Just ignore the useless threat scenario of someone stealing your physical disks to obtain your precious family data and you will be fine. In other words, just store all the photos and important documents in clear, some written down instructions and you should good to go.
I'm more worried by home automation in my case ^^;
The chance of someone breaking in to steal your sensitive files is next to nil I agree.
The chance of someone breaking into your house is sadly much more likely, and them choosing to take any computers they see is almost a certainty at that point.
Your drives are unencrypted. What's your next step if you come home tonight and find the house ransacked and the server gone?
If someone physically steal your things, and those were the only copies, you are screwed anyway, encryption or not. If you had copies somewhere else then it's a different story (but still, they need to be easily accessible by your loved ones).
In your scenario the only threat is that the thief is interested somehow in your data and will use it against you (which might be totally possible depending on the data and your exposure, but usually those things are re-sold in some kind of pawn shop).
It can be a side-effect. Francis Ford Coppola lost all his family photos when his PC was stolen in a burglary while in Argentina to shoot “Tetro”. Of course, he didn’t have backups.
> Your drives are unencrypted. What's your next step if you come home tonight and find the house ransacked and the server gone?
My drives are encrypted and so are my backups (with backups everywhere). But they're symmetrically encrypted with a password. The backup procedure contains a step verifying that decryption works.
Family knows the password: password is stored at different places on laminated paper (friends and family) but not alongside the backups.
Decryption of the backups is one command at the CLI (both brother and wife knows how to use a CLI and soon the kid shall too: already dabbled with it).
The one command is explained alongside the password, on the same laminated paper as the backups.
Yup I did really think this out, including rehearsals where I, literally, fake my own death (I fake a heart attack) in front of my brother and wife and I have to shut the fuck up while they open a CLI, hook up one of the backup hard disk and decrypt the backups.
Once a year we rehearse.
That way they are confident they can restore the backups. I know they can and I don't need reassuring, but they do (well less and less because know they began realizing I really thought this out).
> The chance of someone breaking into your house is sadly much more likely, and them choosing to take any computers they see is almost a certainty at that point.
Got a house break in years ago, they stole no computers.
> What's your next step if you come home tonight and find the house ransacked and the server gone?
Go to the bank, take of one my backup hard drive. Buy a computer, reinstall Proxmox, a VM, Docker CE, redeploy my infra. They still don't have the Yubikeys on my keychain. They still don't have what's on my phone.
Don't think some people here didn't plan for death / theft / etc.
Interesting reply, but I was responding to a poster who said they don't encrypt their disks because "someone stealing your physical disks to obtain your precious family data" is a useless threat scenario and so everything should be kept in the clear.
I think a much more likely scenario is an unencrypted drive fails and then what? Do you send it to the landfill unencrypted? Or do you have some process to physically destroy it? Encryption means you can just toss it and feel reasonably confident the data isn't coming back to haunt you.
You should see the hilaribad basis given in affidavits for search warrants that get rubber stamped by judges.
There is no burden of proof and no consequence for perjury. 100% of the search or seizure warrants I have read have had obvious perjury in them.
I encrypt my data at rest not because I fear a burglar breaking in, but because I fear the FBI coming in the front door on some
trumped up bullshit. Everyone has a right to privacy, even (and perhaps especially) if they are doing nothing wrong.
I’ve read too many stories of writers and activists getting bogus warrants and charges and arrests thrown at them to inconvenience and harass them to ever have a single unencrypted disk in my house.
If that's your threat model, then the "what happens with my loved ones data if I die" is not your threat model anymore. You are probably even making them a favor to have it encrypted and not under their control.
I'm more worried by home automation in my case ^^;