4 ms·

gte910h - Its super easy. Trust me. 10 mins. and you should be all set.

gte910h 16y ago
I'm not talking about the time to install, doesn't seem that would be that big of a deal. But I'm afraid border patrol agents will see the truecrypt banner on boot up flag me as some sort of pedo or some such, and make my life hell as they don't believe I don't have a hidden partition. Or perhaps I'm overly worried about this sort of thing. Anyone have truecrypt installed and regularly/ever crossed borders in the last few years? Do they give you shit about if you just decrypt the disk for them?
- HackyGeeky 16y ago
  What do you mean by "cross borders" ? I travel oversees and no one has booted my laptop ever to see what's inside. Maybe I've never traveled to those countries.
  - gte910h 16y ago
    US border patrol wants to boot your notebook often to check for kiddie porn. I don't have anything, even movies, no pirated software, etc, however I don't want the existence of the true-crypt program alone to be an issue with overzealous border patrol people
    - jrockway 16y ago
      "often"? I've been stopped by customs a number of times, and they have never made this request. It's too bad, because I want to be the test case.
      - gte910h 16y ago
        I don't actually have a clue how "often' this is versus it not being. I've not been stopped the few times I've traveled internationally. I just know TC in particular has been a thorn in the side of the FBI and that border control people have enough powers to be rather annoying if they get pissed off.
- gdl 16y ago
  I haven't had the pleasure of dealing with border agents, but I would assume that they'd leave you alone as long as everything looked normal at a casual glance. A couple example suggestions for that: 1) TrueCrypt let's you change the bootup text, and can be set not to visibly show keystrokes when entering your password. This means that you can make it boot into what appears to be a standard "No operating system found" type error message, which will not react at all until you type your correct password and hit enter. Unless they're dedicated enough to examine the boot sector they wouldn't be able to tell that it's not just a corrupted drive. Toss an OS install disc in your bag for added realism. 2) TrueCrypt will boot from CD into an encrypted drive. Using this to your advantage, install a small Linux partition and set your computer up to boot into that unless the boot CD is inserted. Nothing suspicious at all remains on the drive except for a parition of apparently random data, which they'd have to be pretty suspicious already to even bother looking for. You could copy the TrueCrypt bootloader back onto the drive to boot without the CD for convenience if you're not going to be crossing borders for a while. ...And there are probably other ways. The TrueCrypt documention offers a number of suggestions on how to look minimally suspicious to suit whatever level of paranoia you may have.
  - gte910h 16y ago
    Thanks, this is what I wanted to hear
  - gte910h 16y ago
    Oh man, it looks like full disk encryption isn't supported under OS X :(
    - gdl 16y ago
      That sucks. I've used TrueCrypt for Windows and LUKS for Linux, but have never been a Mac guy so I haven't looked into that side of things. Google suggests that your main options are OSX's built-in FileVault to encrypt just your home directory (and optionally TC or something for additional non-system data), or PGP Whole Disk Encryption for a whopping $150. Or running a virtualized OSX within an encrypted container within a second OS, with all the extra boot time and performance hits that would entail. I'd bet on something better coming out before too long given more interest (and laws) about encryption these days, but unless I've missed something, for now it looks like you're pretty much of out of luck for as good, complete, free solutions go.

I'm not talking about the time to install, doesn't seem that would be that big of a deal. But I'm afraid border patrol agents will see the truecrypt banner on boot up flag me as some sort of pedo or some such, and make my life hell as they don't believe I don't have a hidden partition. Or perhaps I'm overly worried about this sort of thing. Anyone have truecrypt installed and regularly/ever crossed borders in the last few years? Do they give you shit about if you just decrypt the disk for them?

HackyGeeky 16y ago
What do you mean by "cross borders" ? I travel oversees and no one has booted my laptop ever to see what's inside. Maybe I've never traveled to those countries.
- gte910h 16y ago
  US border patrol wants to boot your notebook often to check for kiddie porn. I don't have anything, even movies, no pirated software, etc, however I don't want the existence of the true-crypt program alone to be an issue with overzealous border patrol people
  - jrockway 16y ago
    "often"? I've been stopped by customs a number of times, and they have never made this request. It's too bad, because I want to be the test case.
    - gte910h 16y ago
      I don't actually have a clue how "often' this is versus it not being. I've not been stopped the few times I've traveled internationally. I just know TC in particular has been a thorn in the side of the FBI and that border control people have enough powers to be rather annoying if they get pissed off.
gdl 16y ago
I haven't had the pleasure of dealing with border agents, but I would assume that they'd leave you alone as long as everything looked normal at a casual glance. A couple example suggestions for that: 1) TrueCrypt let's you change the bootup text, and can be set not to visibly show keystrokes when entering your password. This means that you can make it boot into what appears to be a standard "No operating system found" type error message, which will not react at all until you type your correct password and hit enter. Unless they're dedicated enough to examine the boot sector they wouldn't be able to tell that it's not just a corrupted drive. Toss an OS install disc in your bag for added realism. 2) TrueCrypt will boot from CD into an encrypted drive. Using this to your advantage, install a small Linux partition and set your computer up to boot into that unless the boot CD is inserted. Nothing suspicious at all remains on the drive except for a parition of apparently random data, which they'd have to be pretty suspicious already to even bother looking for. You could copy the TrueCrypt bootloader back onto the drive to boot without the CD for convenience if you're not going to be crossing borders for a while. ...And there are probably other ways. The TrueCrypt documention offers a number of suggestions on how to look minimally suspicious to suit whatever level of paranoia you may have.
- gte910h 16y ago
  Thanks, this is what I wanted to hear
- gte910h 16y ago
  Oh man, it looks like full disk encryption isn't supported under OS X :(
  - gdl 16y ago
    That sucks. I've used TrueCrypt for Windows and LUKS for Linux, but have never been a Mac guy so I haven't looked into that side of things. Google suggests that your main options are OSX's built-in FileVault to encrypt just your home directory (and optionally TC or something for additional non-system data), or PGP Whole Disk Encryption for a whopping $150. Or running a virtualized OSX within an encrypted container within a second OS, with all the extra boot time and performance hits that would entail. I'd bet on something better coming out before too long given more interest (and laws) about encryption these days, but unless I've missed something, for now it looks like you're pretty much of out of luck for as good, complete, free solutions go.