this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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https://xkcd.com/538/
Ah lol sure. It depends on what level of state repression you're looking at. Regular cops will just not bother trying to decrypt a drive if they don't have the password and you don't freely give it up (you have the right to refuse to provide a password here, it's under the same kind of principle as having the right to not incriminate yourself), but I'm sure military intelligence etc will go to the wrench technique. Also deniable encryption for anything particularly sensitive is good for the old wrench technique.
How do you achieve the deniable encryption on you Linux machine?
I don't do deniable encryption on my root drives, just on external drives, and store the headers on my (non-deniably encrypted) computers. But if you want to deniably encrypt your root drive, Arch Wiki has some info:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Specialties#Encrypted_system_using_a_detached_LUKS_header
You would still ultimately need an unencrypted header somewhere in order to boot your computer, so if it's your main daily computer you'd likely carry around the USB stick all day and therefore it wouldn't work against a state adversary who would obtain the USB stick with your header when they arrest you, if it's on your person.
Also, it's much more plausible that an external drive is genuinely just random data with no encrypted contents than that the drive installed into a computer has no data. I do have some USB sticks etc with genuinely nothing on them because I wiped them with /dev/urandom at some point, and they're lying around waiting for me to need an unused USB drive. The average person doesn't have an "unused computer" with nothing on it, just random data on the drive. Especially if you are an activist/organiser, if the state finds your computer with just pure random data on it and no encryption header I think they will assume it is deniably encrypted.