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What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

#31

Post by shawn-butler »

joshka wrote: post #11

"Or you can scrub your laptop clean, storing everything on an external hard drive that you leave at home. Then you know you are safe from prying authorities, at least at the border." That is unless you believe that those prying authorities have the will and the way to leave an undetectable backdoor in your laptop. Breaking the chain of custody in any laptop today is akin to destruction of trust in that device. Who is…

I wonder if there isn't a fledgling niche business opportunity here for security-minded but not tech-saavy business travelers?

Rather than leaving it at home, a trusted third-party service could supply a image/reimaging service at popular travel endpoints.

A lot of risk in it I suppose.

Re: What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

#32

Post by andrewcooke »

plg wrote: post #29

Can the authorities ever compel you to provide a password?

in the uk you can be imprisoned (up to 2 years) for not revealing your password. i am surprised the bbc didn't mention that (maybe i missed it?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingd... (also contains details for other countries)

Re: What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

#33

Post by a3n »

oracuk wrote: post #23

I have seen the corporate response of only providing remote desktops via browser and SSL to foreign (US) deployed personnel. Means the data never physically crosses the border. No clear players in this market for consumers though. Where is the consumer remote desktop via browser+SSL that doesn't rely on a US hosted cloud service?

Seems like a natural thing to offer for someone like Skype or Google. /s

Re: What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

#34

Post by logicallee »

joshka wrote: post #11

"Or you can scrub your laptop clean, storing everything on an external hard drive that you leave at home. Then you know you are safe from prying authorities, at least at the border." That is unless you believe that those prying authorities have the will and the way to leave an undetectable backdoor in your laptop. Breaking the chain of custody in any laptop today is akin to destruction of trust in that device. Who is…

That's why I never let my laptop out of my sight after I watch it be given live birth to by a laptop in the wild - I just don't trust some factory or government or my apartment.

Re: What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

#35

Post by valarauca1 »

zacinbusiness wrote: post #27
valarauca1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be possible but difficult. I don't know how to do it without some kind of markup / document system (no morning coffee yet). I figure it wouldn't be that hard. You could use a TDMS file(v1), which each channel is an item. When ran you give the program a password, which it checks against each channel, calculating the salted hash of your password. When it finds a matching hash it decrypts the document (saved as dat…

Knock yourself out. People will be buying anything that they think can keep their data safe, so someone may as well come up with a decent solution. We can build it and let the HN community battle test it. Split on profits can be 60/30 as you're doing the work :-)

Battle testing is a horrible way to prove crypto works, from the outside looking even horribly done crypto looks secure.

Re: What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

#36

Post by powertower »

> Between October 2008-August 2009, for example, more than 220 million people travelled to and from the US, according to Department of Homeland Security officials.

> During that time authorities searched about 1,000 laptops carried by travellers.

We don't live in the police state that most Snowden and Kim Dotcom supporters here tell us that we do.

I get really tired of seeing anecdotes used to represent the average.

Re: What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

#37

Post by a3n »

Activists and other "interesting" people have their own particular security problems.

For most of the rest of us, we really have no data of any interest to the authorities. That doesn't mean we shouldn't care about data security, if that's important to us. But it's not the real problem with border confiscation.

The real problem is not having your hardware or software tools at your destination.

So don't bring any hardware or data that you can't afford to lose. Certainly don't bring anything that you're emotionally attached to, particularly inbound.

Either don't bring anything, and buy it all at the destination, or just bring the cheapest stuff you can use productively, and be prepared to replace it at the destination.

The NSA already has my email. But I'd hate to be without a camera, or phone, or laptop, or data, or whatever other tools I was going to use at the destination. Plan for that, it's the more likely and practical threat.

Re: What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

#39

Post by IceyEC »

zacinbusiness wrote: post #27
valarauca1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be possible but difficult. I don't know how to do it without some kind of markup / document system (no morning coffee yet). I figure it wouldn't be that hard. You could use a TDMS file(v1), which each channel is an item. When ran you give the program a password, which it checks against each channel, calculating the salted hash of your password. When it finds a matching hash it decrypts the document (saved as dat…

Knock yourself out. People will be buying anything that they think can keep their data safe, so someone may as well come up with a decent solution. We can build it and let the HN community battle test it. Split on profits can be 60/30 as you're doing the work :-)

Can I have the extra 10 percent?

Re: What happens if authorities seize your laptop?

#40

Post by dhimes »

01Michael10 wrote: post #30
mcdougle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reimage it again when you get home? edit: To those below: True. I thought about hardware after I posted; didn't even think about the BIOS thing but that's a great point.

Re-imaging your hard drive will not help with BIOS malware. Re-installing the BIOS yourself may help. Your data should stay at home and a VPN connection to your home PC would be a good first step.

Is there a reliable backup utility for your BIOS? I've come across this, but don't know how to judge it's viability.
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