The IronClad is faster than most thumb drives but far slower than a standard hard drive. Boot up, application launch and other Windows operations feel sluggish, though still usable.

I favor pocket-sized hard drives that travel between home and office, syncing with computers on both ends.

Well-secured files don't do you much good if you lose them in a fire or hard drive crash.

For political and bureaucratic reasons, governments at all levels are telling far less to the public than to insiders about how to prepare for and behave in the initial chaos of a mass-casualty event.

For personal use, I recommend the free and open-source Truecrypt, which comes in flavors for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The surveillance of ordinary people is far greater than I would have imagined and far greater than the American public has been able to debate.