Hacker News Reader

You could make a time triggered death man switch that needs to be reset every year. Else your secret is decrypted

But if the system can decrypt itself in your absence it must have access to the decryption keys. So you can't guarantee that the subsequent maintainer of the system won't release the keys after your death. I suppose you could hide the system somewhere (anonymous VPS) but then the encryption isn't actually buying you anything over what the anonymity is getting you.

You could use public key system to your advantage. Devise a cryptosystem that takes x time to crack, write a program to crack it, let it roll. If you're alive at the time of vulnerability being found, you can adjust or change the key.

Likewise it would be a good case for a proof of work system with specialized single machine input. You have to prove x amount of work every so often to keep the data encrypted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com