Comment by Sir_Substance | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sir_Substance | Hacker News Reader

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>So how do you protect yourself?

Here, now, today?

Set all your accounts up with auto-generated passwords, and store the whole lot in a password vault[1]. Don't bring the password vault file with you when you cross the border. Arrange to acquire it after you have entered the country[2].

Now you can honestly say you don't know any of your passwords. If enough people do this, then this law will be pointless.

Also, for the love of god stop bringing your smartphone with you when you travel. Get a $15 quad-band feature phone, and just bring a paper map with you. If you don't need your laptop then leave that behind as well.

[1] As much as I hate password managers and see them as a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist, you should probably be doing this by now anyway.

[2] The details of this can range from a pre-timed email to a physical handover from someone inside the country, depending on whether you think the border police might detain you and attempt to force you to acquire the password vault.

How about this. Make 2 email accounts. One for your stuff, one that is more or less empty. Re-set your phone to factory. Synch with the empty account. When you are in-country, reset phone, synch with first account. Done. 45 minutes or less with decent wi-fi. Of course my preference is to avoid said country on principle in the first place.

I really don't understand how they would ever enforce the "social media accounts." It's pretty easy to just have two facebook and twitter accounts. If it becomes a problem everyone affected would have multiple accounts.

  Also, for the love of god stop bringing your smartphone with you when you travel.

Is there a risk of bringing a smartphone with no past context on it (e.g. a previously-unused refurb or new phone)? Even one that has been factory reset would give basic prying eyes nothing to find, barring the use of forensic tools.

factory reset will do the job even for forensic tools- the border-class forensic tools- cellebrite, magnet forensics aquire, oxygen, etc are all accessing above the flash translation layer. So deleted is deleted, in that case, on a phone. And chip off is Mossad level expertise, due to chip size/complexity, wear-leveling and said flash translation.

>Is there a risk of bringing a smartphone with no past context on it (e.g. a previously-unused refurb or new phone)?

If you're willing to have two smartphones, or to backup and wipe your smartphone when you travel (don't forget the sim), then I guess not that much. I definitely couldn't be bothered though, hence the cheapie phone. Your mileage may vary if you're going for a 3 months sojourn I guess, I usually do 2-3 day trips.

However, back on the sliding scale of paranoia, the main risk of bringing your phone with you if you want next level protection from the US is that if they ever take your phone and remove it from your field if view, you might want to bin it. The US has proven very adept at modifying circuitry of devices to monitor them[1]. A cheap feature phone can be binned without thought.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

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