Full disk encryption is too good, says US intelligence agency

http://ow.ly/7AdWt

An article by Sebastian Anthony on the extreme tech website.

This article discusses full encryption of hard drives, and itemizes some of the concerns that this technology causes for law enforcement, and national security.

The article states, "...there are three main problems with full disk encryption (FDE): First, evidence-gathering goons can turn off a computer (for transportation) without realizing it’s encrypted, and thus can’t get back at the data (unless the arrestee gives up his password, which he doesn’t have to do); second, if the analysis team doesn’t know that the disk is encrypted, it can waste hours trying to read something that’s ultimately unreadable; and finally, in the case of hardware-level disk encryption, tampering with the device can trigger self-destruction of the data."

The article references a recent paper entitled, "The growing impact of full disk encryption on digital forensics,” and provides some commentary regarding that work. The referenced paper provides some tips into how to alleviate some of the concerns mentioned in the Mr. Anthony's article.  Although the article points out that more research is needed on this topic as the existing technology does not seem to overcome the challenges associated with recovering data from an encrypted drive.