kit to prevent computers from losing power during seizure.

[Peter Gutmann]

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry at piermont.com> writes:

>It appears that disk encryption techniques are spawning technical responses.
>This gadget lets law enforcement take a computer without ever turning off the
>power.

For those who don't want to plough through the docs, it looks like a static
transfer switch that requires you to take a tap from a mains line and feed it
to a UPS.  The "tap" relies on either having the PC on a power strip or
stripping the mains flex and attaching jumpers.  So the setup before is:

  Mains -------------------+------ PC
                           |
  UPS   ------- STS -------+

When you unplug the resulting setup from the wall, the HotPlug device detects
the voltage loss (in other words it contains a portion of a UPS switchover
circuit, the static transfer switch, which is just some SCRs operating as a
zero-crossing switch and a controller IC) and switches over to the UPS:

                           +------ PC
                           |
  UPS   ------- STS -------+

and you can remove the PC.

I was going to suggest that given the usual LE-targeted device pricing (five
figures and up) it'd probably be cheaper to buy a commercial STS, but at only
$500 it's quite reasonably priced.

>Countermeasures are, of course, quite possible.

And successively more Rube-Goldberg :-).

Peter.

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