The jurisprudence in this area has to evolve. In a house, for example, the police might be able to search your house because they have a warrant, or they might be able to search your house because of any other exception to the warrant requirement. In all of those cases, police can only search for discrete things--as in, they probably couldn't turn over your bed, unless they thought someone was hiding under it, or the warrant they got suggested that they could. The "plain view" doctrine might indicate that something clearly illegal in plain view could be seized, but this is somewhat narrowly tailored.

If digital jurisprudence evolves the same way, perhaps a warrant (or discovery request) could be obtained to search within a single folder only, but not another, or the like. Perhaps there are cases out there like this already--but possibly a whole body of jurisprudence needs to evolve to deal with these issues.

If we build laws around files and folders, I can't wait to see what happens when filesystem design changes and there's no such thing as a 'folder' anymore.

Right, well that underlies the exact problem--things change faster that law makers and/or the jurisprudence can accommodate to.

The best way to hide something is with misdirection and dead ends. It's by letting someone win a little but not all the way.

If you're a straight male just make a second inner hidden volume and put a ton of gay porn on it. After a few days of arguing with the court just reveal your password to it and they'll think "oh shit, this is what he was hiding. Well nothing to see here, moving on. That's all."

This is the best comment really... I brought up Truecrypt's Hidden OS feature a while ago (here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3415658 ) and apparently in the UK you have to somehow prove the non-existence of such a thing. If you can't get them to leave you alone through such above trickery it becomes a fairly simple calculated choice deciding whether obstruction of justice is a less harmful penalty than what they want to find and charge you for after decryption.

I really like this idea but I think it is important to ensure that whatever XXX material you have, the actors are clearly over 18. Lord knows it may make your standing far worse if you have anything pushing the line.

So, 30+ year old models in your Safe For Government/get out of jail porn directory.

Also make sure the XXX material is fully paid for and licensed, or they'll no doubt slap pirating charges on you for your porn collection.

That's probably not feasible these days. Commercial porn sites only offer licenses for streaming, not downloading.

<.<

>.>

...I always use that method when trying to get out of trouble. Shhh.

genius.

That is like saying that you are guilty but there is no way to prove it.

I agree. However, having the capability to have an undetectable hidden innner volume feels like it makes a lot of this moot.

That is, as long as the inner volumes remain truly undetectable.

My gut reaction to this article was that something like what you've described must exist, although I wasn't certain if it was possible to completely hide a volume from an intimate inspection. What tools are you referring to?

Truecrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org/hiddenvolume

Without the right password, there's no way to tell if there's an hidden volume, since the result of the encryption is indistinguishable from pure random data.