Practicality Of Encryption Software

There are many encryption software products available on the market today, both commercial and freeware. It is only natural that many people who use computers are concerned about privacy and are drawn to these products, but...

Is Encryption software really useful beyond low level uses (hiding things from household or business snooper, thieves, your boss, etc.)? Is encryption software really practical when dealing with information that one may wish to hide from a particular government, or other such authority, that may end up being seized and fall under court scrutiny?

Take for example all of the many choices of On-The-Fly-Encryption products available now. One can encrypt containers, hidden containers, hidden containers inside hidden containers, partitions, complete hard drives, and on and on. But, what happens in court?

Especially now, for instance here in the USA with the Patriot act and other encroachments and dilutions of an individual's rights. Can one refuse to give up an encryption key by pleading the 5th? Can an individual now be taken to another country, where individual rights do not apply, for interrogation?

Is there such a thing as plausible deniability?

Uh, I don't know how that got there, because I have had some problems with viral and Trojan infections lately, and besides sloppy windows creates all kinds of junk files and leaks files all over the place; Perhaps that file of random data was left over from a game I played; Don't know, other users use this computer too; My system has been hacked several times, so I have no idea; Flood one's directories with other containers that are full of random data; Who knows, it may be a leftover hard drive test after hard drive recovery of an infected drive; Etc.

Reminds me of StandardDisclaimer

There are many tricks that a person can do with encrypted containers, such as one can remove or replace the header on an encrypted container. Replacement is especially interesting when the replaced header uses another key, so if you give up that key (and of course it is the right key for the header but the wrong key for the information in the container) when the key is used "poof!' all information is lost in that container.

But, how far does any of this really go to protect a person in a real case that goes to trial? Will said person have to rot in jail someplace, or at least suffer all kinds of physical, psychological and emotional torture?

''What? How would encryption software prevent somebody from being wrongfully imprisoned by the government? I'll make the AmericanCulturalAssumption here - you do not *have to tell the police anything if you are accused. If you're rotting in jail for no good reason, or wrongfully treated at all, you should celebrate because you will never be convicted.

CategorySecurity