| « Why doesn't Linux need defragmenting? | What's in a name? » |
Tue, Aug 15, 2006
![[Icon]](rsc/img/chain_link.gif)
. . . and I'll say it again: Before a politician can pass laws on a subject, s/he should be required to demonstrate above-average understanding of that subject.
The BBC reports that laws are being suggested that would make it illegal for a person to refuse to decrypt encrypted data.
Were there any actual knowledge in the heads of the people trying to get these laws passed, they would understand why it's a ludicrous proposal. A five-minute scan of TrueCrypt's website would be all it takes.
Here's the breakdown:
Computers store information on filesystems, which usually reside on disks or flash memory. They don't just write the file to the filesystem and rely on scanning the entire disk to find each file every time they want it: This would be like making notes in a book at a random place on a random page. It would take forever.
Instead, when a file is created, the computer makes a note in a "Table of contents" at the front of the "book". Then when you ask for a file, it looks in the table, finds out what "page" the file is on, goes to that "page", and retrieves the file.
When you delete a file normally, you might think that the computer applies an "eraser" to your "pencilled-in note", but it doesn't: All it does is erase the note in the "table of contents": The file is left untouched.
This is why people who format their PC hard-drive and then ebay it find their bank accounts suddenly empty: The hard-drive buyer has simply set software to scan through every "page" and construct a new "table of contents", effectively undeleting your entire hard drive and rendering all your information accessible.
In order to prevent this happening, secure deletion methods exist, such as "shred" - this over-writes the file, or the entire hard drive, with random data, completely removing the sensitive information and rendering it impossible to retrieve via software tools.
If you ever buy a second-hand hard-drive, it's well worth shredding it: If the previous owner installed any illegal material on it, you might be accussed of installing it yourself if it is discovered.
So, you buy a hard drive and you shred it: It now has completely random data on it. You then format it, safe in the knowledge that there is nothing on your drive that you didn't put there yourself.
So far, so good?
Next, you install TrueCrypt on your PC, and create an encrypted filesystem on your hard drive. Accessed via TrueCrypt, this looks like just another disk drive. You then shove all your sensitive files on it. Once done, you tell TrueCrypt to unmount the filesystem.
You now have masses of encrypted data on your hard disk. But encrypted data has no visible logic or order to it: The whole point of encryption is to scramble the data so nobody else can get at it.
Encrypted data, in short, is identical in appearance to completely random data. Should the police suddenly bash in your door and seize your hard drive, they will find a huge long string of ones and zeros written on it.
Is it a shredded drive, owned by a paranoid but perfectly legitimate user? Or is it an encrypted filesystem, owned by somebody with something to hide?
It's impossible to tell. Utterly impossible.
But it doesn't stop there: You can create an encrypted filesystem within another encrypted filesystem. So somebody can put a gun to your head and tell you that unless you decrypt the data, they're going to pull the trigger.
So you decrypt *that* filesystem, which has your sensitive-but-legal data on it. But nothing illegal is found. Just a load of as-yet-unused space.
Does *that* space contain illegal material? Impossible to tell - see above.
So I could create a file on my hard drive called "Encrypted.Filesystem", and mount it as an encrypted filesystem with the password "foo". And then on that encrypted filesystem, I could create another encrypted filesystem, with the password "bar"
I could then put lots of illegal material on the twice-encrypted "bar" filesystem, and put a load of perfectly legal material on the once-encrypted "foo" filesystem. And then email the "Encrypted.Filesystem" file to anybody I liked.
And regardless of what the law said about handing over encryption keys, nobody could ever prove that there was anything but legal information and empty space on that file. They could force me to decrypt "foo", but "bar" would remain completely safe and utterly undetectable.
Hence these legislation changes are worthless, beyond the fact that they clearly show that the government employs a lot of time-wasting idiots that the taxpayer would be better off without.
Creative Hedgehog
La parte A se refiere solamente a las dos novelas estudiadas. La parte A debe ser preparada después de leer la primera mitad de la novela y contestar las siguientes preguntas: ¿te está gustando la novela/película o no, y por qué? No me gusta la novela. Las personajes que puedes gustar son superficiales, o hacen [...]
06/08/10 - SPN3730 diario: Pascual Duarte parte A
Hari's corner
Why being bi-lingual has its advantages
10/08/10 - Being bi-lingual has its advantages
Place of Stuff
Isn't this exciting? We're out of the tedium of Genesis (world created, man falls, many people live and die. Oh, and attempted forced buggery and a spot of incest). We're into Exodus now; the Bible has got going, that tricky first chapter is out of the way and the real action can start! When the [...]
03/08/10 - The Bible ? On The Waterfront
Advice From a Single Girl
I was giddy and hopeful when I first met Cary and spent a brief amount of time with him.
The week after that I was happily high on the idea of what could be, the possibility of getting to know someone interesting and intriguing, the wide open potential of what could be.
And I wanted to tell my friends all about him and what had, and hadn't happened, but I also wanted to keep it to myself, sealed safely in the happy bubble that was floating inside me. So I talked to some close friends about him, told them he lived in Vancouver and they, meaning well, told me quite firmly that they would not allow me to go through another long distance relationship. That I shouldn't even consider it.
My bubble had been burst.
I was completely deflated. Hurt. Let down.
I talked to C-Dawg, a sad tinge to the story now that I'd been told it could. . . should never work out.
"Vancouver?" she said, her voice somewhere between amused and incredulous. "That's not long distance! Get serious. Go for it."
And I let my bubble maybe start to re-inflate. Cautiously. Maybe just a little.
Then I talked to my friend about Cary. She said good things.
Maybe there was reason to be hopefully optimistic. Maybe it was ok to be a little girly and dreamy over what-ifs.
I went for a walk with S. We had life to catch up on.
Life including Cary and the story that still makes me smile.
She encouraged me to get his email, which I did, and then she went home and tried to find out what she could about him.
See, I'm not on Facebook. (No, really.) But S is, and in the small world way that Facebook seems to work, she found that Cary and she had a mutual friend and so she looked him up for me. (The modern background check.)
You can sometimes tell a lot about a person by what they put on their Facebook, she cautioned me. Sometimes.
How old is he?
Me: I don't know.
Is he a smoker?
Me: Um, I don't know? (God, I hope not)
Could he maybe be a little bit immature?
Me: I don't know. I suppose.
Well, he seems like a good guy. Cute. Interesting. I'd say he was my type, you know. (We laugh, we already know we share similar excellent taste in men.)
"I say go for it." She says, "just be aware that he's human. Not perfect."
I don't want to hear it.
Don't want to know the reality of him.
Find myself running away from all the what might have been's towards it'll never work what what I thinking's.
It's all or nothing. Perfect or awful. It'll work or it'll be a disaster.
And I realize that my bubble, the one that's been growing and floating inside me will burst on its own, without anyone's help if I get too far into imagining just how great Cary is, how great we'd be together, how perfectly perfect it all will be.
I'm Icarus. My friends don't want me flying too close to the sun.
But I like the feeling.
I like the soaring giddiness of how utterly fantastic this thing I've found will be.
Every single time I meet someone I like that feeling.
And I ride it higher and higher until I'm flapping my bare arms, feathers fallen into the sea and the crash is coming, the relationship splintering and I'm left staring at the brokenness wondering how on earth I could have been so wrong again.
The extremes are familiar. Addictive perhaps.
But I'm trying to learn to ride in the middle.
Safer. A shorter distance to fall.
A smaller bubble to burst.
Expectations that can be met and exceeded.
A safe, yet joyful and giddy flight. Wings intact.
03/09/10 - Icarus
Nation
  This was possibly the most ridiculous show I have seen in a long time and I can get Sky 1 I know ridiculous. It could be summed up in three sentences Do you know what's in your cereal? Want to? Read the label. Instead it went on for a hour about how evil the [...]
27/10/09 - Dispatches ? do you know what?s in your breakfast? (warning...
Blogroll generated by MagpieRSS
![[Links]](http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/skins/112/rsc/img/chain_link.gif)
Strange, how the only people who ever seem to complain that Linux sucks or doesn't work well are people who don't like using the CLI...
03/09/10
Dominic tried to explain how circular references can cause a memory leak to a colleague this morning, and got told off for not working. Apparently, the analogy of a madman shooting anybody who isn't being pointed at by somebody else was NOT the boss-safe way to go..
01/09/10
![]()
I last listened to:
The Offspring - She's Got Issues
Most recent photo:
Submersible houseboat