TL;DR: TrueCrypt or LUKS. Open wireless. STFU.

[Eugen Leitl]

http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/11/what-to-do-if-prosecuted-for-sharing-culture-stfu/

Every now and then, somebody is prosecuted for sharing culture in violation
of the copyright monopoly. Herebs what you should know if youbre worried of
that happening to you.

The most important thing to know is that it wonbt happen to you. The
copyright monopoly lobby likes to publicize every case to ridiculous
proportions. Back in reality, outside of copyright monopoly math, more people
get struck by lightning each year than get prosecuted for sharing culture.

Letbs take that again, because it is important: mathematically, you stand a
higher risk of being struck by lightning than of being prosecuted for sharing
culture. (Note that this does not apply to people who annoy Hollywood on
purpose, which is a separate and much more serious crime.)

But on the astronomically odd risk that you should be struck by lightning
prosecuted for sharing culture, you need to know the next important thing:
every conviction Ibve seen of copyright monopoly violation in direct sharing
cases has been due to a confession.

Again: every conviction has relied on a confession.

In other words: do not confess to sharing culture in violation of the
monopoly (in a prosecution situation, that is b everybody is assumed to be a
good citizen and share; itbs nothing much to bconfess tob, really).

You need to understand what the Police will tell you in order to try to get
that confession. Theybll say that the copyright monopoly violation came from
your IP address. Theybll say that they found the shared material on your hard
drive.

None of that matters. Again: it doesnbt matter if they find something on your
hard drive that matches your IP. The crime isnbt having the bits of data b
the crime is transferring the bits of data. That distinction is crucial.
Actually, itbs not even enough to transfer the data: you need to have
transferred it in a way that violates the monopoly, and far from all copies
do that.

The police need to show that you, personally, transferred this bitpattern in
a way that violated the copyright monopoly. Thatbs practically impossible to
prove. Having the bitpattern on your hard drive is not a crime in itself,
except in North Korea.

Preferably, you shouldnbt say anything at all in an interrogation situation.
If you feel you have to say something, ask the Police if therebs any coffee
and cookies.

But if youbre still worried, there are two easy things you can do. Karma
points for both of them.

The first thing to do is to encrypt your whole hard drive, which is a good
thing to do anyway. For Windows and Mac, you can use TrueCrypt to do this.
Youbll get a password prompt as the computer boots, and after that, the
encryption is transparent. For GNU/Linux, you get the option of encrypting
the whole drive when you install the operating system; Ibm sure there are
ways of adding encryption afterwards. On Android, you can encrypt the whole
drive, too: itbs part of the screen lock menus somewhere.

As the police will turn off your computer the first thing they do in a raid
to prevent you from erasing evidence, they will also lock themselves out of
said evidence on power-down. Theybll lie to you afterwards and claim that
they found X, Y, and Z on your hard drives, again hoping for a confession.
They didnbt. You can just smile at them and say nothing.

You donbt have to justify having an encrypted hard drive to the Police or
anybody. This is tremendously important. If youbre asked why itbs encrypted,
you donbt have to feel threatened in the slightest; it is entirely within
your rights to protect your data from intruders, legal or otherwise. This is
true in all countries that I know of except for North Korea, Iran, and the
United Kingdom. You can smile and shut up or just shrug your shoulders and
say bbecause I felt like itb. Or, for that matter, change the subject and ask
if therebs any more coffee.

The second thing to do is to have an open wireless network. This is also a
matter of being a good neighbor. I have two wi-fi networks, one closed and
one open (most modern routers allow this). Both egress on the same IP address
toward the net, so if somebody is sharing culture from this IP address, it
could be me or any of my 50-or-so neighbors in range. And with an encrypted
hard drive, therebs nothing even suggesting it was me in an astronomically
unlikely raid scenario.

Of course, sharing wireless bandwidth with my neighbors when they may need it
is also a matter of practicing what I preach; sharing is caring.

This latest defense b the open wireless defense proved so successful in
Denmark that the copyright monopoly lobby even stopped suing people sharing
culture, because they couldnbt get any convictions. Theybre now trying other
avenues. (This was regardless of whether there even was an open network, as
civil lawsuits donbt confiscate equipment in a police raid.)

So in summary, an encrypted hard drive is little extra work but will mean
that the confidences placed in you are safe in a raid scenario, and an open
wireless network will negate any connection between you and your IP address.
Anybody accusing you of sharing culture in violation of the monopolies wonbt
be able to get a shred of evidence of it, even with a full-scale police raid.

(In reality, outside of copyright math, the encrypted hard drive is much more
likely to protect your data in a case of burglary than a police raid b and
the open wireless is much more likely to benefit you with better neighbor
relations.)

TL;DR: TrueCrypt or LUKS. Open wireless. STFU.