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What To Do If the Laptop Ban Goes Global (backchannel.com)
"The U.S. is reportedly seriously considering a greatly expanded ban on laptops in airplane cabins," writes Slashdot reader mirandakatz -- sharing some advice from Dan Gillmor. If the government still allows laptops to be checked in with luggage, "the priority will be to discourage tampering and mitigate the risks associated with theft," he writes, envisioning that "If I have to check mine, I'll pack it in bubble wrap and tape, and do some other things to make it evident if someone has tampered with the machine." But of course there's other precautions:
[W]e can travel with bare-bones operating system setups, with as little personal or business data as possible (preferably none at all) on the laptop's internal disk drive. When we arrive and get back online, we can work mostly in browsers and retrieve what we need from cloud storage for the specific applications that have to run "locally" on the PC... You might also get a Chromebook for international travel. Chromebooks run Google's Chrome operating system and keep pretty much all data in Google's cloud. So you could carry a bare Chromebook through a border, go online, and retrieve the information you need. You have to completely trust Google with this method...
[The article also suggests encrypting the hard disk -- along with your phone -- or carrying an external drive.] I use the Ubuntu operating system, and this simplifies creating a special travel setup. In preparation for international hassles, I've put a copy of my OS and essential data files on an encrypted USB thumb drive, which holds 256 gigabytes of data... If I've forgotten to load some specific files, and I have them backed up in the cloud, I can always go there.
Because of all the additional security procedures, he utlimately predicts higher ticket prices, fewer business travellers, and, according to Bruce Schneier, "a new category of 'trusted travelers' who are allowed to carry their electronics onto planes."
[The article also suggests encrypting the hard disk -- along with your phone -- or carrying an external drive.] I use the Ubuntu operating system, and this simplifies creating a special travel setup. In preparation for international hassles, I've put a copy of my OS and essential data files on an encrypted USB thumb drive, which holds 256 gigabytes of data... If I've forgotten to load some specific files, and I have them backed up in the cloud, I can always go there.
Because of all the additional security procedures, he utlimately predicts higher ticket prices, fewer business travellers, and, according to Bruce Schneier, "a new category of 'trusted travelers' who are allowed to carry their electronics onto planes."
Honestly, who the heck trusts that their laptop would not be seriously damaged or stolen if they check it in their baggage? I've had things that were MUCH LESS fragile than a laptop completely destroyed in checked baggage.
My plan is to avoid travel by plane as much as I can. And if I really have to travel, then I'm going to leave my laptop at home. I don't trust the baggage handlers not to steal it, so checking in is not an option.
Encrypting your dead tree notebook must have taken forever
You can travel with something like an Intel NUC Skull Canyon or a Compute Stick and just plug it into the hotel TV's HDMI port. No laptop battery, no fire hazard, etc. Or you can simply use your phone as a computer and plug it into an HDMI port.
You can carry sensitive data on a separate micro-SD card, which, realistically, airport security or passport control won't look for or find unless you're already on a terrorist watch list, in which case a laptop ban is the least of your worries.
It is will just erode the market share of laptops. We really don't need lug around a keyboard, screen, pointing device and a battery anymore. Just a simple nexus-4 sized pack with memory and cpu. Docking stations that can take this device and add a keyboard, mouse, pointing device and a screen will hit the market. Hotels will provide it, may be for a fee, may be free. We will have one dock at work and one at home. We might buy and keep more such docks for visitors and guests. This is going to be the future. Will happen whether laptops get banned on planes or not. If laptop ban goes global this will accelerate the timeline.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
That is a sensible solution and one that would stop mobile / tablet / laptop manufacturers from sealing in batteries. A double win.
I'm a doctor you insensitive clod, my handwritings already encrypted!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Or we could elect a different class of politicians instead of following blind tribalism. Sorry, but all this is self inflicted, and every chance they have, the voters only make it worse.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Just don't have any threatening math in your notebook.
I write Roman numerals instead of Arabic numerals. ;)
How do you know what OS / backdoor is on that laptop/device ?
It is already a huge burden to have a minimum level of privacy on "random" devices.
A device that is specifically given to foreign visitors is surely going to be snooped upon.
So far, the USB computer on a stick is still the best bet.
I'll expense a Chromebook or netbook at my trip's destination, or get a loaner from IT if I'm visiting one of my company's sites. I'll throw the Chromebook in the garbage before I leave.
We beat the terrorist, but add millions of tons of electronics to landfills.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's any gear larger than a phone, which means all your expensive cameras and lenses as well. I was hoping to see a few ideas I might not have thought of from fellow photographers already given there's over 100 comments, but since I appear to be the first here's my thoughts for travelling with a backpack's worth of high-end camera gear:
Firstly, define "global". If we're just talking about any flights flying to/from the US/UK (or any other countries that start doing this), then the obvious initial step is to route around the problem by flying via airports that don't transit the US and UK. If one of your endpoints is in the US/UK, then that's tougher and depends on your location - driving over the Candian or Mexican border may be an option for the US, while for the UK CDG is only a Eurostar and change from London, and Dublin a short trip from Northern Ireland.
If we *really* mean "global" - e.g. every international flight, regardless of endpoints - or the above is unworkable for any reason, then it's going to have to be a Peli Case or similar, and rolling the dice with theft by airport staff and genuine loss in transit. Where practical, I'd hope to mitigate against that by shipping ahead of time as freight - there's better insurance cover anyway, and I'd expect international couriers to start exploring opportunities in this area to make things easier and more cost effective if the ban does go global. If I do have to travel with the gear, then I'm thinking of going for a padded Pelicase I can just put my regular backpack and a few other items in, which means it's going to be big and heavy and will need to be run though oversize baggage. Actually, I'm probably going to make sure that it does, because while that means special handling and more cost, it also means better tracking and in some instances to put the airline on the hook for the full value of the contents if it goes astray. I'll probably put couple of "Fragile" stickers and maybe some of those impact detection stickers on there as well.
Finally, and regardless of the above, screw the compromised TSA locks. I use proper padlocks and security gets confronted with an inventory of the case's contents should they decide to bolt-cutter it - good padlocks are not that expensive, and it's a much better deterant against opportunistic theft by anyone with the magic key.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
That's why, as someone else already mentioned, the right workaround (ignoring the huge inconvenience of not being able to work during the flight itself) would be to buy a gun (even a starter pistol) and store it (properly declared and unloaded) in a checked lockbox along with your laptop.
Of course, if everyone who owned a laptop did this, the TSA would probably implode from the extra workload of handling that many hand inspections, but that's not my problem; that's something for the total newbie TSA people who naïvely proposed a no-laptops-onboard policy to solve.
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