FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad to Increase Secret Public Surveillance

Re:FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad to Increase Secret Public ... by M_Grey on Friday March 10, 2017 @08:44PM (#13843658)

Increasingly I'm convinced that if you want to keep a secret for any reason, the only way to do it these days is encrypted on an SSD that will physically self-destruct without regular maintenance of the "kill switch" (also cryptographically secure). It should do this on a regular enough basis that you could withstand the stay in a cell, but long enough that an unexpected weekend in the hospital doesn't wipe out your data.

The thing is that you must have this as your standard practice... you can't just adopt it when the feds kick down your down.

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Re:FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad to Increase Secret Public ... by themaninthedark on Friday March 10, 2017 @10:20PM (#13844024)

So the first thing done when seizing a computer storage devices is to hook it up to a device that read only capabilities and make 1 to 1 copies.

https://www.digitalintelligence.com/products/forensic_duplic...

This is done for chain of custody reasons but would also effectively circumvent your security.

You need to have your storage medium self destruct if it is hooked up to a system other than the one it was paired with.

This system would have to rely on the logic board of the storage device so you would have to harden that so that a swap of the logic board also renders the storage device inoperable.

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Re:FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad to Increase Secret Public ... by M_Grey on Friday March 10, 2017 @10:26PM (#13844045)

Let them try.

http://securedrives.co.uk/

I mean physical destruction of the NAND gates... just kill it with a "hammer" kind of destroyed. Set it up so it's a fail-deadly switch, and there you go.

Obviously don't keep your family photos on it.

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Re:FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad to Increase Secret Public ... by themaninthedark on Friday March 10, 2017 @10:42PM (#13844087)

Thanks! I didn't know that something like that exists.

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Re:FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad to Increase Secret Public ... by M_Grey on Saturday March 11, 2017 @12:12AM (#13844345)

Isn't it great? I don't have a need for one personally, but I had propriety info I'd rather see destroyed than released?... that would be my solution.

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Re:FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad to Increase Secret Public ... by nullc on Saturday March 11, 2017 @03:47AM (#13844820)

There are people who have programed their storage devices to zeroize when read sequentially over the whole drive; specifically to prevent an unauthorized party from cloning the drive.

People do not swap the logic boards of drives often, because unless you get an exact revision match they will be incompatible.

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Re:FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad to Increase Secret Public ... by fnordfnordfnord on Saturday March 11, 2017 @10:37AM (#13845729)

unless you get an exact revision match they may be incompatible.

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