You’re a journalist. You’ve been running an exposê into some extremely powerful, very scary people, and you’ve gathered a lot of evidence against them. This is explosive stuff - when your information becomes public, it will be the scandal of the century. It’ll be global news for years, and some of the most powerful people around will be exposed. The people you’ve been investigating will stop at nothing to prevent this information coming to light.
You’re pretty sure that they’re not yet onto you. You have a memory stick which you believe to have evidence on it which will eclipse even your current research in terms of potential impact. The person who passed it to you warned that it contains software which will auto-wipe the data if it is inserted into any computer other than a particular one, which she promises to allow access to at a later date*. You’re not sure if you believe this or not, but you lack the technical skill to verify it one way or another. You know that the memory stick will eventually be missed, but don’t think it has been yet.
You need to hide the memory stick somewhere. It’s one of these - tiny, at only 9x16x19 millimetres. You live in - well, whatever kind of place you actually live in. You don’t want to skip town, because all your investigations focus on the area where you live.
For the purposes of the hypothetical, let’s assume the following:
You aren’t in a mad rush to hide the memory stick - certainly, you want it safe as quickly as possible, but you have the time to do a decent job. Folks are used to your constant DIY, so hammering, drilling and the like won’t cause much comment.
The people you’re investigating have the resources to send trained search teams, should they realise you have the memory stick. These searchers will be at least up to the standard of local law-enforcement, and will have the full resources of a typical police search team at their disposal. The powers that be will ensure that they can operate unencumbered during the search; the neighbours will likely think it is the police searching your property (and for all you know, it might actually be).
While there is always a chance they’ll take you by surprise, your contact thinks that she can get you a few minutes’ warning ahead of the search teams getting to your place. As such, you want to be able to retrieve the memory stick very quickly in order to get out of there if you get the five minute warning. Any hiding place which would take more than a minute or so to retrieve the stick from won’t do.
You don’t mind causing damage to your property when retrieving the memory stick, as long as you can do it quickly.
How and where do you hide the memory stick?
*The auto-wipe memory stick thing is really to prevent the easy answer of backing up the memory stick to the cloud and to other devices - for the purposes of this hypothetical, I’m interested in how you’d physically hide the stick given it’s the only possible copy of the data.
I’d go the traditional route. I’d contact a legal firm and hire them to keep the item for me with the appropriate instructions to turn it over to some reliable media outlet if I don’t retrieve it within a specified period.
Hiding it myself is a bad idea. The bad guys could either abduct me and then force me to reveal its location. Or they could just kill me so that the item was lost. Chances are anyone who might randomly find it at some later date will just stick it in a computer and destroy the data anyway.
A legal firm is big enough that the bad guys can’t just kidnap or kill everyone without it being noticed.
I take the memory stick out to a large vacant area, put it in a tin can packed with some explosive that will ignite from impact of a rifle bullet, and shoot it from a couple hundred yards away upwind. With that kind of security, I have exactly zero reason to believe that it legitimately contains the data I’m looking for, and a whole lot of reason to believe that it’s a trap of some sort set by my enemies.
Smashing it with a sledgehammer would probably actually be sufficient, but there’s still the possibility that it contains a lethal trap like explosives or a poison capsule.
The retrieval period makes this much harder otherwise no way would it be in my house or any place I go regularly.
As it is I think I would just toss it in the back of my oven. It’s an electric so the wires down there will help keep it visually obscured and harder for any detection devices to pick it up. I also keep a pizza stone in the bottom of my oven so it would be blocked by that. There is no light in my oven. So aside from someone crawling in there with a flashloght and removing the racks and pizza stone there is no chance they’d find it but it would be simple to get and all I’d have to do is not bake for a couple of days.
Exactly. That’s where I keep my household cash. The oven is sufficiently fireproof that it would withstand any fire short of one that reduces the building to ground level. I just tuck it down inside the roll of aluminum foil (which itself is fairly fireproof) in the lower drawer, and it’s messy enough in there that nobody would steal or search the contents of any partially used products.
I’d disassemble my ikea bookcase and slot it inside one of the bolt holes, then put the bookcase back together using a carpenters glue to lock it tighto.
On the show Burn Notice (about a spy who is disavowed), he cuts a cavity into the door frame behind one of the hinge plates. Easy enough access if you have a screwdriver, but nobody is going to take off all the doors/hinges just to look for a hidey-hole.
How about cutting a discrete slot in a cantaloupe and inserting it into there for a day or two?
Or buried deep in a can of half eaten beans or casserole?
I’m suddenly liking a pickle or olive jar (with lots of pickles or olives), cause they sit in many fridges half used forever.
(I always loved how the Phantom’s wife hid the Pink Panther jewel in her facial cream in ‘Return of the Pink Panther’. But I’d guess they might check lotions and cosmetics, so that’s out. But I’m thinking hiding in food kicks it up a notch, especially if the food is perishable. Probably a moldy casserole would be best.)
This is really the right answer, for all the reasons mentioned. The problems are twofold: time and you have to trust the law firm (and all associates involved with your case) not to be in cahoots with the EPTB (evil powers that be).
… and going to a law firm may tip someone off that you are on to something…
The three main problems are: time, trust, and security… and cost
In short, if anybody suspects that the item is in your possession or that you have any knowledge of its whereabouts, they will just torture you and your family until you tell.
Surprised no one mentioned the good old reliable keistering. But I’d hollow out one of the top stones of my retaining wall. That way I have access if for whatever reason I cannot enter my house.