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Comment by philip1209 | Hacker News Reader

Wow - they advise employees to remove all company data from devices, leave the company 1password account, disable touch ID, and put their attorney on speed dial every time they go through customs.

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I don't go that far, but I do have all my hardware encrypted (MBP, iPhone, iPad) and I power these things off so that they will be unable to trivially decrypt them when I go through customs.

I wish iDevices had a thing that would let me "double click" the power button to passcode-lock the device and disable TouchID until unlocked again.

I don't use the TouchID on my MBP at all.

I've only got one thumb set up for touch ID. If you use the wrong finger 3 times, it'll disable touch ID until you put your passcode in, so you could use your other hand 3 times before you enter the airport.

That's not enough: they can demand that you unlock the device at the border, including powering it on. If your battery is depleted, they'll give you a charger and wait. If you refuse, they can and will confiscate the devices. You can't outsmart them: for pretty much every major country, they're better at this than you are.

They can do all of this even if you're a citizen. In the US, citizens (and, to a lesser but still meaningful extent, LPRs) cannot be denied entry to the country. But you can still lose all your devices. You can be detained, potentially overnight, no matter who you are. If you're not a citizen, you can be detained and then sent back without your devices.

The only realistic answer is not to have sensitive data on your devices at the border at all, nor any indication of where your sensitive data is or any means of getting access to it.

It seems like the best course of action is to ship devices ahead of you and not transit the border with any tech on your person.

The best course of action is either don't travel to the US, or don't carry the devices at all. I wouldn't be surprised to find my electronics had been confiscated when importing them ahead of my travels.

With just a few possible exceptions, the real rule you're advocating for is "don't travel internationally with electronic devices". Your protections in most of Europe are also not great, and the big .EU countries are if anything more hair-trigger about sending people back.

Agree or not, really all I'm saying is: "don't try to leverage your superior tech skills to outsmart customs". You are probably better at tech than the customs agent you talk to first at the border. You are not better than the customs department as a whole. Money buys a lot of tech ability, and countries have a lot of money.

I'm a US citizen who lives in the US. Not traveling to the US is not an option.

>> I'm a US citizen who lives in the US. Not traveling to the US is not an option.

Why isn't it an option? The only way for you to "travel to the US" is to leave the US in the first place. You have the option to not travel outside of the US.

AFAIK, while you have to deal with the TSA, you don't have to deal with customs/immigration for domestic flights.

> AFAIK, while you have to deal with the TSA, you don't have to deal with customs/immigration for domestic flights.

Not routinely, but Border Patrol claims special powers and jurisdiction in a shockingly large portion of the country. Anything a hundred miles from a border (or a lake that touches a border, placing places like Chicago in it). https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

IMO the only reasonable course of action is to have a good backup/restore system, and completely wipe your device before and after exposing it to hostile agents. When asked to explain why, say that it's a mandatory policy from your employer in order to maintain a secure working environment.

I wonder if some form of push back on this would be timed release malware? its just crazy talk and all, I'd NEVER do this, but as a hypothetical since they are plugging your device(s) in to a machine, it would be possible to infect said machine, yes?

Now that’s resistance.

Also: I've heard of people who just wipe their devices and then just download really really grotesque photos to their devices to gross out the employees who have to look through it.

If you want to go to prison, this is definitely a way to see the inside of a federal prison cell.

I imagine as such. Though, if its timed....could they even trace it if done right? you'd be long gone by then.

This is the responsible thing to do in 2017.

It's smart, but that also struck me... this is the USA we're talking about.

I used to be able to enter that country with a driver's licence and a hello. Amazing how things have changed.