Has the kid been told about his/her legal right to privacy from his/her
parents?
The most useful suggestion up until now has been use of Tails LiveUSB w/
persistence.
I'm not sure if Truecrypt is still bundled with Tails. If not, keeping
the installer inside persistent volume isn't that inconvenient and use
of steganographic volumes helps with the 5-dollar wrench problem.
The kid has the right to be curious about computing, programming and
whatnot, so it should be straightforward to explain why the distro needs
to be installed. Avoiding the privacy side of discussion might also be
beneficial.
On 31.05.2015 22:35, Gadit Bielman wrote:
Heh. Yeah, parents don't even need to try to find a 5$ wrench.
There are smartphone-spying stuff, also, though. (*cough-mSpy-cough*
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/05/mobile-spy-software-maker-mspy-hacked-customer-data-leaked/
)
Are there any strategies to detecting that?
Also, money/resources is a major issue in this threat model -- I don't
see it likely that a child/teenager will feel like 35$/year for a
little more security is worth it. I'm not even sure if I wanna assume
they'll be able to put down 50$ for a Raspberry Pi and USB mouse and
Keyboard.
Using some sort of VM sounds like the best solution, because it allows
for just minimizing when parents come to look. Unless, again, there is
screenshotting going on -- in which case, how would you detect that,
maybe running Tails as a VM and doing something that would definitely
draw the parents but not compromise much in terms of online
friendgroup, gender/sexual orientation they might be hiding, etc.
Maybe looking at porn? That would have to take into account the
consequences of that vs. the value of knowing that parents aren't looking.
But "VMs require specific drivers", I didn't know that. Shoot.
I wonder how well you could avoid problems by just using something
like a Tails LiveUSB at night...
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 1:19 PM, Barton Gellman <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Honestly, people, some of these suggestions are like a parody of
geek advice to civilians ;-)
The kid will soon hit upon the same practical solution that his or
her peers all use: the smartphone (preferably with a VPN like
Freedome), plus browsing at a friend's house. Wiping, Linuxing and
LUKSing a family PC will escalate the real-life threat, and the
kid's defenses will fall quickly to the parental equivalent of
that XKCD password cartoon.
If the kid has a need for full size keyboard and screen, and has a
few more technical chops than most, there are some alternatives:
* Boot up Tails in Windows camouflage mode. Choose More Options
at boot. Shoulder surfing will probably bust him/her anyway,
sooner or later.
* Make one of those WinPE Windows USB drives, if real Windows is
required. Last time I looked this wasn't that easy.
* Get a small, fast external drive and install the OS of choice.
If the host is a Mac, use Carbon Copy Cloner (or dd) to copy an
existing machine to the external drive, or do a fresh installation
there. For Linux, choose your flavor.
* Get a Raspberry Pi and hook it to the keyboard and screen, at
times when you don't expect interruption.
* A virtual machine may be possible on the monitored host, if
the required drivers are already present. Probably not. See
http://www.vbox.me/. If anyone knows a VM that works without admin
rights, speak up.
Bart
Barton Gellman
@bartongellman
bartongellman.con
On May 31, 2015, at 12:00 PM, [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
On 31 May 2015 03:24:45 GMT+01:00, Gadit Bielman
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi.
I'm trying to help (probably badly, but..) a friend deal with
parents
that
they expect are spying on them.
