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Comment by remmargorp64 | Hacker News Reader

The lesson here is not to avoid clicking random links, because that is an unrealistic expectation.

So what is the lesson?

Realize that you can get raided at any time, without any warning, due to random life circumstances. Live life accordingly.

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I was raided (secret service) thanks to a boneheaded roommate. Woke up to guns drawn and shouting. My advice:

* Don't talk to the police

* Maintain off site backups because they will take everything, even the whole machine in my case

* Encrypt everything, this event really reinforced that for me

Also, try really hard to not have your dog present when you get raided.

I've been hearing stories of people being detained for refusing to decrypt their drives.

And the author writes:

> I was also asked for my password and if I had any encrypted data on my PC

You should first consult with an attorney before making any statement to the police, much less handling over incriminating evidence. I'd rather keep the option open to fight over it in court than just giving up the key and hoping that the police will view it in my favor. Also, encryption is a must in case of theft.

In some countries, lying or withholding information is a crime itself. The USA is fairly unique with the "right to remain silent."

Sometimes saying anything at all might incriminate you because you're the only suspect. Don't talk to cops without a lawyer basically is the way to go in the USA.

In Japan, you are currently allowed a lawyer to be present when being questioned, but it wasn't that long ago that you weren't. However, there was a bit of a hack: you were guaranteed to have a translator. It didn't matter how good your Japanese language skills were, you could demand a translator (assuming you spoke another language!) and they had to be present during all interrogation. While not as good as a lawyer, at least you had a witness if something untoward happened during the interrogation (which was apparently quite common in those times). I have heard that since the latest reforms in the last 10 years (lawyers present during questioning and allowance of a trial by jury) the incidence of untoward occurrences has decreased. While police here are an extremely friendly feature in society (very different than any other country I've lived in), you definitely don't want to get on the wrong side of the law one way or the other.

The author is also German, thus has less protections than in the US (which would be the case if your raided by the Secret Service)

Which protection in particular is present in US and missing in Germany?

Encrypting everything is a good way to get them to harass you more. First of course they'll compel you to give up the encryption key, so what's the point of encrypting it? Then comes the inevitable lame argument of "if you had nothing to hide, why did you use encryption?!" Encrypt things just for your general privacy (ex. from theft), but against the government, it's counter-productive.

If the police believe you are a suspect in a crime, there is literally nothing you can say or do that will help you. Talking to the police will only hurt you. In the US, key disclosure law is complicated by the 5th amendment. Here's a good example: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/massachusetts-hi...

> Because Gelfgatt already admitted to police that he owned and controlled the seized computers and had the ability to decrypt them, the court found that the act of decryption would not reveal anything new to the police. Therefore, the act of compelled decryption was not “testimonial.” Normally, the Fifth Amendment privilege prevents the government from forcing a witness to disclose incriminating information in his mind (like a password not written down anywhere else)—but only if that is information the police do not already know.

If he had simply made no statements to the police, he might have been able to invoke his 5th amendment right. But now we'll never now.

Oh sure, never say anything without a lawyer, but also don't give them more reasons to harass you.

Encrypted, Offsite backups are key!

Agreed. My first thought was that this makes it incredibly easy for one rogue person in the right place in government and minimal skills covering their own tracks to get anyone they want raided.

And your calls and movements were surveilled for weeks prior to that.

To be honest that fact felt the most violating in this whole ordeal for me

Encrypt your harddrives, and have some plausible deniability in case they want the encryption keys. E.g.: I'm researching pseudo random numbers, and my harddrives are full of them. Or use hidden partitions, or something like that.

The better advice is to know the laws of the country you're in. For example in Germany you can simply refuse to give them your password and they can't use that against you in any way. No need for a reason or plausible deniability. The same strategy wouldn't work in the UK. Here is an overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

Getting better at lying to law enforcement is probably not the right lesson to take away.

In addition, and in this specific case, it's a lie that is easily discoverable. Just because your data is encrypted does not mean that it all looks random. For example, AIUI, LUKS has a partition header that contains a magic number, identifying it as a LUKS partition. Additionally, GPT's "partition type" field can identify the partition as a LUKS volume.

“This police raid has been extremely stressful and I can’t remember” is a perfectly valid statement.

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