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Suppose someone uses my wifi connection to hack into, say, a Sony server and retrieve a database of credit card information. The government would have evidence
by roc 15y ago
Suppose someone uses my wifi connection to hack into, say, a Sony server and retrieve a database of credit card information.
The government would have evidence and reason to believe I have that data. So, naturally, they'll get to seize my laptop and apparently can compel me to unlock it and allow them arbitrary access.
It seems to me that they don't know the stolen data resides on that laptop any more than they know whether I have a hidden volume that contains the data they're searching for. So if their evidence is good enough to compel me to produce a password, why would it not be good enough to insist a hidden volume contains the data and that I'm withholding the sought-after data?
If someone can simply say "nope, no hidden volumes here" and that's the end of it, it would be trivial to defeat a digital investigation.
In short, I'm skeptical about what defines the reasonableness of an investigation and this apparent power to compel arbitrary access to documents.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoI think that's where forensics would come in: "This is a 2TB drive. All the data on the drive amounts to 1.5TB. QED, there is 500GB of data missing." More interesting, IMO, would be how alleged steganography would be handled.
- burgerbrain 15y agoThankfully that is not how truecrypt works. The volume would be reported as the full 2TB (or however large the container is), it is up to you to not use all the space (which you could do, it will just silently start overwriting the hidden volume. They would have nothing to go on other than you didn't fill the disk (who does?).
- pixdamix 15y agoWhen writing a byte, how does truecrypt knows it isn't overwriting a random file in a hidden volume ?
- true_religion 15y agoIt doesn't. Essentially, you have to make sure that you don't fill up the volume space or else you will overwrite the hidden volume.
- pixdamix 15y agoSo, if my volume size is 100G on a 200G drive, I have 80G of data, If I write another byte, how Truecrypt knows it won't overwrite one byte of the hidden volume ?
- jbri 15y agoIt doesn't. If you write anything to the non-hidden volume while you don't have the hidden volume mounted, you risk overwriting part of the hidden volume.
- pixdamix 15y agoNow, I got it, You have to mount both the hidden volume and the first level volume to safely write to the first level. Great.
- mahyarm 15y agoNo, since people everywhere don't use the full capacity of their hard drives. Hidden volumes look no different from empty space so that doesn't prove anything.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- pyre 15y agoI think what it amounts to is: * The government 'knows' that you have a bunch of digital data, therefore it must be stored on a digital device. Therefore, all your digital devices are reasonably suspect. * The government can't search your laptop without full access to files. If you have full-drive encryption (or even just homedir/per-user encryption), the government can reasonably claim that you haven't given then full access, with some amount of proof that there is encryption being used. * Once you have unlocked your primary partition, the government would probably have a hard time convincing a judge that there is any reasonable way to know if you have a hidden partition, other than asking you with a polygraph... which I don't think you can be compelled to take.
- kenjackson 15y agoI think the govt would have to use the same means it would use to prove that you know the whereabouts of a missing person. They can't hold you forever (except maybe in enemy combatant like scenarios), much like if you picked up a girl from a club at midnight, and no one ever saw her again. Your claim is you dropped her off at her apartment at 3am, but there's no evidence of it. They can ask you what they want, but w/o more evidence they can't just lock you up forever. But with more evidence, for example, if they find IMs where you mention that you've hidden something in hidden volumes, they may have more options open to them. I guess my point is that this seems to fall into standard practice, more than this being a one off rule specific to hidden volumes.
- pyre 15y agoYea. Your point is that they can't lock you up forever based on the suspicion of a hidden volume. My point is that it would likely to be hard to them to reasonably assert a hidden volume, and even if they could assert a hidden volume, if you unlocked one but had several, they wouldn't be able to reasonably convince a judge of suspicion of several hidden volumes. Then, having several is difficult since they all have to nest, and can't reside in parallel (i.e. the second hidden volume has to be inside the first hidden volume, it can't reside along side the first hidden volume within the top-level volume).