[anon4]

So can't you just embed messages in every file you own? Then when asked for the keys, give out fake keys for the really really secret stuff. So law enforcement ends up with a few sensitive documents and a whole bunch of random bytes where you cannot distinguish between "actual random bytes" and "bytes decoded with the wrong key". And there is your plausible deniability.

Obviously it's not perfect. Obviously a totalitarian regime which suspects you of dissident activity will pick any reason out of thin air to lock you up for as long as they like, or just execute you.

But being able to say "here's the keys" with them having no way to know if they are all the right keys, is at least something.

Though of course at best you won't keep those files on your PC in the first place. You'd keep them on a microSD card that you keep in a tiny pouch under your skin. You'd keep them encoded in photos you have printed out and hung as wall pictures. You'd have them embedded in a well-torrented movie and backed up willingly by hundreds of thousands people (though not you). And if you just use them to send encoded messages, neither you nor the recipient will ever store them on an hdd.

I mean, you're not stupid, right?