Hi, what is the preferred way to transfer data between my journalist tails usb and work computer?
I work on a Mac, and it can’t read Luks-encrypted USBs. The first thing I want to do is to transfer my private PGP key to my Journalist Tails USB, so that I can decrypt documents I’ve encrypted on the Secure Viewing Station. And some day in the future I’ll want to transfer documents I’ve researched to my work computer for publishing.
The only solution I can think of is to zip the files I want to move in a password protected archive and copy them using an USB.
Up until recently I’d have recommended something similar, possibly with GPG or OpenSSL encryption for the archive. But if you’ve upgraded to Tails 3.9, it now has Veracypt integration. Veracypt is an open-source full disk encryption system, forked from Truecrypt and generally well-regarded from a security perspective It’s also available for OS X, so you could use it to create an encrypted Transfer USB that will work for both OSes, or use it to encrypt files before burning them to read-only media if you don’t trust USBs.
(FPF training folks recommend the use of a keyfile as well as a password to unlock volumes, but if you go that route you’ll need to mount the Veracrypt volume via the disk utility instead of using the integrated support in the file manager.)