An interesting way to protect your laptop from border searches

[thewayne]

Bruce Schneier is an internationally-recognized expert in cryptography and computer security. He has an interesting proposal. First, you get a whole-disk encryption program and encrypt the entire disk. You create a normal key that you would remember. Then you create a massively random key: pound on the keyboard for a few minutes. Email the

Comments

[greyweirdo]

Privacy used to be constitutionally protected. This situation would go under 4th and 5th amendments, if we still had those amendments of course. We've sort of lost track of those the last few decades.

EDIT: I should point out that I know the bulk of the story is about international travel, but I just chose to complain about the last sentence.

[thewayne]

Sadly, we've lost track of a lot of stuff over the last few decades, the last decade in particular.

[deborak]

Bill has been going through customs a lot (he's in Germany right now, Japan next week, previously Italy, Korea and UK) and he's never mentioned any request to boot up his laptop. I'll have to ask him about that.

[thewayne]

It seems to be mainly a US/UK thing. Though it hasn't been recent, I've frequently been asked to boot my computer when flying. Usually the (in)security people wanted to see the screen change to make sure it wasn't full of dummy electronics that could take over the plane.

The best way to secure an airplane is to armor the cockpit door and the air crew are the first to board and the last to leave. The Israelis learned this the hard way, we seem to be slow learners. I guess it just doesn't cost enough.

[silveradept]

Hrm. That looks like a very good solution to the problem. Of course, there's the worry that the remaining key item will be deleted. Wouldn't it be easier to store your randomized key on, say, your home PC, so you can tell the truth about not being able to access it, and then decrypt it that way?