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What a newsroom police raid teaches us about encrypting our devices (freedom.press)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Summary

The Marion County Record newsroom in Kansas was raided by police, who seized two cellphones, four computers, a backup hard drive, and reporting materials.
A computer seized was most likely unencrypted. Law enforcement officials hope that devices seized during a raid are unencrypted, as this makes them easier to examine.
Modern iPhones and Android phones are encrypted by default, but older devices may not be.
Desktop computers typically do not have encryption enabled by default, so it is important to turn this on manually.
Use strong random passwords and keep them in a password manager.
During the raid, police seized a single backup hard drive. It is important to have multiple backups of your data in case one is lost or stolen.
You can encrypt USB storage devices using BitLocker To Go on Windows, or Disk Utility on macOS.
All major desktop operating systems support Veracrypt, which can be used to encrypt entire drives.

Main Take-aways

Encrypt your devices, drives, and USBs.
Use strong random passwords and password manager.
Have multiple backups.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Although you don't have to be smarter than the experts, just smarter than police. Few local PDs can bring the kinds of resources to bear to do a decrypt on a properly encrypted data store.

Obviously if you're pissing off major state actors, all bets are off -- they are probably already surveilling you and saw you type your password through a zoom lens pointed at your window, or worse.