Subject: Improving Security with Encryption

From: "King, Kimberly S." <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:58:33 -0500

> Fred Baker wrote:
> What I would suggest is that people encrypt confidential
> information on their laptops, and perhaps the entire laptop.

I strongly agree and my entire laptop is encrypted.  Perhaps people could
consider suggesting to their management that data protection is critical and
disk encryption is a simple effective step.  Sometimes managers aren't aware
of the tools (or risks) available and maybe it is up to the technical
community to inform them and help protect sensitive information (e.g.,
individuals data, company and client confidential data, etc.). 

Kimberly

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked]
To: Fred Baker; [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Sent: 11/10/2006 12:34 AM
Subject: RE: Risk of Laptop Seizure by Customs or Border Patrol Officers ...

>> JORDI PALET MARTINEZ wrote:
>> http://www.acte.org/resources/press_release.php?id=91

Ah, our brilliant government in its infinite wisdom....

> Fred Baker wrote:
> What I would suggest is that people encrypt confidential
> information on their laptops, and perhaps the entire laptop.

I would not recommend encrypting the entire laptop. As George Carlin
would say (*), border service agents with a double-digit IQ and a
triple-digit income might think that if dude encrypts the entire laptop,
dude must really have top-secret stuff on it, while the only two
confidential files dude has on his laptop are the payroll spreadsheet
showing how much more dude makes compared to his office buddies and
dude's mistresses phone numbers (one in each city, needs a database to
keep track of). No need to trigger un-necessary scrutiny: Traveling
Terrorist's 101: do not look, dress or act like one.

Besides, there are several ways to carry confidential info while flying.
Here's an example: They'll look at your laptop, but will not bother
looking at the 4GB SD card you have in your digital camera, which
happens to be a perfectly good plug-and-pray disk for any computer, PC
or Mac. I have stored Excel and PowerPoint files both in and out of the
directories used for pictures and it never bothered any camera I had in
my hands.

And even if they do look at it, there are ways to embed your
confidential data within pictures. You need to use a lossless
compression format such as TIFF. If done correctly, on a digital camera
with a noisy CCD at high ISO settings, there is no way to find out that
the least-significant bit of the picture contains actual data. A
5-megapixel 24-bit picture is 15MB, out of which 1.8MB are useable in
theory and 300KB in practice. In short: configure the camera to TIFF,
noise reduction to off, ISO 400 or higher.

Heck, you don't even need a laptop. Just a digital camera.

Michel.

(*) Info: recorded _before_ 9-11-01
(*) Warning: absolutely politically incorrect and rude language.
(*) If you have a problem with the "F" word, do NOT click the link
below.
(*) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwMz2bsbNY

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---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:13:19 -0800

> King, Kimberly S. wrote:
> I strongly agree and my entire laptop is encrypted.

Guys, Jordi was talking about the US government wanting to know what's
in your laptop. If the intel they have on you is that you may carry
information such as how to build a nuke or grow a biological agent, and
if you encrypt the entire thing they're going to confiscate it and
either break the encryption or detain you indefinitely until you cough
up the key.

Keep in mind: you're dealing with the same guys who sent visa renewals
to the terrorists who flew planes in the WTC six months after the entire
world knew they were dead. They won't find more nuke blueprints in your
laptop than they found WMDs in Iraq, but they sure can get annoying
trying.

>> Michel Py wrote:
>> An iPod is a lot more suspicious, IMHO.

> Joe Abley wrote:
> Apparently!
> http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?
> topicId=11211166&pageNo=1&sid=1

And it did not even have one of these Sony batteries that spontaneously
explode :-D
Why build your own bomb to take on the airplane when Apple and Dell
manufacture perfectly good ones, me wonders.

Michel.