Tough Puzzles at the Community Privacy Residency

"As soon as you're caught in the room, cryptography won't help you." Most cryptographers are trained on that separation of concerns. If you're locked in a room, someone can coerce you into handing over your keys, so that part is "out of scope". During three weeks at the Community Privacy Residency, I met a journalist from an occupied territory, and his reality threw the whole distinction out. There were daily roadblocks, with military police doing phone inspections. If you didn't unlock your phone, you were detained and your phone confiscated. If there was an encrypted chat app on your phone, you were detained and investigated. If there was a number from the wrong area code in your call log, you could be arrested on terrorism charges. If you were a regular suspect or a journalist, they had no problem leaning on your family with threats of detention. Detention without charge, potentially for years. So if you need to go to the shop, you can't go with Signal on your phone. Not if you…