I'm sort of a staunch law & order kind of guy, but this is why you never talk to the police. If they want to talk to you, they can have ample opportunity to do so in your lawyer's offices, in a comfortable plush chair, right into the tape recorder, after giving you blanket immunity for anything resulting from what you are about to tell them.<p>I will also happily let the authorities image my hard drive if they can convince a judge to issue a search warrant for the entire thing. It isn't that I don't trust you, officer, it is just that I desire to renew our traditional understanding that my papers and effects are <i>mine</i> and not to be trifled with lightly.
WikiLeaks which provides anonymous leaking services for things just like this has recently stopped due to lack of funding (and this document would likely have been leaked there if it hadn't been stopped).<p>Please consider donating to them (they need both money and technical services/expertise) at <a href="http://wikileaks.org/" rel="nofollow">http://wikileaks.org/</a> to help them carry on if you'd like to support the freedom to whistleblow.
This is why all of my disks are encrypted. Power turns off, data is gone. If someone shows up at your door threatening you to provide them with a disk image, you can happily comply. When they realize the data is useless without the Constitutionally-protected secret key that only exists in your mind, they will have to file charges, and get a judge to order you to testify against yourself. And right about then, the investigation stops, because you committed no crime, and the order to testify against yourself is illegal. (If anything, it means you have plenty of time to talk to your attorney. They are not getting the data any other way, so you have the power to say, "wait, let me get my lawyer first", even if they physically seize your hardware.)<p>I also have a few drives in my house that look like LUKS encrypted disks, but are actually a LUKS header with random data following it. There is no way I could ever decrypt these disks, as there is no data on them; just random bits.<p>Anyway, you can tell that this was never a real criminal investigation, because a real investigator would get Gmail records from Google, not from some random guy with a laptop. This was purely to scare the blogger into not publishing information about the TSA anymore. "Chilling effect."
The story according to the two bloggers:<p><a href="http://www.elliott.org/blog/full-text-of-my-subpoena-from-the-department-of-homeland-security/#more-10228" rel="nofollow">http://www.elliott.org/blog/full-text-of-my-subpoena-from-th...</a><p><a href="http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2009/12/30/the-fallout-from-sd-1544-09-06-the-feds-at-my-door/" rel="nofollow">http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2009/12/30/the-...</a>
There's the difference between Joe-blogger and someone who's an actual journalist. Granted, I don't know that "writes a column for the Washington Post" is exactly hard-hitting journalism, but I find it interesting that he did not turn over any information on his source whereas the guy who was just a blogger complied.
Wait, the TSA has their own subpoena-serving law enforcement agents?<p>I wonder if they instead used the FBI, if <i>those</i> agents might have been able to get an external hard drive to work?
Flagged. This one seems straight from the submission guidelines:<p><i>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.</i>
I'm wondering if there are any of us who would suggest that right after a terrorist attack, it might be a good idea _not_ to share with the bad guys how we're going to stop them? I mean, maybe hold off for a week or so while we figure out if:<p>A) There are more attacks coming.<p>B) How we are going to stop them.