[Cryptography] Proving a Negative (was MAybe he's Adam Back, maybe not)

[Peter Gutmann]

Jon Callas <jon at callas.org> writes:

>He looks up, gets a big smile and says, "Really?" We start having a great
>conversation about passport security; how good is contactless, anyway;
>biometric safety and security; and more.

Our customs guys are pretty cool, usually you just get waved through but if
it's not busy you can have a chat with them about all sorts of stuff.  I
always put down "IT" as my occupation on the arrival card and one time ended
up in a discussion about the pros and cons of going back to banking work
maintaining COBOL programs, which is what she'd originally done.

>He gets thoughtful for a few seconds and then says, "I guess we'd have them
>sit in one of the holding rooms until they convinced us there was no second
>volume."

Many years ago I was at a talk by a law enforcement person who also talked about
Truecrypt.  The target of the investigation, not a very nice person, had used
every possible bell and whistle that TrueCrypt provides.  They (LE) got in
anyway through "good old-fashioned police work", not a euphemism for beating
them up which in any case I doubt would have worked but surveillance and
taking advantage of the target's lack of OPSEC.  This is why I always find it
amusing when someone says "the police will never figure out what's going on if
I use TrueCrypt".

Peter.