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Yeah. If you've drawn the unfavorable attention of the police (which I'm aware isn't difficult in many cases), it's extremely unlikely any of them are thinking

by gary_0 2y ago

Yeah. If you've drawn the unfavorable attention of the police (which I'm aware isn't difficult in many cases), it's extremely unlikely any of them are thinking "let's painstakingly disassemble and reassemble this guy's laptop!" But like I said upthread, there are still several plausible reasons why you might want to secure your hardware (and the threat of arbitrary police surveillance still isn't zero). But on another note, in many countries (where digital privacy isn't already illegal) law enforcement is pushing for encryption backdoors and the like, so that kind of wiretapping will be their go-to, and in the police's ideal world they will simply be able to remotely log in to any phone, operating system, or CPU firmware and rummage around to their heart's content. Until that comes to pass (heaven forbid), I doubt they will usually make the effort to check anyone's screws for nail polish. They're all about the brute force. > It's not even a $5 wrench scenario It's a $0 "type in your password or we're sticking you in a cell and leaving for the weekend" scenario.

XorNot 2y ago
> It's a $0 "type in your password or we're sticking you in a cell and leaving for the weekend" scenario. Missing the point: the point is - they're not listening at all. They don't care. You're not a problem to be taken seriously and carefully investigated. You're going to be stuck in the cell and forgotten about anyway. Your equipment will be destroyed. No one is looking.
- gary_0 2y ago
  Corrupt police are often motivated by money, so the scenario could be: "we overheard you talking about transferring money/cryptocurrency/whatever and we are confiscating it, gives us access or else". My point in starting this thread wasn't that the police are evil/misunderstood/chaotic-neutral, it was that the threat model here shouldn't be solely about one kind of adversary.

by gary_0 2y ago

XorNot 2y ago

> It's a $0 "type in your password or we're sticking you in a cell and leaving for the weekend" scenario. Missing the point: the point is - they're not listening at all. They don't care. You're not a problem to be taken seriously and carefully investigated. You're going to be stuck in the cell and forgotten about anyway. Your equipment will be destroyed. No one is looking.

gary_0 2y ago
Corrupt police are often motivated by money, so the scenario could be: "we overheard you talking about transferring money/cryptocurrency/whatever and we are confiscating it, gives us access or else". My point in starting this thread wasn't that the police are evil/misunderstood/chaotic-neutral, it was that the threat model here shouldn't be solely about one kind of adversary.