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Just curious here -- how would a dead man's switch be created?

I'm thinking something like a python script which is scanning for particular words and phrases on google news, like "Snowden killed", or "Snowden captured"? That seems like something I could build easily -- would a kill switch indeed be something as simple as that?




You could have a server running a timer that needs to be reset periodically and can only be reset by the person with the password.


How about a script that watches for such phrases (perhaps using Google Alerts), which sets off a timer for the release of the key. Then Snowden could disable it if there's a false positive.

The only problem is, that complicates the system with a critical point of failure.




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