Suppose the government wants to spy on you using government-designed malware. If you then want to visit sensitive pages on the internet, would it be more secure to use Tor browser within a USB - live boot environment (Ubuntu) as opposed to using Ubuntu from your harddisk with Tor? Can the USB live boot environment immediately get infected by malware if you use it from a certain location which is the same location you normally use your computer?
I know there are certain rootkits that infect UEFI but apart from such an attack does this strategy mitigate risk?
I know I could also use a live CD but my strategy so far was to reformat the USB stick after each secure browsing session and install a new version of Ubuntu on it from a computer at another location.