Laptop Security

I was reading a couple of disturbing posts (here, here and here) about how the US Department of Homeland Security can confiscate laptops, phones and PDAs at US borders without reason (or even more disturbingly like if you even look like or have the same name as a terrorist, you could end up in Guantanamo with no human rights or legal recourse). Or there's the more likely scenario of just losing an electronic item on public transport, in a bar, or even just some creep taking it whilst I'm not looking, so I decided to encrypt my laptop.

Windows Vista (Ultimate Edition only, I think) has a full disk encryption method called BitLocker which does the job. I only use XP on my system, largely because I think it has less extraneous crap on it (which isn't actually saying much) but mostly because XP does perfectly well.

So I had a look around and found the free and open-source Truecrypt had released version 5.1a in the past couple of weeks. Version 5 comes with its own system-disk and -partition encryption which can be used to protect a lost, stolen or confiscated (i.e. also stolen) laptop drive from prying eyes. It uses strong encryption, such as 256-bit Serpent, Twofish or AES. You will need a strong password, meaning 20 characters or longer (the longer the better, max 64 characters), and a mixture of upper-case, lower-case, numerals and symbols, avoiding dictionary words being embedded anywhere in the password, or the use of personal data, like your pets name, birthdate, city of birth etc.

For real security.