On Monday, January 30, 2012 09:10:59 PM zep wrote:
On 1/30/2012 7:44 PM, Basil Chupin wrote:
When I installed 12.1 I encrypted (for the first time) my HOME directory.
Last night, in anticipation of installing KDE 4.8, I did a backup of my /home to an external HDD.
Then the thought occurred to me - which is as a result of a court case in USA where the judge ruled that the Fifth Amendment did not apply where the woman refused to divulge the passphrase to her encrypted system and she had to type in the passphrase to make the contents of the HDD available to the DoJ - is my encrypted data now readable on the external HDD?
The answer is YES. I attached the external to another computer and am able to read all the files in that backup.
perhaps it's a good time for the very paranoid to switch to hidden encrypted partitions with truecrypt (www.truecrypt.org).
the basic premise is there are 2 separate, mountable partitions within an single encrypted file. password A opens and allows partition A to be mounted, password B opens and allows a smaller subset partition to be mounted, giving plausible deniability if forced to divulge a password.
I like this idea. What would be interesting is if you could add a third password that would do something to the data. For example, if just giving the bad guy a fake password is enough ok, then show him your boy scout data. But if the bad guy is going to really dig into the disk, then maybe you need to use the "third" password that overwrites all the private data while the bad guy is looking over your boy scout data. Another thing you've got to think about. It seems that most countries are kidnapping and enslaving people for up to 2 years for not giving the password. You've got to think about this, which is worse the 2 years or however many years they enslave you for whatever is on the disk. It could be that 2 is better. Jim in Germany -- Check out my stamp & postcard collection! Yankee GO HOME! Anti-US Propaganda on stamps, postcards, envelopes, and labels http://yankeegohome.18-t.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org