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These cases keep on cropping up and you see people suggesting to do some sort of technical trick like taking the hard-disk out of the laptop and carrying a Tail

These cases keep on cropping up and you see people suggesting to do some sort of technical trick like taking the hard-disk out of the laptop and carrying a TailsOS live USB flash device for your computing. Other tricks might include mailing a USB flash disk to a hotel reception with the intent of picking it up when you arrive. These are all fraught with risk and you could appear extra suspicious by doing these. Another 'trick' I see people advocating for is trying to act like a so called 'normie' and having normal average joe files on your computer and maintaining an innocent-looking browsing history where you can be seen visiting cnn.com or even cbc.ca for your news and not some left-wing conspiracy websites. The only caveat with the 'normie' method is that you will need to access your more controversial/sensitive files at some later stage, so this could mean logging into Dropbox and then downloading an encrypted Veracrypt container onto your machine and proceeding to work with those files in the privacy of your hotel/where-ever.

joe_the_user 7y ago
Well, I'm not sure if one wants to just call security approaches "tricks". A "trick" approach is often one that can be undone if your adversary knows about it (keeping your files hidden somewhere in your luggage would be a "trick"). A cohesive approach should be unbreachable if minimal conditions are met. If you can assure a "trustworthy" base computing environment (one that isn't keylogged etc), then having your valuable files encrypted in a remote location should work (which is the idea of tailsOS boot + a remote drive). How determined the adversary would determine how hard they might fight again you getting such a trustworthy environment. Just sayin'
- snazz 7y ago
  The “tricked-out-bootloader” approach also seems to be brought up often: have your hard drive portioned into two sections (or even have two hard drives), then configure your bootloader to start up the non-encrypted, not suspicious partition unless you press a specific key combo at boot and enter your disk encryption password.

joe_the_user 7y ago

Well, I'm not sure if one wants to just call security approaches "tricks". A "trick" approach is often one that can be undone if your adversary knows about it (keeping your files hidden somewhere in your luggage would be a "trick"). A cohesive approach should be unbreachable if minimal conditions are met. If you can assure a "trustworthy" base computing environment (one that isn't keylogged etc), then having your valuable files encrypted in a remote location should work (which is the idea of tailsOS boot + a remote drive). How determined the adversary would determine how hard they might fight again you getting such a trustworthy environment. Just sayin'

snazz 7y ago
The “tricked-out-bootloader” approach also seems to be brought up often: have your hard drive portioned into two sections (or even have two hard drives), then configure your bootloader to start up the non-encrypted, not suspicious partition unless you press a specific key combo at boot and enter your disk encryption password.