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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Story time: when I worked at Google we had a specific policy for traveling to and from China. IIRC it went something like this:

1. You absolutely aren't allowed to take your regular phone and laptop;

2. You will be given loaner devices to take into China;

3. If you're asked to open such devices on entry, comply and then, when you can, inform IT;

4. Once you got back, I'm not sure what happened to those devices. I believe they were in the very least wiped. They may even have been destroyed in certain circumstances (eg if a border official examined the open device). But that's speculation.

I never travelled to China so never used this. A colleague who regularly traveled to China told me some stories about this.

But yes it does seem prudent to wipe your device and restore when you land. Then again, border officials can also deny you entry with very little justification so who knows?

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If I ever have a company phone out of a employee's sight like this, eg border searches, from China to Canada, it's thrown in the garbage after.

There's no way wiping should be considered enough.

> it does seem prudent to wipe your device and restore when you land. Then again, border officials can also deny you entry with very little justification so who knows?

For example, if they instruct you to turn on the device, and they see the setup screen or even just that it has no photos, no messages, nothing, might raise suspicion I would imagine.

Good luck trying to argue with them that absence of data should be considered normal and not a reason for them to harass you :(

They might try to claim that you're smuggling a new phone or some such. But you could often just state that it's corporate policy?

Now you can both take the same side complaining about stupid bureaucratic rules making everyone's life harder.

That's exactly like the travel advisories to the US for EU firms. If it bothers you this much, why this Don Quixote act, why not do something about it where you actually can? Otherwise it's just bashing the Chinese for internet happy points. Just like reddit.

Unauthorized access by Chinese state actors is not a hypothetical [1].

[1]: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1600064/hackers-used-i...

You are referencing something orthoganol to the subject at hand here (searches of devices while going through customs, which garvi is right to point out occurs in a range of countries).

(Not only that but it was a very poor reference, with almost no detail given in the linked article of China's alleged involvement in the hacks.)

As someone who's more affected by the US behavior than the Chinese behavior, and very critical of it, what you're doing is whataboutism.

What you are doing is proving my point.

>Otherwise it's just bashing the Chinese for internet happy points. Just like reddit.

Not every criticism of China is xenophobia.

You've lost all objectivity on this.

You're a Chinese propaganda sockpuppet account.

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