I was rebuilding my Fedora VMware image today. Attempting to install TrueCrypt 5.x, I became very frustrated. It made me realize my expectations have changed. I no longer want to have to understand every single application I use, how to compile it, its associated dependencies and specifics. On one hand learning this still interests me to this day. Unfortunately, I no longer have the free time I once had to do this for every application I require — so I just want it to work. Since a quick install didn’t seem to be an option, I started compiling TrueCrypt from source and adding in all the dependency libraries etc. During this process, I discovered a entry by Oliver Meyer. He published a simple step by step procedure. It is easy to understand and well done. Highly recommend it.
-mike.
In the United States, the ninth circuit held that the Fourth Amendment does not require government agents to have reasonable suspicion before searching laptops or other digital devices at the border, including international airports. The legal details and write up written by Jennifer Granick a lawyer for the EFF can be found here.
What I wonder is does that apply to encrypted volumes that may be present on a laptop? My laptop contains all my data related to my customers on an encrypted volume. That encrypted volume also holds all my bookmarks, e-mail, and web browser cache. The operating system and applications are not encrypted (yet), and assuming the officers searching my laptop were savvy enough to find the encrypted volume, I am wondering if I am required to give them my pass phrase to access the encrypted volume?
I probably would give it to them. I don’t have anything illegal and it is probably easier to just cooperate then end up being added to some list that would make future travel difficult or impossible. I just wonder where the law sits on this issue.
This post is to keep a list of some of the net neutrality issues that I may need to refer to at some point.
- Rob Topolski created a summary video with comments presented to the FCC hearing at Standford University on Apr 17, 2008. It is here.
The CBC show SearchEngine has the following:
- April 17, 2008 Part II of the Internet bill of rights. Podcast located here.
- April 10, 2008 hosted a podcast on the Internet bill of rights. Podcast is here.
Many of the latest operating systems including Windows Vista, Mac OS 10, and Linux now offer disk encryption to protect data against laptops and devices that are stolen or ‘prying’ eyes. There is an excellent open source disk encryption tool I have used for years called Truecrypt which is cross compatible for Linux and Windows. Disk encryption often presents a problem for law enforcement during an investigation. With the proliferation of build in disk encryption this problem is exasperated.
Some really cool research done by Princeton University on defeating these forms of disk encryption was published. The paper gets quite technical into key reconstruction and other related math, but the blog entry has a video that shows a recovery procedure, including the use of off the shelf products to sufficiently cool memory to permit data extraction.
I am going to have to try this out on my laptop.
I was rebuilding my Fedora VMware image today. Attempting to install TrueCrypt 5.x, I became very frustrated. It made me realize my expectations have changed. I no longer want to have to understand every single application I use, how to compile it, its associated dependencies and specifics. On one hand learning this still interests me to this day. Unfortunately, I no longer have the free time I once had to do this for every application I require — so I just want it to work. Since a quick install didn’t seem to be an option, I started compiling TrueCrypt from source and adding in all the dependency libraries etc. During this process, I discovered a entry by Oliver Meyer. He published a simple step by step procedure. It is easy to understand and well done. Highly recommend it.