>On Thursday, January 31, 2002, at 08:44 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >>Encrypted disks are still rare, but that is because raids >>that seize people's computers are rare. Of course it is >>regrettable that disk encryption is not part of the operating >>system -- but if Microsoft put it in before we had a strong, >>widely adopted system, they would doubtless muck it up.
There are two things that can make it common - - paranoids like us reacting to raids on computers - stolen laptops leading to corporate information theft. Microsoft isn't going to encrypt disk drives to protect against the former; they might do it because of business demand from the latter. One of the big impacts of encrypted disks is that cops can steal your computer with just a warrant, while encrypted disks force them to take you to court to get the password, which gives you an opportunity to get a lawyer and argue about the reasonableness of the search. That's one of the few good excuses I can see for using biometrics - if the computer won't mount the main diskdrive without you putting your thumb on the pad, it's harder to blackbag and they can't get your data without you knowing it, assuming the biometrics are implemented properly. Some blackbag jobs can work fine without rebooting the machine, like keyloggers in the keyboard cord (if your operating system doesn't choke on disconnecting the cord), and obviously cracking into your box from your DSL line won't be affected, but it does block some attacks. Some uses for biometrics have a much more incriminating tradeoff - if your private key can only be opened using your thumbprint, that's strong evidence that that key really belongs to you and not just some random user with an account on your machine. But tying your thumbprint to the hardware sitting in your house isn't very incriminating, unless you were going to claim that you're just running the box for your brother and don't know what he's running on it :-)
