Originally Posted by
mre5765
"Good luck breaking 256 bit AES encryption."
Shortcut attacks target some aspect of the encryption algorithm to recover the key or plaintext in less time than a brute-force attack would take on the same algorithm. The NSA has resources to employ both. Since they would have the pax's laptop, they would have possession of the encrypted data and possibly some plaintext with which to deduce some or all of the cipher text.
Originally Posted by
bocastephen
"Agreed, but the idea was to show a less-than-technically astute customs inspector there is nothing for them to see so they leave you alone."
I would not make that assumption. CBP is a large organization. It would be safe to say that they have a unit of their own to deal with these situations. If they retain possession of the laptop because the pax was noncompliant, they have the time to work on the problem. I'm not saying that's right but we know that it happens. You can learn a lot about someone from what's on their computer. Unless they are using a drive encryption utility, which encrypts the entire drive, there will be plaintext files on the computer with which to work with.