In keeping with my first comment, I would say that the best way to avoid grief with anything explosive is to not allow explosives to reach their destination via

In keeping with my first comment, I would say that the best way to avoid grief with anything explosive is to not allow explosives to reach their destination via the mail in the first place. It's not the easiest, but once you're living in that world, it's really the only sensible choice. My comment meant to point out that talking about how you handle USB devices would be a digression and distraction from the main precautions of screening mail for explosives. As long as that's understood, I would also point out that the physical act of joining the connectors could trigger something in the drive, regardless of external power. A small capacitor, kept charged with a small coin cell, might leave room for enough explosive material to injure someone's hand. I don't know much about explosives or electrical engineering to REALLY know how practical this is. But if your goal is to intimidate, you would probably be able to get that message across. So unless you have a good explosives screening process, you need to treat the devices as if they are general-purpose bombs -- as well as malicious USB devices -- the whole time. So the best practices for handling an untrusted USB drive, again remembering that allowing explosives of any form to reach you through the mail is the main failure here, would be: - choose an expendable computer to plug the device into - physically connect device with a motorized rig in an empty and reinforced chamber - provide as little power as possible to the device - whitelist USB drivers - extract data - disconnect device remotely - dispose of device as you would ordnance And I regretfully point out that, if this is now the necessary process for receiving information via the mail, the goal of impeding journalism is already achieved.