8 ms·

It's easy to break your encryption. Trust me, if you live in a country that has crap laws, they will actually extract the password from you: https://xkcd.com/5

• notatoad 7y ago
  the parent isn't saying to encrypt your drives, they're saying to encrypt your data and store it separately from your computer - essentially treat any devices you're carrying across the border as compromised before you even reach the border.
• stale2002 7y ago
  This post is about western countries. The vast majority of western countries will not literally torture you to death, in order to get rando citizen's phone passwords. Encryption works great for this usecase, that almost everyone in this thread will be using it for. People being tortured for their personal phone password by a rando border guard in basically any country, just isn't something that happens, despite what the internet memes would lead you to believe. Even in supposedly bad countries, I really doubt that this "attack vector" is something that happens frequently.
  • cmurf 7y ago
    How long can you be detained? And under what conditions? More than a few hours will get the vast majority of people cooperating. I suspect they could detain you for 24 hours, or even several days, but I don't know what the legal limit is for detaining a citizen at the border of their own country. And for quite a lot of other people, even not being personally detained, but having to acquire new devices is inconvenient enough to compel cooperation. Who wants to buy new devices? Who has a need for two sets? It'd only be a cost of business for someone who does a decent amount of traveling and has confidential information to protect. But then, that's a trap too because why should people need a reason? Why are only people with business/legal confidential information a protected class?
    • stale2002 7y ago
      > How long can you be detained? And under what conditions The answer is not very long. I'd call "a couple days" to be not a big deal, and not at all equivalent to being tortured to death, like the person I was responding to was implying would happen. So yes, encryption does work, and all that will happen to you is that you could be moderately inconvenienced. But even that I would expect to be rare. Most border security would just look at your computer, or whatever, not find anything on it (because the thing you show them just looks like an empty computer), and move on their way. The narrative that I was responding to was this idea that technology solutions can always be bypassed, by torture or something, therefore technology solutions are worthless. And that's just not true. An extremely effective technology solutions to an incompetent border guard that is interrogating you is for all your devices to just appear like there isn't anything on them, like a new factory default computer that you just bought. A guard will just look at that, not see anything, and then move on to the rest of his crappy job.
      • Joakal 7y ago
        I gather it could be indefinite detention. Say 5 hour detention then they ask again. Then detention again. Repeat. I think a couple days is good enough because people will miss holidays, work, plans etc. That's Western nations "torture" equivalent of a wrench
        • stale2002 7y ago
          > . Say 5 hour detention then they ask again. Then detention again. Repeat. Ok, and does this happen in real life? The answer is no. It does not. In almost any western country in the world, the low paid border security guards are not detaining people in mass for days on end. This stuff just isn't really happening to any large degree.
          • Mirioron 7y ago
            You can go to jail for years in the UK for refusing to disclose a password to law enforcement.[0] [0] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/09/04/how-refusing-to-give-police-your-facebook-password-can-lead-to-prison/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/09/04/how-refusing-to-...
• graedus 7y ago
  If I'm understanding vbezhenar correctly, the implied step after uploading the encrypted file to a cloud storage service is to securely delete it from the computer you're carrying. Then, the authorities won't know that there is anything to beat out of you with their $5 wrench.
  • ineedasername 7y ago
    Yeah, but you still get beat with the $5 wrench. And if it was going to work in compelling you to give the password, it will still be pretty effective getting you to provide access to the cloud storage and the encryption password to it.
    • stale2002 7y ago
      How does the low paid border security drone even know you have a cloud storage account? What country do you live in that has to worry about people being tortured to death on a frequent basis? This stuff just doesn't happen often, despite what a silly XKCD comic would lead you to believe. Encryption actually works pretty damn well, for basically all usecases that a normal person would come across. The world is not a James Bond spy move.
      • saagarjha 7y ago
        You're not going to be tortured to death, but there are quite a few things that the government can do to make your life miserable.
        • mortenjorck 7y ago
          The $5 wrench isn’t what most people have to worry about; it’s the 5-hour detention without charge.
          • ddalex 7y ago
            5 hour detention is nothing - expensed vacation :) Extraordinary rendition to the Guantanamo Bay is what concerns me.