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How do you protect against government accessing your safe, getting your master password and accessing all your digital files. If I am not mistaken, Fifth Amendm

by GGO 4y ago

How do you protect against government accessing your safe, getting your master password and accessing all your digital files. If I am not mistaken, Fifth Amendment protects one from incriminating themselves by giving up their own password, but in your case they just need to confiscate and open your safe.

delecti 4y ago
If the feds want your data and are willing to confiscate your safe to get it, they can probably get your data without confiscating your safe.
whatatita 4y ago
> How do you protect against government In general; you don't. If the gov. wants to make you do something, you're going to have to do it. In many western countries, that's only a vague threat, an many others it's a lot more real. Theoretically, you could have two components to the password: something long and random that is written down, and something easily remembered and personal. A special moment, a place, an anniversary only the two of you would know, etc.
- lupire 4y ago
  What benefit does the long random part provide?
  - userbinator 4y ago
    Bruteforce protection.
  - mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
    It prevents it being guessed. The memorable part protects against someone finding the written down/recorded random portion and using it since they don't have the remembered part, but the remembered part on it's own is somewhat vulnerable to guess work
ubermonkey 4y ago
I don't. If one has something going on such that state-level actors might want nefarious / adversarial access, well, one should be taking MUCH MORE SERIOUS STEPS about personal digital security. Your "regular everyday normal mfer" (as the song apparently incessantly looped on Instagram goes) has no such enemies. My personal digital opsec is designed to keep me and mine safe from likely threats, and the threats I face are pretty banal -- brute force attacks, mostly. I am 100% unconcerned about governmental intrusion into my safe to gain access to, e.g., my online banking passwords.
- Test0129 4y ago
  You do realize state actors include the IRS, the FBI on a fishing expedition for a crime that occurred near your house, being framed for a crime because you look similar, false DNA matches, etc, right? All of these things are non-zero, and significantly above non-zero that everyone and their grandmother should consider it. Unfortunately, pandora's box opened with Snowden. We are all targets. The only difference is what degree of a target you've made yourself. If you work in tech, you're already high on a priority target list somewhere.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - brewdad 4y ago
    By the time the FBI gets a warrant and takes my safe with all my secrets, it's too late. Maybe I'm naive but I don't have time to live my life with your degree of paranoia. Good luck to you in your endeavours to avoid anyone knowing anything about your life.
    - Test0129 4y ago
      It's not about preventing people from knowing anything about my life. It's about control and threat surface. You can do these things without thinking after a little practice. I would like to present the version of myself I want the public to know about and have full control over that. Incursions into my privacy violate that idea. It's not paranoia. That would imply they aren't out to get you. They are. Leave the government out of it for a second. If someone's phone is stolen it's very likely their entire identity, a majority of their secrets, documents like medical ID cards, credit cards, etc have been compromised. This is akin to "getting a warrant to a safe" (which in reality is just court-ordered theft) and it will completely destroy a person. In the context of the discussion if you were able to break into a dead person's phone you could very likely build a complete picture of their life. Perhaps one they weren't interested in you knowing about. I'd prefer to avoid those situations. First, by not making myself a target, and second by protecting any and all data I have the best I can. I rarely think about it but I know if my phone is stolen, my computers are taken, or I get caught up in a fishing expedition the threat surface is extremely limited (provided the information isn't beaten out of me).
_Algernon_ 4y ago
https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
rrwo 4y ago
If they get a warrant from a court, they can open the safe. As the question is about granting access to accounts after death, it seems an odd worry. The government is also likely to get access to your data from your Google, Facebook, etc. If you have a server in the cloud, they can probably go to your hosting provider to get physical access. So unless you have data in secret offshore servers in countries that won't cooperate with the US government, then a safe is not your weakest link.
- GGO 4y ago
  My question was regarding about having secret to your password manager in a safe, which I agree think is still on-point with the topic for "Have you set up a procedure to disclose your passwords in case of death?". Storing secret to password manager that can be easily accessed by government and state actors negates all the trouble that password managers went through ensuring no one besides you can access it. I believe every good password manager encrypts data in a manner so that the provider itself can't decrypt it if government tries to get access to it.
firecall 4y ago
Don’t keep anything behind that password that the government doesn’t already have access to! Government already has access to banking and phone records, most online accounts and data from Apple, MS and Google.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sib 4y ago
I prefer to think of the NSA as my cloud backup provider of last resort, paid for by my (overly abundant) tax dollars and responsive to a FOIA request ;) /s
balderdash 4y ago
I think for 99%+ of people that’s not much of a concern, but if it is for you, what’d be wrong with burying it under a rock in the yard, or any of the 100+ sneaky ways one could secret a envelope somewhere for safe keeping (there is a slip of paper in the copy of Moby Dick at Bob’s house in the library, and if it’s not there, there is backup one at uncle Jim’s in the NE ceiling tile of the ground floor guest bathroom). I’m sure others have much better ideas…
- GGO 4y ago
  I think your statement about 99% of people it not being concern is true at any given snapshot of time, but not true across the lifetime of those 99% people. Case in point: Harvard student gets denied entry because of his friends' social media posts which were discovered upon searching his phone [https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/02/denied-entry-united-states-whatsapp https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/02/denied-entry-united-states...]. If you were to ask him, he would say he is part of 99% and has nothing to hide or be concerned about, and is probably true for most of his life, besides that period where his friend posted something on whatsapp and his phone being searched.

by GGO 4y ago

delecti 4y ago

If the feds want your data and are willing to confiscate your safe to get it, they can probably get your data without confiscating your safe.

whatatita 4y ago

> How do you protect against government In general; you don't. If the gov. wants to make you do something, you're going to have to do it. In many western countries, that's only a vague threat, an many others it's a lot more real. Theoretically, you could have two components to the password: something long and random that is written down, and something easily remembered and personal. A special moment, a place, an anniversary only the two of you would know, etc.

lupire 4y ago
What benefit does the long random part provide?
- userbinator 4y ago
  Bruteforce protection.
- mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
  It prevents it being guessed. The memorable part protects against someone finding the written down/recorded random portion and using it since they don't have the remembered part, but the remembered part on it's own is somewhat vulnerable to guess work

ubermonkey 4y ago

I don't. If one has something going on such that state-level actors might want nefarious / adversarial access, well, one should be taking MUCH MORE SERIOUS STEPS about personal digital security. Your "regular everyday normal mfer" (as the song apparently incessantly looped on Instagram goes) has no such enemies. My personal digital opsec is designed to keep me and mine safe from likely threats, and the threats I face are pretty banal -- brute force attacks, mostly. I am 100% unconcerned about governmental intrusion into my safe to gain access to, e.g., my online banking passwords.

Test0129 4y ago
You do realize state actors include the IRS, the FBI on a fishing expedition for a crime that occurred near your house, being framed for a crime because you look similar, false DNA matches, etc, right? All of these things are non-zero, and significantly above non-zero that everyone and their grandmother should consider it. Unfortunately, pandora's box opened with Snowden. We are all targets. The only difference is what degree of a target you've made yourself. If you work in tech, you're already high on a priority target list somewhere.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- brewdad 4y ago
  By the time the FBI gets a warrant and takes my safe with all my secrets, it's too late. Maybe I'm naive but I don't have time to live my life with your degree of paranoia. Good luck to you in your endeavours to avoid anyone knowing anything about your life.
  - Test0129 4y ago
    It's not about preventing people from knowing anything about my life. It's about control and threat surface. You can do these things without thinking after a little practice. I would like to present the version of myself I want the public to know about and have full control over that. Incursions into my privacy violate that idea. It's not paranoia. That would imply they aren't out to get you. They are. Leave the government out of it for a second. If someone's phone is stolen it's very likely their entire identity, a majority of their secrets, documents like medical ID cards, credit cards, etc have been compromised. This is akin to "getting a warrant to a safe" (which in reality is just court-ordered theft) and it will completely destroy a person. In the context of the discussion if you were able to break into a dead person's phone you could very likely build a complete picture of their life. Perhaps one they weren't interested in you knowing about. I'd prefer to avoid those situations. First, by not making myself a target, and second by protecting any and all data I have the best I can. I rarely think about it but I know if my phone is stolen, my computers are taken, or I get caught up in a fishing expedition the threat surface is extremely limited (provided the information isn't beaten out of me).

_Algernon_ 4y ago

https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/

rrwo 4y ago

If they get a warrant from a court, they can open the safe. As the question is about granting access to accounts after death, it seems an odd worry. The government is also likely to get access to your data from your Google, Facebook, etc. If you have a server in the cloud, they can probably go to your hosting provider to get physical access. So unless you have data in secret offshore servers in countries that won't cooperate with the US government, then a safe is not your weakest link.

GGO 4y ago
My question was regarding about having secret to your password manager in a safe, which I agree think is still on-point with the topic for "Have you set up a procedure to disclose your passwords in case of death?". Storing secret to password manager that can be easily accessed by government and state actors negates all the trouble that password managers went through ensuring no one besides you can access it. I believe every good password manager encrypts data in a manner so that the provider itself can't decrypt it if government tries to get access to it.

firecall 4y ago

Don’t keep anything behind that password that the government doesn’t already have access to! Government already has access to banking and phone records, most online accounts and data from Apple, MS and Google.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sib 4y ago

I prefer to think of the NSA as my cloud backup provider of last resort, paid for by my (overly abundant) tax dollars and responsive to a FOIA request ;) /s

balderdash 4y ago

I think for 99%+ of people that’s not much of a concern, but if it is for you, what’d be wrong with burying it under a rock in the yard, or any of the 100+ sneaky ways one could secret a envelope somewhere for safe keeping (there is a slip of paper in the copy of Moby Dick at Bob’s house in the library, and if it’s not there, there is backup one at uncle Jim’s in the NE ceiling tile of the ground floor guest bathroom). I’m sure others have much better ideas…

GGO 4y ago
I think your statement about 99% of people it not being concern is true at any given snapshot of time, but not true across the lifetime of those 99% people. Case in point: Harvard student gets denied entry because of his friends' social media posts which were discovered upon searching his phone [https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/02/denied-entry-united-states-whatsapp https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/02/denied-entry-united-states...]. If you were to ask him, he would say he is part of 99% and has nothing to hide or be concerned about, and is probably true for most of his life, besides that period where his friend posted something on whatsapp and his phone being searched.