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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

I suppose if the drive is encrypted and requires a passphrase at boot, it's effective for FBI raids, etc.

Ross Ulbricht would like to have a word with you.

they snatched his computer while it he was using it - open and unlocked

Indeed. My point is he had full disk encryption and password at boot and it didn’t stop the govt from accessing his data.

It was logged in and running when they snatched it. Hence why a breakaway mag connector and dead-man shutdown script might have been helpful.

In this case that may not have been useful, assuming law enforcement knows about the cord. Law enforcement will plug in a mouse jiggler (simulated moving USB mouse), having the script detect rogue USB devices and shutting down at that moment would add another layer of protection. I saw that solution a few years back... Maybe this works doubly well for devices with USB and USB-c power connections now... Since law enforcement try to keep power running on machines seized in this way.

How would they know about the cord? Or something more stealthy, like Bluetooth?

I don't think a mouse jiggler would help. A dead-man script would force a fast, ungraceful OS halt. Maybe after emptying some caches and wiping memory.

I think most MacBook Pros have some accelerometer functions you can access. I wonder if you could create a util to detect if your laptop was picked up and automatically log you out.

Two undercover agents distracted him while a third snatched his running and logged-in laptop. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-arrest-of-silk-road-mast...

That sounds like exactly a good use case for this. Or maybe that's what you meant?

Whenever I read stuff like this I am forced to wonder just what the fuck people are doing that they feel such a pressing need to hide their data from law enforcement.

I mean, I have plenty of things to hide just like any other reasonably interesting person, but none of it is outright criminal.

There's no shortage of things someone might find morally acceptable themselves while still being potentially criminal. Or grey area stuff, like a business that sells marijuana in a state where it's legal, since the US federal government doesn't consider it legal.

Or use cases like a crypto wallet. Where legality isn't the main concern.

If you happen to have an opinion that is not shared by the current powers-that-be, law enforcement will be happy to look at your data under any pretense it can cook up.

And they'll be equally fine with - ooops! accidentally, of course! - leaking info that you'd like to stay hidden, even if it's not anything criminal.

In other words, it's just a bunch of self-important tech asshats deluding themselves into believing they are important enough to warrant FBI attention?

Eh, believable, but I think it's more likely a lot of them are evading taxes or committing securities fraud.

I would probably look into it if I was already on some government agency's radar for whatever reason. You've probably broken a ton of obscure laws yourself without knowing it.

They could be organizing protests in Hong Kong. Or be a union organizer in South Africa.

This would be useful outside of "hiding from law enforcement". Plenty of people have jobs where the compromise of their laptop could cause significant damage to their employer or their customers. Many people ready this thread should be taking these precautions.

Parent specifically mentioned "FBI" though, not other actors, specifically law enforcement.

Journalism, perhaps? https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/san-francisco-p...

Or politics (see Watergate), or being a public defender, or environmental activism, or... the list goes on.

Yeah, all reasonable, I just have difficulty believing that the people who post things like the parent are actually involved in any of those activities.

Maybe I sell marijuana in a US state where it's legal, but still have reservations about the Federal government. Or maybe it was just an example and I happen to find the topic interesting.

Have you ever remembered something that you left in a home directory on someone else's server but only after you no longer had access to it? It wasn't sensitive but then, it wasn't something you'd leave in a public place like foo.com/~name, either. You can't convince yourself they had the inclination to just delete all your trash. You know of at least one person who might have gained access (you don't know whether) and he probably would have engaged in some voyeurism. Everyone who knew him after you were gone knew that he was an asshole, and your one brief interaction with this person indicates that's an understatement.

Did that feel good? Well, it was preventable. That's a kind of thing that a reasonably interesting person might want to prevent.

Anyway, this happened. Not that I'm, like, supposed to be reasonably interesting or anything. ;)

Yeah, it's fine to have stuff you want to hide for a lot of reasons. The problem I have with what the parent posted is that the specifically invoke "FBI" as what they're afraid of. That suggests to me that they aren't just hiding embarrassing or private information, but specifically something illegal. Now, as other posters have mentioned, parent could be an activist or something, but frankly I doubt that everyone I've seen post something similar is. I'm left with the conclusion that in addition to being holier-than-thou assholes and pedants, a lot of tech people are also casually engaged in things like tax evasion and securities fraud.

Sigh. I used FBI raids as an illustrative example. Which you've now extrapolated into a weird set of accusations.

Yeah it is kind of silly. If you aren't truly anonymous, you blow out some of your deniability just by discussing deniability. You said law enforcement and I straw manned another thing today. Great.

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