What exactly does seizing a laptop even do anymore with the ubiquity of cloud storage?
Simply make an encrypted backup and wipe everything before traveling through airports and borders.
Simply make an encrypted backup and wipe everything before traveling through airports and borders.
what it has always done: Provide free equipment for border agents.
The implication that just because a best-prepared "opponent" can thwart someone, there's no point in engaging the <unknown>-prepared.
Turns out after a quick Google search there are a plethora of articles titled "Why are so many terrorists engineers?"
I wonder if there are many more good terrorists engineers who just haven't been caught yet.
Which helps against a border guard installed hardware keylogger how…? There's been reports of border guards flashing laptop firmwares (no idea how credible they are), which would make "wiping everything" rather difficult (you can re-flash the main firmware, but what about e.g. the Intel Management Engine firmware? That thing is a hardware rootkit by design).
True, but in some countries (such as the UK, under RIPA) it's illegal to refuse to give authorities your password or decryption key. You'd really want to use a decoy disk image with some content; an empty disk on an otherwise used-looking laptop arouses suspicion and would probably lead to further scrutiny.
Or keep your data on a server somewhere and hide the address and key, accessing your data remotely when you get to your destination.
Of course, there's the question of how to make a realistic-looking decoy account that doesn't look suspicious on account of not having any files created in the past year or two, but with a little creativity you could pull it off.
Simply carry around an encrypted local copy that's always secure and available, and never let any traffic traverse an uncontrolled network.