the last time this idiocy was going around, companies were switching employees to netbooks, chromebooks, thin clients, burners, etc. when traveling – default install, don’t log in until in the other country, log out or wipe before leaving the other country – this time, the corporations seem perfectly happy to capitulate and throw their corporate secrets (and the employees) under the bus …
Probably because most backup solutions, especially mobile, are inadequate. Telling employees to wipe their phone and having 5% lose their 2FA, important docs, or whatever is worse than the 0.01% probability of their phone being searched.
I’ve been wiping all devices when crossing borders for a decade, but I don’t use big tech (non E2EE) cloud, and the whole process is the most stressful part of international travel for me.
Easiest solution is to do everything on a remote host and just use the laptop or rdp or ssh or whatever works best for you system.
When you travel, bring as few devices as possible with you. Obviously, you’ll bring your phone with you, but leave your laptop at home if you can.
Last time I travelled overseas I took a burner phone without a calling plan, and just used it as a wifi device at the hotel. I used google maps and “offline maps”, GPS still worked. Used the phone as a camera, and I would have uploaded anything private and wiped locally but that wasn’t necessary.
If anyone at the border had asked, I’d have said it was so I didn’t risk losing my phone, and so work couldn’t call me up and bug me during vacation.
What about checking it into your luggage (assuming airport)? It’s unlikely that they’ll fish it out and bring it to the security checkpoint just to get you to unlock it. For land travel, maybe mail it to your hotel or something.
That’s better than not having a phone at all.
Don’t they have universal unlocks for suitcases? They can just take a phone / laptop out, disassemble it quickly to clone the hard drive (or sometimes not even that, just power it on and use any of the various Israeli exploits they’ve bought) and presto, you can go on your merry way.
Here’s what travelers should know: “This site isn’t available in your region | usatoday.com”
Yeah very cool. Also I presume that translates to “We can’t be fucked to care about user privacy enough to comply with GDPR”. And also “We can’t be fucked to know what the EU is”. Because they are blocking access to me here in Switzerland, outside the EU, where GDPR doesn’t apply.
Buy a burner phone. Use a newly created email. Don’t install any of your socials (not even lemmy).
Use only Signal (with messages auto deleted after being read) to be in touch with the really close friends and family.
Don’t bring your personal laptop.
If it’s a longish stay you may install socials a few days after completing immigration. But don’t use fingerprint or Face ID in that case.
The neat part of this is then getting detained for even longer for “suspicious activity”
Hopefully the respective country’s embassy and place of work (outside of work, study I don’t see why anyone would want to go to that hellscape) can step in. Like check in with your significant other post landing when you’re waiting at immigration checkpoint. And if you’re not heard from after that, alarm bells should go off and embassies should be informed.
Wow. Here is a free guide from the EFF, though it’s from 2017 so I don’t know how useful it still is.
The article doesn’t mention what happens if non-citizens decline, but The Guardian says:
For visa holders and travelers from visa waiver countries, they are at risk of being denied entry if they refuse to unlock devices
Which is really dumb IMO, because if a cop tries that just after being allowed in, then it’s a violation of the 4th amendment. I really hate that.
The law here actually extends to areas near international borders(up to 100 miles) and in principle includes any airport that receives international flights. So, basically everywhere. This occasionally comes up in real cases.
Sort of. The federal government has extra control in those 100 miles, but they can’t just violate your rights.
No, use a burner phone. Don’t install any apps, and only have the most important numbers in there, if at all. Use a new mail account with it.
Then you’ll be detained because obviously you got something to hide, let’s find out what!
