Suppose you were a dissident facing political persecution, how would you preserve your personal files so that you can retrieve it many years later, in case of imprisonment?

I'm talking like photos of important moments of your life, and perhaps deceased loved ones or deceased pets. Maybe favorite TV, Movies, Youtube videos, stuff that might be lost when you get released. Let's say like 1-5 terabytes worth of stuff.

Hard Drives at home wouldn't be an option, since they'd get confiscated. If you bury a hard drive in the woods, it could get corroded.

I was thinking foreign cloud, but then you wouldn't be able to keep paying the subscription since they'd probably try to seize your assets.

"Lifetime" cloud plans are kinds shady, I'm not sure if I could trust them.

So... what are the options? (Hypothetically)

And yes, budget is a huge factor. A person facing persecution would not have billions to create a dedicated building to store an archive.

21 comments

1-5Tb isn't that much info. I would store it on several different hard drives and have them kept in storage at law firms or bank deposit boxes. Maybe compress and encrypt it into a torrent so it gets preserved on some seed boxes.

Lawyer, friends/family, cloud storage, or safety deposit box all seem like viable normal options.
To be extra safe. 6 hard drives (each with a copy of the files, and four stacks of Blu-ray disks (each with a copy of the files). Divide these into at least two yeti coolers (include a large silica gel pack just in case), and bury the coolers as deep as possible in the woods.
- I feel like that's gonna end up full of water after a few years even if it's supposedly waterproof. Like a small pool that silica gel can't help with.

Ten 2TB drives of different brands, wrapped up and glued into aitight containers. Hide sone in the woods, some at friends places if possible, and two in a bank vault (people had that back in the day, a sort of coffer in the bank, I don't know if it exists any more). Two in a car that you put in a long time parking.
Fun excercise :-)
- bank vault
  I think they'll search your bank vaults for any anti government materials and seize it. Also that is still a subscription (you have to pay a yearly fee to keep the safe deposit box).
  
  Not if the vault is in Switzerland.

Encrypt your data.
Make a disk image.
Make a torrent of that image.
Start a cult where the torrenting your data determines the ranking within the order.
Come up with a cool name and logo for the cult. Maybe something like "The Archivists of Eternity" for example.
???
Profit
- If 4. is too hard (like, if you're not cool enough), make two versions and send them out to different groups. "Secret files of Trump and Epstein; help us break the encryption!" And, "Free America Foundational Sovereign Data (Crucial For Rebuilding Society Once Trump Finishes Overturning The Corrupt Bureaucracy)"

In terms of data, put TailsOS on a USB drive, configure persistent storage, download VeraCrypt over TOR, install that, encrypt everything tutorial
What you do with the drive (or drives if you make copies) really depends. If the climate is very wet and warm where you live then storing them outside is going to need very good protection to keep them relatively cool and dry. You'd also have to find somewhere that you can absolutely guarantee isn't going to get redeveloped or otherwise built on, or conversely, knocked down/demolished for as long as you're away.
A long term self-storage company might be an idea, or a bank vault, where you've paid for (for example) 10 years in advance. Of course that means you have to be absolutely sure the company won't go bankrupt or be seized by the corrupt regime you're hiding the data from. You'd also have to have someone else set these up in their name or it could be seized along with you. You then have to hope they don't get seized, or get dementia or die.
If you have comrades abroad in a safer country, maybe physically mail them the drives before the corrupt regime starts noticing you? Then of course you also have to hope they can return them and haven;t forgotten, died etc.

Depends on budget and storage options
That’s not much data
Listed in order:
Encrypted nas. For that small amount of data raid 1. A shitty e waste pc would suffice. A ups would be ideal. This is least ideal honestly as it requires power, a maintainer, and isnt truly backup
SSD of some kind, even a usb stick Enterprise hard drive like wd gold or ironwolf pro Redundant copies, 2-3 ideally, store in various cool dry locations
LTO tape - far more resilient than hard drives and cost effective per tb but downside is that you need a very expensive ($3-5000) tape drive to utilize them, also very slow to read/write, older/cheaper tape formats (I believe pre lto8?) don’t have the ability to act as an external disk where you can just drag and drop files and are more of a pain to use
Blu-ray M-DISK. Upside for these are that they are very resilient, can be stored basically anywhere assuming you put them in a sealed container, and will last many many years (probably longer than you’ll be alive). Downside is that storage per disk is very low (100gb), cost per disk is high, and write speed is low. so you will need ~ 50 for 5tb of data, each disk is about $25 (so $1225 though tbf there’s probably bulk pricing) and it would take 37.5 hours to burn them. But this would be the most resilient of all
Cloud storage - backblaze, tresorit, icedrive, etc
Hybrid solution - ideal scenario. Load a hard drive or two and lock them away somewhere. If you have access to a Blu-ray burner maybe burn a handful of m-disks of your most critical data (not all 5tb but the most important 1-200gb or so). If you can access a tape drive do that too. Ideally update the tape and hard drives monthly. Update the Blu-ray as needed. local nas and cloud for daily backups
Obviously encrypt your files. Veracrypt is a good solution in a political dissident situation - can create hidden volumes so that if you are caught you can give up passwords and reveal only the outer volume, keeping the inner volume hidden

Context plays a huge factor here. Depends a lot on which country you're being prosecuted, how much effort is people putting in catching you and gathering your evidence, and what kind of resources you can count with.
Personally, I'm not too tech savvy so I'd take the bury it in the woods option even if you say it can get corroded. There's many things that can happen to it, depending on the weather, environmental policies (cross your fingers they won't be selling the land for development while you're away), and what you can afford to store your drives in. I believe it's possible to protect the cache well enough if you ziplock them carefully and then find a Tupperware container, perhaps put that inside a larger wooden box or a tin to protect against crushing you should be good. Hell you can even cover the Tupperware containers in cement so it would look like you are burying rocks. But, do you have access to these things? Do you have the time?
Another option is to hide the cache similarly protected in some architectural nook you know of, perhaps at a friend or relative's house- some places have space under houses. Or perhaps you know how to crawl in some wall space or similar. The challenge here is returning to it, because the landlord (your friend) may be gone, dead or else by the time you're out. The property may be bulldozed and sold, who knows.
- Why should the drives be sneakily deposited. If he trusts his relative or friend he may just tell them to keep it safe until new gets out.
  However the bigger challenge would be to read the files using newer technology since those drive connectors might get obsolete. Maybe you need to store technology you can read it with. For example an external disk drive with USB 3 cables and Somme USB C adapters. If using internal drives this gets a bit complicated since you would need also some cables and motherboards. So external hard drives would be easier.
  
  Even if they're obsolete there will almost certainly be some way to retrieve your data unless you're expecting to go away for a LONG time- if you went away in the 90s and did this I'm pretty sure it'd be as simple as buying a SATA-IDE adapter.
  
  I mean, you can buy adapters for everything. No reason to expect that would change in the future.
  
  They don't necessarily need to be deposited sneakily, although that's to be considered, especially if you have people interrogating and investigating your friends and family - maybe you know someone who would crack easily under pressure but has the perfect hiding spot for you.