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Comment by mkl | Hacker News Reader

I may be misunderstanding how it works, but aren't the presence of Tails, the drive full of random-looking data, and the absence of a visible consumer OS all massive red flags? It seems like it would be completely undeniable that you're trying to hide something.

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Red flags might not actually matter in many use cases. But where it does, setting up a decoy OS that boots on the computer by default when turned on may be one good strategy.

For a VeraCrypt volume, setting up an outer volume with convincing files and providing the decoy password may be effective.

Whether the mere possession of a Tails USB adversely affects your situation is a matter that remains to be discussed at length. There is clearly no one situation that applies to everyone.

HiddenVM's potential to provide deniability is about cryptographic deniability, not human deniability. Software can only do so much. If humans are suspicious, software alone cannot change their minds.

The thing is, if you are outside the norm, you are raising suspicion. Using this kinda setup will prevent you from flying under the radar, instead, you are painting a nice target on your back. This is gonna bite you in particular if you are already a person that your adversaries are keeping an eye on.

Right. So all we can do at our end is better document the risks and limitations, and then work on the political advocacy side of things to promote diversity and nonconformity.

Such is the spirit of Linux. Is every Linux user automatically suspicious to various enemies? If so, the work to be done is not in our code repositories.

If we could incorporate some steganography in the future that could also help. Open to ideas.

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