Freedom Pen

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: Freedom Pen
started by: cia-tec

Posted by cia-tec on Oct. 08 2005,04:12

I would like to suggest that some attention be paid to the growing trend to prevent freedom of speech and thought both here in the US and in other countries.

Why do this? Remember your US history. The Committees of Correspondence were a fundamental connection between those who wished to overthrow George III. Now it is time to help protect those working to overthow our own native born (? - hatched seems more likely) demented George.

My suggestion is to set up a mount point on a DSL USB key that would be encrypted with a strong standard and at least three factors to decrypt.

The three factors would be username, password, and key. The user name would be as usual. The password would be a phrase of almost any length and be encrypted to a message digest form. The key would be a shorter phrase, also using a message digest output, that would be manipulated by some mechanism to create, in combination with the password output, an encryption key that would be so large that not even teraflop computers could crack the code in our lifetime.

This approach would make it relatively easy to memorize the password phrase and key. The digest version means that the potential key space is enormous so ordinary brute force attack just is not practical.

And being on a USB key makes it small so keeping it hidden is easier.

If the mount point could be hidden from normal scrutiny then this would be even better as USB keys are getting so common that possession will be exptremely hard to prevent.

There are issues that would have to be tested for: data left behind when booting to DSL inside a Windoze OS. Would traces of connectivity and content be lodged in log files to be examined later? Could Windoze be modified to capture keystrokes via a keylogger utility and have it still function even while DSL was running. Perhaps the best approach is to do a forced reboot via an interrupt to the CPU and then leave behind a bit of code that would reboot the machine after the USB key is removed.

The overall idea also has an additional bit of merit even for those not involved directly in the movement for new democracy in that others could use it even if they have nothing to hide. Merely using the encrypted mount point creates a situation where the oppresors don't have enough resources to go after everyone using a USB key with this structure. Plus it does protect all their own information against identity theft.

Think about it. I think the basic idea has a great deal of merit and with improvement could be a wonderful tool for use by all.

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Oct. 08 2005,05:45

This has been done, and is functional in versions of DSL since 1.4.

use the "secure" cheat code.

See the wiki for a full list of cheat codes.

-J.P.