How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Mind you, this is for entering the country that considers itself the freest in the world...
_anything_ here presumably doesn't include freedom of movement of when you find yourself in an El Salvador concentration camp.
Next up: How to replace your Real Madrid tattoo by obtaining a skin graft
They are still unreasonable searches enabled since and by the patriot act.
Meanwhile there are very few countries that don't have the same type of border security that we do for foreign nationals. This advice is just as pertinent if you travel to the UK or almost any EU country.
We were pretty "soft" (dislike the term) on the land borders and on immigration. Fairly easy to enter, to claim asylum, to live and work on different sides, and so on.
I don't have an answer for the question of if we should be making our border security as intense as it can be elsewhere, but I don't love the story of just doing as other countries do. We're exceptional, right?
I don't think this is a great comment I'm writing, but it's how I feel about things right now.
Yup, and that pushes a nationalistic agenda even if not intentional. We're exceptional, so everyone else is mediocre and such border policies don't seem that strange? IMO a historical example of where being exceptional led us is the Trail of Tears.
Moving in the direction away from exceptionalism and more towards doing as other countries do is a simpler story toward reaching cooperation / peace than the alternative. Since if you don't, then you have to force your ideals on others, or every conversation just ends with "but we're exceptional and you aren't".
As I said, and not to be flip, but "propaganda mouthpieces." The odd part about "social media" is that it actually instills a sense of reward in people when they uncritically repeat what they've been told like a Manchurian candidate. While at the same time being an outlet for their frustrations with the outcome of these same policies and ideals.
> live in the freest and generally most superlative country
Since the 1950s the government has been opening and reading peoples mail. We had the Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In this era people did not make the same mistake. This notion of the "freest" country honestly started after 2001. "They hate us because of our freedom," was a useful excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
> We were pretty "soft" (dislike the term) on the land borders and on immigration.
That depends on your perspective. The cold war certainly had an impact on some citizens of the world more than others. The 2001 trade center attack just moved the goalposts. Here we are moving them again.
> but it's how I feel about things right now.
That's the most valuable thing you could possibly do. Thank you.
That's absolutely not the impression US gives to the people outside. The visa system is soft only on one specific demographic it deems worthy (educated, wealthy, commonwealth citizen), and treats everyone else with contempt at best.
Getting a visa requires extensive background checks, and an in-person interview in a part of a consulate built like a prison. The green card lottery keeps people on uncertain ground for decades, during which they are second-class citizens and can have their entire life uprooted at any moment.
Claiming asylum via safe modes of transport has been made technically impossible (anyone suspected of seeking asylum won't be sold any tickets, won't be let through any security), and deadly dangerous and intentionally cruel towards everyone desperate enough to try anyway.
Unfortunately, many countries are like that, and the USA is not better than average even on the good side.
Nobody is forcing people to join the lottery. Nobody is in “limbo” against their will. it’s something that has a huge upside if you win, and little downside (apart from the Application fees).
Which country doesn’t do some kind of background check or information gathering when letting you in (except for tourism of course).
It’s extremely onerous to get a tourist visa to the EU if you’re an Indian citizen for example. Or it used to be.
They want your bank balances to make sure you aren’t going to just get on welfare.
The people being deported are those calling for genocide. Good riddance. You do not have a right to come to this country to organize a foreign country's wars.
I use the he.net app for TOTP. Will I get those back in working order?
I have a billion photos I want to keep — were they properly backed up to iCloud?
My mail settings are a pita to recreate. Will those come back?
Are passwords stored in the Secure Enclave? Could I lose those?
When I sign back into iCloud am I going to be able to use a username and password, or is it going to require me to approve the login on my laptop — which I left at home — as a second factor?
WhatsApp, Signal — how much is tied to my physical phone and/or any key material unique to the OS — material that is irretrievably lost, by design, when it is wiped.
I think really the long term answer is to stop using an opaque, closed source iPhone. Maybe some time in the next five years one will emerge that competes with Apple’s quality? Until then, every border crossing is going to risk handing over a huge part of my life to ICE because I can’t risk losing anything in a backup/restore hysteresis loop.
Post.: Another future direction would be for iOS and apps to recognise this as a common use case and provide guarantees about what is and what isn’t restorable after a wipe.
There’s also a conflict here between wiping data so that it is irretrievable and wiping data to later retrieve it. If you wipe with the intent to retrieve I can believe that immigration will just detain you until you restore your phone so that it can be searched.
It feels like buying a fire safe (phone and app backups) without any kind of understanding if it works then burning your house down to see if it works. I want a fire safe (phone and app backups) that is up-front with guarantees it works!
I should have said this by the way: for a long time I did wipe my phone when crossing borders, learning the hard way all the little details that don’t quite work properly when doing a restore from backups.
Isn't that actually one of the things you want to do to validate the backup process?
Better to figure out in a non disaster scenario where you have alternatives.
It's quite easy to restore an icloud backup to a different phone or even ipad for testing purposes, if one were reliant on icloud to hold their data.
Ultimately it's not enough for individuals to spend this effort for themselves. We need a self-managed option that is nearly as turnkey as iCloud. A distro with it built from the outset.
It's not like my backup of my ~/Photos directory where I can copy to a USB and md5sum the files on a separate computer and check the match.
This is an issue I face- I have a collection of thermal cameras that use apps to control them- after every install onto a phone, they then reach out t oa server to authenticate.
Here's the issue- though I have a few older phones- these apps are 32 bit ones, so no modern phone after Android 13 will run them. And they are all now not on the app store anymore,as they all came out about around 2016. i did use a APK extractor to pull the APKs to store them - but the native backup functionality wouldn't capture that authorization in the future, I might rob myself of my ability to use some extremely expensive, and long-term invested capable hardware, by backing up and restoring-
I suspect a full image would solve this problem, but I don't think one can do that outside of things like TWRP- but that requires unlocking the bootloader, and if you do that it wipes your device- AND is more vulnerable to Custom's usage of Cellebrite and etc, to my undertanding.
I don't have this issue with laptops ,as I can fully image them and wipe and restore ahavend have a perfect replica/ no issues. But my thermal cameras do not run off of PC and th eform factor wouldn't work if they did
A lot of this is from anchoring important things to your phone. I practice, and strong recommend, avoiding that as much as possible. Your phone should be entirely disposable. If you drop it in the ocean, would you care (other than the monetary loss)? If yes, find way to detach those things from the phone. There should be nothing important on a phone.
So be it. I used to say that the reason I valued my privacy was not that I did not trust my government _today_, it was the fact that data would be available to every potential authoritarian government _tomorrow_.
Welp, today has become tomorrow, and yeah, I'd _absolutely_ rather just have my devices seized than have the contents of my phone dumped into a database that can be searched without a warrant, for the next 15 years.
Rights (like the 4th amendment) that are not exercised are not upheld. I'm sure the threat of having one's devices stolen (let's be clear, that's what this is), is enough to deter many people. For myself, my next course of action would be to contact the ACLU and sue the government for violating the 4th amendment.
Even if you do sue the gov't, it'll be at least a year before any kind of resolution that results in the return of that device. Them keeping my phone would be one thing, but if they also kept my laptop, I'd be screwed. My laptop is much more than $1k, and there's no free laptop with contract cell service I could use to replace it. Now I'd be without a means of working.
These kinds of situations make me really yearn for the days of replacing the internal hard drive of a laptop. I could swap out my daily use drive for a travel drive, which would be much less of a hassle than the options on offer for modern laptops.
I don't know if other bootloaders outside GRUB have a silent/hidden start option, as well in a similar vein that would require you to hit a key in that first second to get the menu to appear, or else it just boots up normally
I wonder about the other approach, just going into the BIOS nad changing the order so Windows boots first, which should be doable in some setups. Lock the BIOS with a password, and you're in not bad shape. (Not sure if Secure Boot being enabled could also help here - probably couldn't hurt)
I am a US citizen though. The only real goal for me at CBP is to avoid secondary at all. I'm not worried at all about them coming for me after I leave the airport. If that sort of stuff starts to happen... I am screwed anyway. They can find records of everything I've said by just compelling US companies to disclose it to them.
I left a comment about Veracrypt offering the Hidden OS feature, with two passwords - one for the dummy OS and one for the real OS. However it doesn't seem to be supported anymore on Windows 11 or modern hardware, the option is greyed out on my laptop with no explanation.
I'd suggest that if $1K is a big deal to lose, one should not spend such an ungodly amount on a phone.
Perfectly adequate phones can be had for $100-$200. I couldn't imagine wasting more than that on a phone.
You're totally ignoring the option of wiping your phone prior to crossing, and avoiding both fates.
>Rights (like the 4th amendment) that are not exercised are not upheld. I'm sure the threat of having one's devices stolen (let's be clear, that's what this is), is enough to deter many people. For myself, my next course of action would be to contact the ACLU and sue the government for violating the 4th amendment.
This already has been litigated, and the courts have affirmed CBP can deny entry or seize your phone. By all means, try to affect change by writing to your senator or whatever, but displays of civil disobedience is mostly pointless. ACLU won't even take on your case because it's been settled, and the chance of it being overturned is slim.
China not anymore. You can now easily travel there without visa.
Turkey is still too aggressive and risky, but at least you don't have to wait 6 hrs at their border anymore.
> wipe your phone and restore from backup
If they can compel you to divulge the password, then they can compel you to restore from backup in front of them.
Of course, if your backup is to a US-based cloud service, they already have full access to it.
if they're really out to target you and they've got you under investigation, then maybe they know what your primary email account is and that your phone isn't signed in to it. but the advice here is for the traveller who just doesn't want to be hassled at the border by the guard who wants to flex their power.
It’s a mantra but it’s incorrect: You’re supposed to list your “online accounts” to the border agent in the US.
Thanks in advance.
> U.S. citizens cannot be denied entry to the United States for refusing to provide passwords or unlocking devices. Refusal to do so might lead to delay, additional questioning, and/or officers seizing your device for further inspection. [...] If an officer searches and/or confiscates your laptop or cell phone, get a receipt for your property.
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encounter...
[2]: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/can-border-agen...
First, it's the fourth amendment that protects against unreasonable search. Fifth amendment is protection against self-incrimination.
My understanding is that fourth amendment protections effectively do not apply at the border [1] because the border is inherently a reasonable place to search people.
In regards to being compelled to unlock your phone, CBP maintains the position [2] that in order to uphold their duties they're inherently able to compel you. Anecdotally, if you don't unlock your device, they may (a) confiscate it (and possibly apply all sorts of cracking tech to it), or (b) refuse you entry. That said, a random law firm [3] cites that you can withhold a password-based lock, but CBP can compel you to provide biometric unlocking [3].
To me, this is a case of https://xkcd.com/538/ ; you may have a legal basis to refuse, but in the current iteration of the administration I find it unlikely that it would be a positive experience if you were to stand on it. (Not that CBP is going to beat you with a pipe wrench, but if they want in your phone, they're gonna get in your phone.)
[1] https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-04/19-borde... [2] https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-searc... [3] https://borderslawfirm.com/border-search-computers/
I.e., this warning example from this week,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43618754 ("Lawyer for U-M protester detained at airport after spring break trip with family (freep.com)")
(US citizen, attorney, detained for 90 minutes as punishment for asserting his rights and refusing to unlock his work phone, which contained privileged attorney-client communications).
IIRC there is a radius around every international airport where such warrantless searches are legal.
But Stallman is a kook.
Game developers pushed really really hard for this, to combat cheaters or those wishing to skip on in-app purchases and ads.
And Netflix was the driver behind the anti-rooting measures, who in turn were pressured by the MAFIAA and other "rightsholders" (aka, parasites).
I'm writing this from a GNU/Linux phone, Librem 5, which offers the full freedom of a desktop (including a full desktop mode when you connect it to a keyboard and screen). My daily driver.
> No cell radio.
Librem 5 has a hardware kill switch for that.
Here's the issue- though I have a few older phones- these apps are 32 bit ones, so no modern phone after Android 13 will run them. And they are all now not on the app store anymore,as they all came out about around 2016. i did use a APK extractor to pull the APKs to store them - but the native backup functionality wouldn't capture that authorization in the future, I might rob myself of my ability to use some extremely expensive, and long-term invested capable hardware, by backing up and restoring-
I suspect a full image would solve this problem, but I don't think one can do that outside of things like TWRP- but that requires unlocking the bootloader, and if you do that it wipes your device- AND is more vulnerable to Custom's usage of Cellebrite and etc, to my undertanding.
I don't have this issue with laptops ,as I can fully image them and wipe and restore ahavend have a perfect replica/ no issues. But my thermal cameras do not run off of PC and th eform factor wouldn't work if they did
As my favorite blogger puts it: "If the data is important, it's not stored in only one place. If there's no backup, it wasn't important." With that in mind, wiping the device and filling the gallery with high-resolution images of genitals covered in excrement remains one of the more effective passive defense strategies.
Jokes aside, it's depressing that crossing borders often means giving up fundamental digital privacy — and that we've largely normalized this. The idea that any government agent can dig through your phone without a warrant just because you're crossing a line on a map is dystopian at best.
I would not call that passive defense, that's a full on attack on the stomach.
This (along with healthcare) are examples for the "both parties are the same" refrain.
Neither side wants or advocates for the status quo (for US citizens to lose their rights at the border) but neither side is doing anything about it. They could easily eliminate the "constitution-free zone" exemption at borders and airports, but from what I can see, no lawmakers are talking about it.
Wipe your phone. If more people do this before travelling to the U.S. it'll quickly become less "suspicious". This is a privacy issue. I don't have anything to hide, but I also don't like the idea of having the contents of my phone backed up and saved for 15 years. It's just like how there's nothing under my pants that is of interest to the authorities. I just prefer wearing pants.
Another good tip for travelling to the U.S. is to fly, rather than drive, and to do a TSA pre-check at your point of departure. That way, if the Americans get too paranoid, you're not trapped on foreign soil and subject to their whims. You can just cancel your flight and go home.
Better yet, don't travel to the U.S. right now unless you absolutely have to. It's not a good time to vacation there. Your country may have travel advisories in effect for the U.S. (mine does). Listen to them.
The alarming thing is, we all do have something to hide now, unless you're full MAGA. When anything vaguely critical of the current administration can be used as grounds for detention without due process, every bit of information on our phones becomes "sensitive."
(Although as per the article, a fully wiped account looks suspicious -- it would need some innocuous apps or apps with no login info, etc.)
Sadly this is automatic, which means regular people can't use it. You workspace admin got to enable MDM, and then phone will prompt you if you want a work profile when you try to install it.
Sadly it doesn't seem to work on all phones.
it works on most flagships nowadays, so if you've got an okay phone, you're likely good
Side note: The sibling comments talk about creating a work profile which is different in that it still lives within the same user account and is not fully isolated.
Setting a duress password is not tedious.
AFAIK the justification for them to say "don't rely on adblockers for security/privacy" is that you can be more easily fingerprinted and those adblock lists are a moving target, vs. having better sandbox capabilities in the browser.
The rest is conjecture I don't have the motivation to debate at the moment.
As for the rest of the article... just get a second phone if this is a major concern, or wipe the phone and have it be perfectly clean when you go through customs. The only thing you need to remember is the password + a single TOTP backup code (write that one down maybe) to restore your cloud password safe (which you should have) then you can get access to all your other data from there.
If they rely on phoning home, such as a comparison of requests on different access, that's some top notch log analysis. Expensive too, compared to just running JS.
There was a lot of talk about duress passcodes several years ago, but I don't think any phones ever got it. Sure would be nice to have
There's no way around the wipe at least and better hope the bugger installed is not persistent in some firmware.
We need a similar solution for UEFI- that allows for truly hidden, foolproof hidden OS installs.
Better to use a burner/travel phone.
(Not to be confused with power + volume down which takes a screenshot).
That's assuming border patrol operates within the law and constitution.
https://informationsecurity.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toru...
The amount of bad advice here is staggering. You are not James Bond or some kind of ninja Seals secret agent.
You are a nobody attempting to enter a country, and you will be pissing off the border police.
Have some common sense.
The common sense would be don't go to countries where you risk being immediately sent home or to a slave colony in El Salvador for writing something mean about its president.
Its sad but people taking these other measures are rolling dice every time they go. Negotiating the leopard.
my biggest worry entering and leaving my own country is that my bag was lost, or theres a queue.
Now, as a French, I seriously consider being detained for something trivial and getting into a net of bureaucracy which would certainly extend my stay in the US. And I will not do that.
My grown-up children are suggesting vacation in New York and some other places, we will go to Asia instead where I was lucky enough to have only good experiences (especially in some countries). Nobody will care in the US but this is one less person to visit.
I would love the Americans to continue visiting us as nothing changed for them but I can totally understand that they will slow down as well, expecting unpleasantries.
Issues with border patrol can happen in any country. If they have bad mood, or you suddenly decided to piss them off, they will do their best to make your life harder. The US is not the best or worst to that matter. People who chose working as border patrol are not the smartest people out there (otherwise it is unlikely they would choose working at border patrol).
So I understand all precautions but saying its "common sense" not traveling there is a huge stretch IMHO.
I don't want that in my life. As simple as that.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-nationals-us-immigration-detain...
https://lamag.com/latravel/detained-at-the-border-what-forei...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tufts-student-grabbed-off-...
I really don't want this kind of nonsense in my life. Why would I visit a country that thinks this kind of treatment is okay?
Rest of articles state vague cases of travelers being sent back home at US border. Again nothing new here, at every country it up to border enforcement to make final decision regarding entry. Its nothing but regular "treatment".
If you don't want this - that's certainly your choice, but I really would like to hear about cases where legitimate travelers are thrown into detention centers and kept there for weeks. Something tells me there is no such stories, but I would still like to see the evidence.
Nobody forces you to go there, and especially play secret agent. If you go, you know that what you have can be searched so have nothing, or have something that is not controversial.
The same applies to all the countries in the world.
Extraordinary rendition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
Coups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
Otherwise yes, you are right - they are bullies.
They will try to bully us in many other ways but this has nothing to do with the devices and how to hide stuff.
I feel no moral or legal obligation to let them search through all my stuff just because of their policies, which don't seem at all compliant with our highest laws and ideals.
The source is here: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...
And what do we have in 2025?
I don't think it was a Lonely Planet https://www.bbc.com/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/AP5ln7N8TRGkf...
As far as I understand, the key point was visa processing. If they considered you suspicious (maybe because you were a reporter or a religious worker), they might flag you for surveillance. Otherwise they didn't really care. The expectation was that you would exchange currency in the black market, because the official rates were terrible. And that you might make some money by selling western goods. If you were part of a tour group, the chances are your official Intourist guide was involved in this.
Too old phone? Suspicious. Too empty phone? Suspicious...
The US, along with Canada, Australia, Germany and a few others have been asking people at the border to unlock their phones.
Wallpaper is a US flag. Home screen shows Truth Social, X and 4-chan. Smartphone cover displays a roaring eagle.
Hah! Phones are a PITA to reliably backup and restore. I outlined the pain I had with it in this recentish comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42652663
This is incredibly sketchy. As a non-American (Canadian), I think I’d probably just prefer to be refused entry to the US at that point.
Canada ending their intelligence sharing with the US would be a big win for citizens in the US and Canada. They basically rely on sharing records with a government with a very hostile and notoriously flawed justice system (that in practice results in quite racist results) and then using it to judge US citizens, which favors other immigrants from countries with weak or less flawed criminal systems or ones that do not share information with Canada.
Also, it is terribly unhelpful and uninformative.
Schneier’s blog post on this has tons of useful information in the comments: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/04/cell-phone-op...
The EFF wrote the canonical guide to this in 2017: https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017. I don’t know if it has been updated, but there is a lot that’s useful there.
I think the main thing to decide ahead of time is: will you unlock a phone on request, or are you willing to lose the powered-down phone or be denied entry if you refuse? Most of your decisions flow from there.
If unlocked and it leaves your sight, ALL your messages and photos and documents will be stored forever and are available warrantless in probably every country in the world.
I wonder what could happen to citizens who weren’t born in the US
Given what we’ve seen recently. Could it be possible they would refer these people to the state department to revoke their citizenships?
But next week it could all be different.
It seems like they are claiming that “not saying you intended to protest” is essentially lying on the initial visa application, thus fraud and grounds for revocation of residence and deportation
So, if CBP confiscated someone’s laptop or phone (because they don’t want to unlock it), then break into it, and find social media posts against genocide, and/or against the Trump administration… given how they’ve acted, who knows what they’d do
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnitedNations/comments/1jw8gyv/all_...
Insofar as the current regime has little or no respect for the rule of law, particularly due process, I can imagine them revoking someone's passport. The Secretary of State could certify that you have engaged in activities abroad that are opposed to U.S. foreign policy. On paper, the conditions for revocation are rather narrow. In practice with an adverse administration and a largely captured judicial branch, who knows? Either way, personally I don't care. No warrant - no looksies.
GrapheneOS had an opportunity to do this 1000% better... and they instead ship a kinda broken fork of SeedVault, which they have been intending to replace for a long time now.
This is an issue I face- I have a collection of thermal cameras that use apps to control them- after every install onto a phone, they then reach out t oa server to authenticate.
Here's the issue- though I have a few older phones- these apps are 32 bit ones, so no modern phone after Android 13 will run them. And they are all now not on the app store anymore,as they all came out about around 2016. i did use a APK extractor to pull the APKs to store them - but the native backup functionality wouldn't capture that authorization in the future, I might rob myself of my ability to use some extremely expensive, and long-term invested capable hardware, by backing up and restoring-
I suspect a full image would solve this problem, but I don't think one can do that outside of things like TWRP- but that requires unlocking the bootloader, and if you do that it wipes your device- AND is more vulnerable to Custom's usage of Cellebrite and etc, to my undertanding.
I don't have this issue with laptops ,as I can fully image them and wipe and restore ahavend have a perfect replica/ no issues. But my thermal cameras do not run off of PC and th eform factor wouldn't work if they did
Apple Pay cards and so forth, anything with 2FA codes, in Sweden we use "BankID" which is largely using a private key in secure storage and a pin to "sign" and "identify" people, you would be destroying those things in an unrecoverable way.
Also, restoring a phone takes a seriously long time (8-10hrs?) and some things might not restore. Music you might have saved for example.
Also, your restore process might be using the internet (which is also an issue), but if it's not: then you're bringing your backups with you most likely, so they're forfeit.
2FA is a pain to recover, but it shouldn't that _that_ long to restore a backup unless you don't have decent internet access. All of my important data and apps usually take maybe 2 hours to get back (including flashing the OS), 3 if you include 2FA recovery.
Local backups is kind of an interesting risk/reward situation. My phone usually spends most of its time downloading apps from Google Play when recovering, the data recovery itself is very quick. Just backing up the APKs (which do not contain anything interesting) would probably cut down my backup recovery time to less than half an hour. Of course, my pictures and music are all stored in self-hosted cloud services, if you care to keep a local copy then things will take longer.
1) We're talking about people who are most likely going to be using 4/5G and Hotel Wifi. The US anyway is far behind on bandwidth, I get symmetrical 1G for "free" in Sweden, last time I was in the US it was $60/mo for 60MBit.
2) Phones have as much as 1TiB of storage, even at the speed of storage that'll take a hot minute.
Getting the 2FA codes set up while not having access to those 2FA codes is going to be interesting.
It all depends on the security pyramid you have, and how much risk are you okay with. I store all my passwords in Dropbox .kdbx file, but I need these always in case of emergency, even from a different device. So I must not enable 2FA on Dropbox. The password to it (and the .kdbx file) lives only in my memory. I hope not to get hit in the head.
If you're trying to protect your data, probably better to set up a secondary, plaubile profile, and restore from backup after crossing the border. Or to take a burner phone and buy a completely new one inside the US after crossing.
here's some: mail it
not to mention that there are rooms and people trained in every airport to scan your phone as a routine component of their daily function WHEREAS customs on mail are 90% concerned about duties and 10% concerned about smuggling. 0% on what kinda sms you send to your buddies
I have old pixel phone that will work for simple stuff.
Oh, and if I don't have (bring) a phone at all?
I've got an old blackberry lying around somewhere. Even though that helps with "can you communicate at all with people not in shouting distance", there's a lot of stuff that just presumes you have the ability to install an app or visit a website — and that blackberry is so old that its web browser can't handle current standard HTTPS encryption.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
I was wondering about a different strategy: what about leaving your phone at home and then buying a new one after you've crossed the border?
It seems like it wouldn't be any less work than 'clean wipe and full restore post-crossing' and has the advantage that border agents can't search what you don't have.
If your trip is short and the return policy sufficiently generous, you might even be able to clean wipe the phone and return it before you cross again.
I'd be curious to hear what people think about something like this.
> I'd be curious to hear what people think about something like this.
Because you asked. It's extremely wasteful and therefore a bad idea.
I would imagine that stories, snapchat, and disappearing message features are probably safe, but I tell my loved-ones that it's not exactly clear what type of meta-data might remain on the device even using those features.
Here's one example: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-f...
However, this feature doesn't seem to work for Windows 11, or on some modern laptop hardware anymore?
Is there other software that offers similar functionality?
If you're concerned about having it searched, don't bring your primary phone. Go to a phone shop, buy an old phone, put your SIM card in it, and use that instead.
If you're worried about being beaten until you divulge your info, it's not like a burner phone is going to save you. They'll extract the login info for all your online accounts.
If you engage in stupidity online and it comes back to bite you because you wear it on your arm, my advice is don't go crying about it, unless you didn't believe enough in what you're saying to follow your words through with actions.
Talking about computer security as part of your job?
There is no end to it. Ultimately McCarthy will get what he wants if he wants it. The only way to make it hard for him is to overload him and protest it. (Which is instantly suspicious.)
I noticed you posted this from a non-throwaway account. Enjoy being flagged suspicious.
Yet there are comments form U.S. citizens elsewhere here that testify to having been detained at the U.S. border. They seem to have wide latitude in deciding who needs more scrutiny.
Only reason I would is tourism, and I like my vacations harassment & risk of detainment free
Sadly I was still quite young. Oh well, there are many other beautiful countries in the Americas. And especially south-America is substantially cheaper.
Even carry on got a lot better than it used to be in the days right after that. Like I'm pretty sure they had banned lighters for a bit (and a lot of people assume they still are) but they're explicitly allowed and I throw mine right into the scanner bin every time I fly. Not even being able to carry in a sealed bottle of water and having to take your shoes off is stupid, but about the extent of what's left. No more keeping all liquids (what even counts as a liquid?) in a ziplock bag and having to take it out, and even laptops can stay in with the new scanners they're rolling out
I've carried on an inflatable life vest with an active CO2 cartridge and that's also listed as fine. Though it did get flagged and secondary screened because it was in my bag, even though they don't say you have to leave it out.
In general the more you fly if you pay attention, you can pretty much know what will trigger it if you put it in your bag. Metal water bottle in the bag? Your bag is getting pulled, every time. I've even told them right where to look lol. Left out and it goes right through.
seeing the latest (leaked?) Cellebrite info from 2024 Summer- BFU State[Before First Unlock state] after posting on, modernimoPuxelsiPhones on the latest OS, and graphene devices see moto be the hardest to get into.
Anyway- , with computers - this was a solved problem from a technical standpoint- Yes I'm talking Truecrypt then, and today Veracrypt. The Hidden Container feature is impressive- but the Hidden OS feature allows for a truly hidden OS behind the scenes that can't be found at all. However, there's a unfortunate weakness that makes this hard to use today- it's limited to MBR , not UEFI [GPT]systems- so unless you like your computer not being able to have more than 2 Tb - and only 4 partitions (so good luck If you do a lot of stuff from dualbooting to other whatnot) We need a Veracrypt Hidden OS equivalent for UEFI systems that's truly undetectable.(That also will work for Linux and maybemeMac not just Windows as Veracrypt currently does - you can only make the Hidden Volumes on the non Windows versions of VC) There was one project to do it - and there were articles and a black hat presentation on 'Russian Doll Steganogrpahy" for a OS- but it didn't go anywhere from what I can tell, and everyone is now wide open .... Unless you have a MBR system. I also think I've heard UEFI is more easily secured than MBR in general and for the foreseeable future...
https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/russian-doll-steganograph...
https://i.blackhat.com/eu-18/Thu-Dec-6/eu-18-Schaub-Perfectl...
People have all sorts of reasons to have to travel to U.S. So I very much appreciate the advice rendered in TFA because the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments are considered optional at the U.S. border.
Should Americans be subject to search-for-no-reason at their own border? No, and I hope that as these border issues work their way through the legal system this will get sorted out. Please note that the CBP can say whatever they want about you having to give them a phone password, but you don't have to. They might keep your phone for a while and fuck around with it.
The entirety of Europe would not come close to making a majority of countries. Even if I grant you the "entirety of Europe", I bet I'm still right that most (i.e., more than half) of countries reserve the right to search your device at the border, and will compel you to give the password.
For instances where the authorities wish to suspect you of a crime, looks like France was prepared to compel you to give a password in 2022: https://www.fairtrials.org/articles/news/french-court-rules-...
EU-wide, 2024: https://www.politico.eu/article/police-can-access-mobile-pho...
In the U.S., I believe you are covered by your 5th Amendment self-incrimination protections. I have some recollection that there are situations where authorities will compel you, like if you're not the one being accused of the crime.