IGX

I lug around a lot of software install packages,reference documents and contact lists on various flash drives and external hard drives as part of my job, and it made me nervous to think of accidentally walking away from a PC and leaving one of those flash drives sticking in the front slot. Anything not locked down in Corrections and the Youth Center tends to disappear (and it's not the inmates doing it). Trucrypt was the answer to my worries about spilling confidential data to a bunch of people just smart enough to exploit it and just rough enough to want to.

This is a free, and open source, data encryption tool that lets you encrypt flash drives, partitions, entire hard drives or just a spot on your hard drive for data you don't want other people seeing. I was a little intimidated by it at first, since I didn't want to lock myself out of my own hard drive by accident or anything, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty fool proof.

Essentially, once you install Trucrypt, you can designate a "container" with a file name while running it. It creates a password for the container using high powered encryption protocols (you can take your choice of several) and incorporates random mouse movements into the key as well. Then later, when you want to access files in the container (or move stuff into it, etc,) you start Trucrypt and "mount" the container to a drive letter, and the software encrypts and decrypts on the fly as you work, with no performance hit that I can see (at least on a fairly modern desktop). Don't forget or lose your original password, as even God Himself won't be able to decrypt the container (at least without a multi-petra-flop supercomputer and a lot of free time.)

Good stuff. ABW rates it two paws (dewclaws?) up.

You work in prisons?

baffled wrote:You work in prisons?

He's a masseuse.

Prison IT- Get a bigger, harder, drive.

baffled wrote:You work in prisons?

PC Support for the NGO that services the county. It supports my (currently unlucrative) LMT habit by providing a steady paycheck for those periods (2008 - 2011) when people don't have the spare cash for deep tissue and sports medicine work or exotic sounding stuff like shiatsu.

I don't interact with the inmates all that much, pretty much look right through them when they try to start a conversation in a housing mod. It's the corrections officers I have to watch out for. Most of them are pretty stand up people, but the field attracts its fair share of douche-bags. Understandable that they get hired in a field famously desperate for warm bodies and knuckledraggers to fill slots on off hours shifts.

What do you mean by saying you need to watch out for the corrections officers?

They want you to rub on them? Fix their computer?

Abandoned by Wolves wrote:. . . Most of them are pretty stand up people, but the field attracts its fair share of douche-bags. Understandable that they get hired in a field famously desperate for warm bodies and knuckledraggers to fill slots on off hours shifts.

http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/federa ... urder.html

I have taken care of a lot of convicts over the years, and had one actively hostile, one try to fast talk me (had a shipment of contraband coming in, didn't want to stay in the hospital), and had many lie to me (always downplaying. Amazing how many would 'slip in the shower' and end up with bruises shaped surprisingly like knuckles). The rest were generally well behaved and more grateful for medical care than the general ER population.

A high percentage of the guards, however, were jacktards. Foul mouthing the nurses or the female residents, making fun of the inmates who needed genital or rectal exams, and complaining about how long the wait was.

Also useful for dropbox, since the dropbox TOS means that they 'own' anything you store on their service. I agree with the OP.

baffled wrote:What do you mean by saying you need to watch out for the corrections officers?

They want you to rub on them? Fix their computer?

Swipe confidential data from any usb sticks I might leave behind or leave unattended for a few moments when my attention is elsewhere. Or just fuck things up.

Abandoned by Wolves wrote:

baffled wrote:What do you mean by saying you need to watch out for the corrections officers?

They want you to rub on them? Fix their computer?

Swipe confidential data from any usb sticks I might leave behind or leave unattended for a few moments when my attention is elsewhere. Or just fuck things up.

Good. I was concerned you were talking about inappropriately long hugs.

What the hell would a prison guard do with usb sticks?

baffled wrote:.

What the hell would a prison guard do with usb sticks?

Look at the shiny.


Seriously. On the amberlamps we respond to the prison and jail a lot. What judobrian said is dead on the money. The prisoners are typically decently behaved. The worst inmate I had just wanted us to hit him with pain meds. Corrections, otoh, have gotten in my face before about simple things like redirecting to the appropriate facility since the pt arrested en route. The fucker actually had his hand on his taser as he was shouting at me.

As to the OP, this sounds pretty useful. I will check it out. Thanks ABW.