Many people keep sensitive and personal information on their mobile devices: confidential data, medical information, and passwords that we may use for different services and more. At border crossings, customs guards are increasingly demanding access to people’s devices, sometimes without consent or a warrant.
Erinn Atwater, a doctoral candidate in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, and other University of Waterloo researchers have developed a way for travelers protect their sensitive information. Shatter Secrets is an app that Atwater developed as the research director of the not-for-profit organization Open Privacy, an organization dedicated to understanding, researching and serving the privacy needs of marginalized and highly targeted at-risk communities.
Shatter Secrets works through threshold cryptography, which distributes encryption keys into shares. These shares can be securely transmitted to friends residing at the traveler’s destination. If the traveler is subjected to scrutiny at the border, they will be unable to comply with any request to access or search secure information on their mobile device.
The use case is not limited to border crossings – Shatter Secrets can also be used to keep information safe during travel between locations, including remote workers and those who work on the go, or at home.