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Comment by Jach | Hacker News Reader

If you go full disk encryption with TrueCrypt, make sure you look into their Hidden OS feature as well. A judge may be able to order you to give up the decryption key to the OS when accessing the drive prompts for one (last I checked the precedent is still somewhat shaky), because while they can't know what's being encrypted they can infer something readable is. They can't prove the existence of a Hidden OS, though, so your 'real' encrypted area is just noise and can't be legally proved anything else so a second key can't be demanded.

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Might look odd if none of the files on the decoy have been modified in the last 6 months - logging in to do this regularly and in a believably meaningful way seems like a burden. The good news is unless you're an international crime lord, it seems unlikely there will be anyone on hand in the court to make this kind of leap (not a lawyer so that guess could be way off though).

An automated update of the decoy would be a good addition to such software.

Not sure exactly how this would be implemented, but it sounds like a bad idea, since they would just wait for your automated updater to decrypt the decoy. Even if it was in some limited fashion, the encryption key would be in RAM, so it would be as vulnerable as any running system.

(BTW, if you're worried about a state-level adversary, that means you should always turn off your computer when not using it, and wait a few minutes before physically leaving it to prevent a cold boot attack)

Well, the point of the decoy i that you don't care if they can access it isn't it?

The RIP Act in the UK allows for jail time for refusing to give a key.

"RIP privacy", amirite??

What if the key doesn't exist?

The point of a hidden OS is plausible deniability. When used correctly, there shouldn't be any evidence that another OS exists. For instance: what if there wasn't a hidden OS, and you do keep random data in your unused HD space? They'd be jailing you for refusing to give something that doesn't exist.

> They'd be jailing you for refusing to give something that doesn't exist.

That doesn't sound like a desirable outcome.

Like the non-terrorists subject to extraordinary rendition to Guantanomo bay so they could give the information about terrorism that they didn't have because they were not terrorists?

My dad was the security officer in a major department of UK gov, and he asked this very question to legal. The response was that if the key doesn't exist, you must prove its non-existence. His protest on that fell on deaf ears. Furthermore, if the key is controlled under the Official Secrets Act, you will brake the law both when you hand them over you and when you don't.

Basically, laws that don't make absolute logical sense are fine, they'll just decide who to prosecute. Totally fine, nothing to see here.

That's pretty damn messed up. Basically they're saying: "we're accusing you of having X, we didn't find it on your encrypted drive, but maybe you have a hidden OS where it's at! Give the key!" And suppose you did give up your hidden OS key and they still find nothing? Do they say "Aha! Well, we didn't find it on this device, but we found this innocent picture of Jesus--give us the key you used to steg the information inside!"? And suppose you actually had some steg'd info inside, but it's not the information they wanted, it's nothing illegal. Do they then say "Clearly you dumped the incriminating hard drive in a landfill--tell us where!"?

Something mentioned at the beginning of the paper "I've Got Nothing to Hide" and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, is Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Traps, from 1956. It involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers for a mock trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. "An altogether minor matter," the prosecutor replied … "A crime can always be found."

It's unplausible for unused space on the harddisk to be random due to the way filesystems work. Random data is likely to be encrypted data.

Except that some operating systems have a secure erase option for free space (OSX for example).

If you use TrueCrypt properly, most unused space on your hard disk will be filled with random bits, whether or not you have a hidden OS in there.

Actually it works the other way around, and is considered to be a problem by many security experts. If you don't have a Hidden OS partition, and the court requests the password, it's impossible for you to prove you DON'T have one. Just like it's impossible to prove you just forgot your password.

So you're better off making a hidden OS partition and not using it, just so you can access it.

And you can be happy if it's a judge and not some convincingly dark smiling guy with a mask.

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