surrendering one's passphrase to authorities

[gerry_lowry (alliston ontario canada)]

on vedaal's laptop design ... 

  [5] marry the drive to the motherboard so that removing the drive
        to another computer would cause the drive to self destruct.

  [6] design the drive as a secondary only never bootable drive;
        it's sister drive would carry the O/S and detect any O/S
        tampering; the data drive would use non standard
        logical and physical architecture to require specialized
        drivers in order to be accessed, i.e., no generic access.

  [7] design the drive to fail if physically opened or probed.

  [8] design the drive to be not probable by any form of hands off
       electronic eavesdropping.

  [9] remove dependency of need [4] destruct activation by any human.

[10] destruct the drive immediately if the smart card is yanked out
        improperly; probably removal should be almost equally brief, example:
        Ctrl+x, Ctrl+y,Ctrl+z, where x, y, and z are user configurable.

[11] find financing for this technology.

gerry

P.S.:  "Cryptonomicon", Neal Stephenson, ISBN: 9780060512804; ISBN10: 0060512806;
         http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060512804/Cryptonomicon/index.aspx
         The "... crypto-hacker grandson, Randy" character, "is attempting to create ... a
         place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny";
         there are some interesting laptop related ideas in the novel; also, the book uses in
         its plot a deck of cards for passing encrypted messages back and forth undetected;
         there is also an appendix that describes the algorithm for using the deck of cards;
         that appendix and algorithm design was created by Bruce Schnier, example:
         http://www.jera.com/solitaire/ "Solitaire for KJava home page"; especially see
         http://www.schneier.com/solitaire.html "The Solitaire Encryption Algorithm", version 1.2, 5/26/99.