It's probably better to be beat up or tortured by a state actor than to rot in prison for the rest of your life if they get hands on proof of your culpability.
What I'm saying is that they wouldn't get a chance to use the kill switch because they would have focused on "containing" the suspect before they could activate it.
In theory, I agree. But it is somewhat akin to saying - why use strong encryption since a three letter agency can just brute force your device. If you're in that deep, maybe it won't help. But for the average reporter in a hostile zone, keeping the local police from snooping on their machine would be preferential.
We actually agree completely. This thing may be useful, and certainly something to think about if you live or travel to places where electronic devices are often snatched and, like you said, prevents casual snooping since the local police WILL have to escalate to violence.
I just don't think it's going to prevent a Silk Road incident and could make it worse for the suspect.
I disagree. I this this sounds a little too much like a TV show like 24.
The idea that you could completely immobilize someone at a public library so rapidly and without their awareness that they could not even move their arm 20 cm or so during a struggle seems ludicrous to me. Particularly as the kind of person who would buy this device would be setting themselves up with their back to the wall to prevent captures from behind.
I am fairly strong and have wrestled and grappled for over a decade, and I would not put my faith in an operation that required me (even with another agent) to completely immobilize even a weak person enough that I could guarantee they could not trigger this.
This takes a flick of a finger to trigger, or moving your arm a small distance away from the laptop.
> The idea that you could completely immobilize someone at a public library so rapidly and without their awareness that they could not even move their arm 20 cm or so during a struggle seems ludicrous to me.
They didn't "completely immobilize" him, though, as apparently "Ulbricht stood up sharply"[0] after his laptop was seized. However, he did make the mistake of not sitting with his back to a wall, since the agents "walked up behind" him. I guess we'll never know how he would have reacted if they had instead walked up in front of him and tried to grab his arms.
I think you have way too much faith in the reasonableness of law enforcement. There are 20K no-knock raids in the US every year, a significant percentage at the wrong address or clearly innocent people.
This device is indeed clearly designed for a no-knock raid situation, or other surprise grab.
I'm simply saying that, if you're attached to your laptop by a 50cm cable, which of you separate your arm further than that from will lock your computer, it will be very difficult for the agents to guarantee you won't be able to lock your computer.
If your kill switch manages to destroy evidence, that's generally obvious and has two consequences.
First, intentionally hiding or destroying evidence of a crime is itself a crime (self-incrimination is restricted only to verbal statements) of which you can be convicted even if you're not guilty of the original accusation;
Second, destroying evidence in this manner enables the legal concept of 'adverse inference' where essentially the judge can require the jury to assume that the destroyed evidence did contain whatever prosecution wanted to find there, and convict you based on that.
Besides the USA is not Al Qaida, there is a chance they would respect the Geneva convention: https://ccrjustice.org/home/get-involved/tools-resources/fac...