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The Legal Purgatory at the US Border: Detained, Searched, and Interrogated
An anonymous reader writes "America may be the land of the free, but upon arrival millions of visitors cross a legal purgatory at the U.S. border. It is an international legal phenomenon that is left much to the discretion of host countries. In some cases, this space between offers travelers far fewer rights than some of the least democratic and free countries on Earth. Limited access to legal counsel, unwarranted searches, and questionable rights to free speech to name a few. One of the more controversial — and yet still legally a contested grey area — are the rights travelers have in regards to electronics and device searches."
Um, the GP knows about hidden partitions and plausible deniability. Here, I'll quote: "never mind that they cannot prove you have one and that you may actually not have one in the first place". The GP also knows that, yeah, usually some bored border agent will take one glance at your booting laptop and wave you through with a yawn.
The GP also knows that if, for whatever reason, you do get flagged for extra attention, and they then realise you've got encryption capable of plausible deniability, that they will not give one iota of a shit about your protestations that you don't use it.
It's not about how technology works, it's about how people work, and people tend to react badly when they think you're hiding something - regardless of whether you're actually doing so.
So, yeah, you may eventually leave the interrogation room after the maximum legally-allowed eight hours and fifty nine minutes later (depending on jurisdiction and assuming they haven't found some pretext to "indefinitely detain" you), having missed your flight, your luggage thoroughly ransacked, your every last piece of electronics down to and including the xbox controller confiscated, your name permanently engraved on their hassle lists, your house searched, your neighbours and employers queried and your every phone call tapped for the next two years, but hey, you sure showed them, right?