[drvdevd]

I agree - basically. The scheme is designed to be a half truth essentially. One that you can mentally convince yourself of in a tight situation, which would relieve you somewhat of the need to be "tough", psychologically speaking. At least for a while, anyway.

wrt giving up the key under extended duress, I was thinking the same thing and aside from simply wiping the disk I can think of another scheme that might serve you well: give the header to a trusted 3rd party who could simply be the one actually controlling access to your data. Your lawyer for example.

[hollander]

If you give it to your lawyer, it's still half truth, and still you can break and call him to mail the headers to you. If this is so important, setup a server that you control with your data encrypted on it, and enter the US with a clean Ubuntu system, or even a Chromebook with a fresh account.