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This site is so cute. Half the time it's the Ed Snowden show, all about how to use PGP to thwart the NSA. Half of the time it's complaining about privacy protec

This site is so cute. Half the time it's the Ed Snowden show, all about how to use PGP to thwart the NSA. Half of the time it's complaining about privacy protections in SSDs. Think about it. If the SSD fails to erase, do you want that to mean it's readable forever? Would you be happy if the NSA was snooping around and your SSD refused to do anything other than disgorge secrets? This feature is good privacyware. If the drive can't be erased it also can't be read.

kevinchen 12y ago
I am sure the three-letter agencies have electrical engineers who can swap out or reflash the controller chips on the SSDs, and recover most of the data.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Maybe. Does your wife have one? Your boss?
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Maybe. Am I involved in a lawsuit with my wife or my boss or my ex-partner? Perhaps a lucrative divorce option? If so, I think she/he can afford to spare a few thousand dollars to some recovery service to read my drive. But you started talking about this being a "privacy" feature, and now that they told you it's not really protective, you go on about how it's good enough for one's "wife". As if that's where privacy concerns end...
SEJeff 12y ago
The FBI is known to pick apart spinning disk drives and retrieve data directly from the platter using a scanning tunneling electron microscope. What makes you think the NSA doesn't know how to do the same and perhaps with SSDs?
gwern 12y ago
Which is better: my SSD fails, taking all unbacked up data with it, or my SSD fails and I can rescue my data and dispose of the drive carefully? You seem to live in a bizarre fantasy world where if a drive dies, people just go out onto the street and hand it to random strangers, saying 'please! try to take my data and invade my privacy!' No, what happens when a drive dies is that it gets chucked and hit with a hammer if it had (unencrypted) data on it.

kevinchen 12y ago

I am sure the three-letter agencies have electrical engineers who can swap out or reflash the controller chips on the SSDs, and recover most of the data.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
Maybe. Does your wife have one? Your boss?
- coldtea 12y ago
  Maybe. Am I involved in a lawsuit with my wife or my boss or my ex-partner? Perhaps a lucrative divorce option? If so, I think she/he can afford to spare a few thousand dollars to some recovery service to read my drive. But you started talking about this being a "privacy" feature, and now that they told you it's not really protective, you go on about how it's good enough for one's "wife". As if that's where privacy concerns end...

SEJeff 12y ago

The FBI is known to pick apart spinning disk drives and retrieve data directly from the platter using a scanning tunneling electron microscope. What makes you think the NSA doesn't know how to do the same and perhaps with SSDs?

gwern 12y ago

Which is better: my SSD fails, taking all unbacked up data with it, or my SSD fails and I can rescue my data and dispose of the drive carefully? You seem to live in a bizarre fantasy world where if a drive dies, people just go out onto the street and hand it to random strangers, saying 'please! try to take my data and invade my privacy!' No, what happens when a drive dies is that it gets chucked and hit with a hammer if it had (unencrypted) data on it.