I think that what you want is The Ephemerizer, by Radia Perlman (she of OSPF fame). I heard about this a few years ago at the LISA conference, and a bit of digging turned it up. From the abstract:

This paper is about how to keep data for a finite time, and then make it unrecoverable after that. It is difficult to ensure that data is completely destroyed. To be available before expiration it is desirable to create backup copies. Then absolute deletion becomes difficult, because even after explicitly deleting it, copies might remain on backup media, or in swap space, or be forensically recoverable. The obvious solution is to store the data encrypted, and then delete the key after expiration.

Google turns up this copy in PDF.

Hope that helps!

You could try something like:

• Keep a list of passwords (I use Emacs + GPG, but there's bound to be something out there that'll work for you if that's not your style)
• Print out the list monthly (if that really is how often you change passwords)
• Seal it and put it in a safety deposit box at your local bank
• Tell everyone "In case of my death, go here for passwords"

(Alternately, this could be something a lawyer could help with -- something like holding passwords in trust, only to be given up in the event of X, Y, Z...)

Yes, it's a pain in the ass. But it would work, and it would mean your executor/spouse/etc would only have one set of people to convince that you're dead.

I'm a Canadian sysadmin. I love -- LOVE -- the LISA conference (http://www.usenix.org/lisa11/). It's wonderful, informative, and fun; I've made great friends there, learned an incredible amount and generally enjoyed myself enormously.

Last year was the third time I went. The conference was in San Jose. I took a bus and a train -- which took over 24 hours -- from Vancouver to San Jose, rather than fly and go through a naked body scanner. I figured if I'm going to talk the talk, I should walk the walk.

I'd already decided to skip this year's conference; it's in Boston, which is a long way to go by train or bus. I didn't want to be away from my family for that long. But I had been thinking about going next year, when it's going to be in San Diego.

I'm not going now. Not if this crap keeps up. I'll watch the video on my workstation, I'll listen to the MP3s on the bus, and I'll stay here in Canada. We have problems of our own -- but random searches and "papers, please" for the crime of taking the goddamned train are not one of them.

I'll miss y'all.

Still, I can't help but think: digital rights management, sure! Where are my rights, as a consumer, and who is managing them?"

And that is why the Free Software Foundation insists on calling this technology "Digital Restrictions Management (http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm): it points out that this is meant to keep YOU, the paying customer, from doing useful things with the stuff you buy.

Yep; where I work (small university dep't) one of the faculty members has it on all his desktops.

My main grumble about OpenSuSE is that, at least until 11.2 -- I'm still fuzzy on the details -- you couldn't actually do an upgrade from SuSE itself using zypper; you had to boot from the DVD and upgrade. I'm used to CentOS and Debian where this sort of thing isn't a mix of hope and prayer or a feature request.

I was at LISA '09, and Dr. Bruno Michel (works for IBM, mentioned in the article) made a presentation on this work (or at least very, very similar work). You can see the presentation, or download the MP3, here:

http://www.usenix.org/event/lisa09/tech/tech.html#michel

Interesting talk, and well worth your time.

Up here in Canada, we've got a new copyright bill coming down the pike. It's been spearheaded by two Cabinet ministers, Tony Clement (Industry) and James Moore (Canadian Heritage). While Clement has been sensitive and seems open to suggestions, Moore has definitely taken a more combative approach.

In fact, in a recent speech, Moore decried copyright "radical extremists" with a "babyish" attitude toward copyright.

Notice the same phrase?