<story><title>Run a script when police raid your house</title><url>https://github.com/defuse/swatd</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nateberkopec</author><text>IANAL: what could actually happen to you, legally, if your hard-drive self-destructs after being tampered with?&lt;p&gt;Is that really &amp;quot;destroying evidence?&amp;quot; What if you just shut down the computer, rendering the hard drive unusable, its contents completely encrypted (a la TrueCrypt). The evidence isn&amp;#x27;t destroyed, it&amp;#x27;s just inaccessible.</text></item><item><author>ipsin</author><text>I really like his sort of thing, but realize that, like anti-forensics tools, there is a risk to having and using destructive anti-tamper triggers.&lt;p&gt;If the police actually think you&amp;#x27;re up to something, raid you, and your &amp;quot;cybernetic boobytrap&amp;quot; destroys your hundreds of GB of &lt;i&gt;actual&lt;/i&gt; random data, they may still try and prove that you&amp;#x27;re a terrible person and destroyed evidence in court.  Then it&amp;#x27;s up to a jury, and a prosecutor bent on making you look guilty as hell.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not trying to dissuade exploration, but understand what can happen if you actually deploy this sort of system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>maxlybbert</author><text>In the US, it&amp;#x27;s generally a crime to destroy evidence if you believe there&amp;#x27;s an investigation.  So setting something up to respond to evidence of an investigation seems like a bad idea to me.&lt;p&gt;In the US, it&amp;#x27;s also possible to be held in contempt of court for failing to hand over evidence in some cases.  There&amp;#x27;s the Fifth Amendment, but there are enough exceptions to the Fifth Amendment (e.g., I&amp;#x27;m not actually charged with a crime, and instead I&amp;#x27;m facing fines for not having the right licenses; or the evidence on my computers is meant to be used in proving somebody else committed a crime) that I would want to talk to a lawyer before telling a judge that &amp;quot;the evidence isn&amp;#x27;t destroyed, it&amp;#x27;s just inaccessible.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Run a script when police raid your house</title><url>https://github.com/defuse/swatd</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nateberkopec</author><text>IANAL: what could actually happen to you, legally, if your hard-drive self-destructs after being tampered with?&lt;p&gt;Is that really &amp;quot;destroying evidence?&amp;quot; What if you just shut down the computer, rendering the hard drive unusable, its contents completely encrypted (a la TrueCrypt). The evidence isn&amp;#x27;t destroyed, it&amp;#x27;s just inaccessible.</text></item><item><author>ipsin</author><text>I really like his sort of thing, but realize that, like anti-forensics tools, there is a risk to having and using destructive anti-tamper triggers.&lt;p&gt;If the police actually think you&amp;#x27;re up to something, raid you, and your &amp;quot;cybernetic boobytrap&amp;quot; destroys your hundreds of GB of &lt;i&gt;actual&lt;/i&gt; random data, they may still try and prove that you&amp;#x27;re a terrible person and destroyed evidence in court.  Then it&amp;#x27;s up to a jury, and a prosecutor bent on making you look guilty as hell.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not trying to dissuade exploration, but understand what can happen if you actually deploy this sort of system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danielweber</author><text>&amp;gt; The evidence isn&amp;#x27;t destroyed, it&amp;#x27;s just inaccessible.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;Star Trek&lt;/i&gt;.  You don&amp;#x27;t win by outsmarting the computer like Captain Kirk does.&lt;p&gt;The courts have dealt with these &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m so clever&amp;quot; tricks thousands of times. They have little patience for them.</text></comment>