Jay-Z and Kanye Show How to Prevent an Album Leak in the Digital Age (The Atlantic)
The measures employed to protect the release were a combination of physical and logical access control using tried and true methods (old-fashioned locked briefcases) as well as high tech, though inexpensive, biometrics.
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How Jay-Z and Kanye West Beat the Leakers With 'Watch the Throne'
To combat pre-release piracy, Kilhoffer, Grammy Award-winner for West's Graduation and John Legend's Get Lifted, claims that all sessions were saved offsite to hard drives in Goldstein's locked Pelican briefcase over the course of nine months. "Everywhere we went in hotels, we were locking hard drives and Noah took them with him," says Kilhoffer, who now travels with external memory units that can only be accessed by biometric fingerprints.
The technology, which Kilhoffer implements while traveling on West's current European tour, takes a live scan of one's finger to serve as key to access protected material. For less than $100, devices such as the Eikon Digital Privacy Manager and Zvetco Fingerprint Reader measure the finger's ridges and valleys with conductor plates, transmitting imprints through a USB cord to safeguard hard drive contents. While on the road, Kilhoffer and Dean are the sole gatekeepers to unlock the digital safes.
