Yes but this isn’t the NSA, this is the border patrol, operating with a fraction the budget and expertise of the NSA. The people doing the copying are basically security guards that couldn’t pass the police physical nor find work as teachers.

I really like the idea of a hacked hard drive or phone which generates a never-ending series of files containing terabytes of random data. I bet any given boarder crossing will only have the ability to scan two devices at a time, so bring a couple and you can probably shut down everything as they scramble to figure out what to do when their local storage fills up.

I understand that you're coming from a good place, but speculation on how to "hack" fascism is fundamentally misplaced energy. Nobody will have to worry about overloading the CBP's hard drives if we live in a country where our right to privacy & protections against unlawful search & seizure are respected.

I realise that this is not the exact argument that i was originally making, but technical people are unlikely to rethink technical solutions without them understanding the technical barriers that limit a "solution's" effectiveness.

Why even fake it?

Most hard drives (and presumably SSDs) contain embedded microcontrollers to handle translation between the various protocol levels (USB, SATA, etc) and the raw data on the platters/FLASH cells, often running i/o drivers on top of some microcontroller-specific RTOS.

So ... surely the ideal technique would be to write a driver for the RTOS that generates a stream of data on the fly that looks like an ExFAT filesystem full of directories and email folder hierarchies containing Lorem Ipsum text? That way, it keeps feeding an unending supply of junk back to the imaging hardware (which probably isn't anything as high level/simple as "plug into a PC, mount it, and copy everything"). Yet if they open up the case and look inside, they'll see a genuine hard drive with genuine platters.

An exotic device that smells like tradecraft is a great way to get past the bored rent-a-cops and meet some some serious counterintelligence investigators.

Make it look like one of theses 100 TB SSD too, it should take 48 hours to backup one alone as it use SATA 3.

This is more like my way of thinking. People seem highly focused on how much space they might have for storage. But security isn't really about disk space, which is quite cheap these days. It's about how much time/money/resources it takes to complete the tasks needed to circumvent whatever security controls are in use.

If I had to do this, I would indeed make a faked Nimbus 100TB SSD drive, but it would also be super slow and glitchy. Spit out the proper meta data, then slow random noise presented as glitchy virtual sectors. Done deal. They've surely imaged glitchy drives before. They aren't rare.

How many drives can they image at a time, and how long does it take? How many drives can they not image because yours is taking so long? That's what I would attack.

Maybe you're waiting in a room (or covid-room) while they're trying to copy your strange shitty disk for days on end. I can already see the 'The Atlantic' piece.

I'm wondering if it's not gonna be another 'good' reason to keep anyone they want to mess with for days. Oh sorry we can't read m2 disks we have to call the guy from the place that has the only converter. We'll keep you warm in the mean time. You didn't have a flight connection or a lawyer you wanted to call, right?

That is where the storage comes in. Most likely the data from the drives is being dumped to a local NAS device with a limited capacity - more then likely a consumer level NAS sitting under someone’s desk. When it fills up it probably requires an IT person to get involved, and then they have to decide if they are going to dump data or do an unscheduled upload, being greedy they will probably wait for it to upload, then they have to start over or resume copying data from your device, so if it’s a honeypot giving endless data then you can imagine them making thee or four attempts before giving up and waving you through. Meanwhile they have hundreds of terabytes of your random data to store and index for 75 years.

All of these comments seem to be written as though the side effect of trolling federal agencies is everyone being mature, recognizing that you pulled a great joke on them, having a good laugh, patting you on the back and sending you on your way.

Based on prior stories I've read - trolling pissed off people with any form of Authority could end up very very badly for anyone doing this.

Aside from them just out and out confiscating any electronic device they like, they could detain you for a long period of time, they could put you on no-Fly lists (and then good luck ever flying into/within the US again), they could put you on extended screening lists (and so, every time you fly then on - again, kiss goodbye every electronic device you posess every time you travel, again). If you're a foreign national, or even if you look vaguely foreign, you might find yourself deported/denied entry/locked up for a while during the deportation process.

That's before they even get motivated enough to be malicious - I'm sure if they wanted, they could gin up enough of a case of "obstruction" or "wasting police time" if they can find any evidence (or even anything that looks like it could be hint of intention, like posting on HN), which even if it never goes to trial can still make your life a living hell, cost you your job, and a huge amount of money defending.

Both can be true. CBP frontline officer is not a highly sought after job and they have a lot of difficulty hiring people to go work in the desert.

You haven't ever met any of these people, have you.

I've heard that 5 eyes can only process 20 precent of what they collect a day. I'm not sure what they do with the 80% at the end of the day considering that pipe is constantly getting more feeds.

I doubt they look at everything by default. I would think they have a starting point of something like Persons of Interest, Devices of Interest, and Locations of Interest.

I mean, that's the NSA. Does the border patrol share resources?

That being said, you are of course correct.

Are you serious? You snowdon leaks were propaganda?