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Should International Travelers Leave Their Phones At Home? (freecodecamp.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the call-me-later dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader Toe, The sums up what he learned from freeCodeCamp's Quincy Larson: "Before you travel internationally, wipe your phone or bring/rent/buy a clean one." Larson's article is titled "I'll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you." All the security in the world can't save you if someone has physical possession of your phone or laptop, and can intimidate you into giving up your password... Companies like Elcomsoft make 'forensic software' that can suck down all your photos, contacts -- even passwords for your email and social media accounts -- in a matter of minutes.... If we do nothing to resist, pretty soon everyone will have to unlock their phone and hand it over to a customs agent while they're getting their passport swiped... And with this single new procedure, all the hard work that Apple and Google have invested in encrypting the data on your phone -- and fighting for your privacy in court -- will be a completely moot point.
The article warns Americans that their constitutional protections don't apply because "the U.S. border isn't technically the U.S.," calling it "a sort of legal no-man's-land. You have very few rights there." Larson points out this also affects Canadians, but argues that "You can't hand over a device that you don't have."

11 of 514 comments (clear)

  1. Ways around this by Anaerin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Depending on how long you're staying, you could send your phone via courier to meet you at your destination. Of course, then you have to trust the courier company and the customs agents handling the package.

    1. Re:Ways around this by Gussington · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeesh, calm down will ya. Just be cause I don't want to visit your country due to the protracted, draconian and at times even humiliating process I'd have to subject myself to in order to get a Visa, that does not mean that I hate Americans.

      This is an important point which is often overlooked in diplomatic relations. When you hear leaders speak, they'll say Russia this, or America that, or Japan this or China that etc, but what they really mean is the current administration, not the country or its people. If I was the boss of my country I'd come out and say we love Americans, the people are great, the countryside is great, it's just the current head of state is a fuckwit with so we choose not to engage for the next 4 years. We look forward to dealing with the American people again whe they choose a competent leader. Regards.
      This would prevent this from using it as a wedge to boost patriotic support, because the attack is purely on the person only, and not the country.

    2. Re: Ways around this by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There should be a way to do this and just move all the data to a microSD card. Then you can bring the card with you and transfer the data back later.

      The microSD card, since it's so incredibly small, would be very easy to hide somewhere, like your wallet.

    3. Re:Ways around this by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      He has some skills, but the idea that he amassed billions is laughable. He inherited a large amount of money and his investments have not performed as well as the overall market.

      And that's based on the best estimate of his wealth. It's quite possible that his wealth is significantly less than he claims. As a concrete example of this, in the disclosures he made as a presidential candidate, he listed some $20M in income from his golf course in Scotland: problem is, it's losing money. The $20M is revenue, not profit.

      So, let me throw that back at you and suggest that you are not as smart as you think you are.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    4. Re: Ways around this by ezdiy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm using a 64GB sd card a bit differently. Forget copying things back and forth, that's too much hassle with plenty of room for mistakes.

      Instead, get a phone with vendor supplied sdcard backdoor (there's plenty of those, just look for root tutorials of your favorite vendors). For example huawei ones look for dload/update.app, This is made of kernel and squashfs image. You can just rip those from internal ROM, except modify the sdcard version /system squashfs slightly so that fstab mounts sdcard partitions to /cache and /data (running whole system off sd is possible too, but a bit involved to bastardize the rom for it). Put the card in, start the phone and voila - entirely different world boots up, remove the card, and its back to original.

      I did this mainly because the sdcard image is rooted and heavily customized, while the internal rom is the original vendors (to not void warranty). But as a side effect, this way you get perfect plausible deniability. Without the sdcard, the phone is pretty much stock, with no indication that entirely different world exist on some card that isn't there.

  2. Attack Software by pubwvj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So what happens when travelers start carrying attack hardware & software that bites back. Imagine that the border agent sticks your phone into his reader and along with your data your phone injects a virus into his system. This can be done at very low levels. Or your 'phone' might simply send out 200,000 volts of power through the connection frying boarder patrol's expensive equipment.

    Sounds like a good plot for a thriller spy movie...

    And it's all possible.

  3. Need more layers of encryption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You must give border agents a key that will unlock your phone, but what if your phone had multiple levels of unlock? One key unlocks it to show a minimal contact list, texts and phone call histories of only select contacts and web history of only whitelisted sites. Sign in with a different key and suddenly your full history is available. If the filesystem is encrypted who is to know you haven't done a full unlock for the border goons.

  4. No Different From Laptops by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is no different from the drill for laptops. On your travel day, back up your phone, encrypt the backup, send through your by vpn to a server stateside, reset the phone to factory defaults. Download the backup when safely stateside.

    --
    Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  5. The border exception is a usurpation. by jcr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The US Constitution is the entirety of the legal basis for the very existence of the American federal government. Is it binding upon all American government officials, agents, and employees at all times and all places. There is no provision in the constitution for the suspension of the bill of rights at the border, and the fact that our rights are routinely violated when entering the country is because our courts are derelict in their duty to enforce the constitution.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  6. Re:Stay away. by Spaham · · Score: 5, Interesting

    yep !

    I even used to live there as a student.
    I'm not planning to come back any time soon now.
    Why bother with all the hassle ?

  7. Worse than North Korea by psychonaut · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've made scores of international trips in my life, for business and pleasure, and on only one occasion did the border guards demand access to my laptop. That was at Pyongyang International Airport in North Korea, in August of 2015. And at least the search was conducted in full view of myself -- they even asked me to do a lot of it myself, since they were completely unfamiliar with KDE and couldn't type on my Dvorak keyboard. It turns out all they were looking for were South Korean movies (which they didn't want me distributing to the locals), and as soon as it became obvious that I had none, they called off the search.