For people who are concerned about having their devices seized at US airports starting Monday when ICE "assists" the TSA, EFF has this guide: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/journalist-security-checklist-preparing-devices-travel-through-us-border
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For people who are concerned about having their devices seized at US airports starting Monday when ICE "assists" the TSA, EFF has this guide: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/journalist-security-checklist-preparing-devices-travel-through-us-border
@evacide alternate solution: Take Amtrak
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For people who are concerned about having their devices seized at US airports starting Monday when ICE "assists" the TSA, EFF has this guide: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/journalist-security-checklist-preparing-devices-travel-through-us-border
@evacide Would be funny to take an old Pixel with a swollen battery and a half-popped display, install Graphene on it, then put no data on it, just encrypt it with a random number "password" so nobody can ever unlock it.
Take it to the airport and feed it to ICE. If you are lucky they will steal it and spend time in a futile effort to crack it. If you are REALLY lucky they won't notice that swollen battery, will try to charge it, and a battery fire in the "evidence room" will destroy more phones they are trying to crack.
It's just an old phone however unsafe, so this would be difficult to prosecute as phones with swollen batteries are not legally contraband.
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For people who are concerned about having their devices seized at US airports starting Monday when ICE "assists" the TSA, EFF has this guide: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/journalist-security-checklist-preparing-devices-travel-through-us-border
Good I have currently no plans to visit US: After reading through I decided to double check it talks about US, not China. But guess at Border Control the difference for non US residents might not be that different nowadays.
I would for both countries take a dedicated and prepared phone (other devices alike).
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@masek Because not everyone has the money to buy brand new devices every time they travel.
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@d3adpaul@mastodon.social @evacide@hachyderm.io
That would be good, if there isn't a thing "tampering of evidence".
Duress code is good only for wiping your device before they lay hands on your device.I do not place myself in enemy hands voluntarily (this is why I do not use the airlines, travel internationally, or even enter bag search buildings) and I will never peacefully hand over a computer or a phone. I see this given my position as the obligation of any soldier not to hand over classified military equipment to any member of an enemy army.
If I had a phone in Enemy hands with remote wipe capability in the absence of Google Play and a Google Account, I would wipe it even if this meant a 100% chance of an indictment. Better to take one for the team than let other people get raided, same as when I risked my own life by burning a grand jury subpeona in front of the courthouse.
When I had a phone pass through enemy hands in 2017, it was returned to me, but I presumed it rigged to capture the encryption passphrase so they could decrypt a copied image of the filesystem. I refused to boot it, instead smashing it to bits and disposing of the pieces.
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@masek Because not everyone has the money to buy brand new devices every time they travel.
@evacide @masek This is part of the cost of travel. You could have a semi-burn phone that travels with you, is factory reset at every border crossing or airport pass-through, and is discarded if siezed and returned. If you travel between two places regularly, make arrangements to keep phones that do NOT travel in both places.
If you cannot afford to protect the people you communicate with, you cannot afford to fly or travel internationally. For domestic travel, consider driving, Greyhound, Amtrak(at the moment), or anything else that never "inspects" electronics and rarely inspects baggage at all. Be alert to any changes, and cancel if you see the station infested with cops.
Yes, CPB and ICE have been known to board busses but I've never heard of them demanding everyone produce their phones for inspection. if THAT starts up, it's driving, biking, hiking, or (for some folks) hitching or hopping trains (yes, that is still done by experts). Or just staying within your local range.
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For people who are concerned about having their devices seized at US airports starting Monday when ICE "assists" the TSA, EFF has this guide: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/journalist-security-checklist-preparing-devices-travel-through-us-border
That is a hard "NOPE".
Traveling with brown skin, I would rather drive a week long road trip than go near an airport.
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Agreed. It was always aspirational - no disagreement there. But people visiting the US from abroad in the 1980s and 1990s would never have thought to themselves: "They might detain me for something that I wrote that disparages Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, or Bill Clinton, so I better hide that." You can add Ford and Carter to that list as well. Hell, even George W. Bush wouldn't have done that.
That just wasn't a concern.
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For people who are concerned about having their devices seized at US airports starting Monday when ICE "assists" the TSA, EFF has this guide: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/journalist-security-checklist-preparing-devices-travel-through-us-border
@evacide - good information.
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I do not place myself in enemy hands voluntarily (this is why I do not use the airlines, travel internationally, or even enter bag search buildings) and I will never peacefully hand over a computer or a phone. I see this given my position as the obligation of any soldier not to hand over classified military equipment to any member of an enemy army.
If I had a phone in Enemy hands with remote wipe capability in the absence of Google Play and a Google Account, I would wipe it even if this meant a 100% chance of an indictment. Better to take one for the team than let other people get raided, same as when I risked my own life by burning a grand jury subpeona in front of the courthouse.
When I had a phone pass through enemy hands in 2017, it was returned to me, but I presumed it rigged to capture the encryption passphrase so they could decrypt a copied image of the filesystem. I refused to boot it, instead smashing it to bits and disposing of the pieces.
@LukefromDC@kolektiva.social @evacide@hachyderm.io @d3adpaul@mastodon.social
If you want to wipe your device (either using "factory reset" feature or with the duress feature you set, doesn't matter), wipe it before you're served a search warrant, instead of relying on cops to trigger the wipe by offering the duress password to the cops.
Wiping it beforehand, you have "oh I was testing something on this phone and it went very bad", a plausible reason for the phone to be in a broken state w/ all data unreadable. Wiping it in front of the cops, you throw yourself into prison due to evidence tampering for no reason or benefit compared to the former situation. (Well unless you didn't get a chance to do the former)
This is what I meant. I don't mean "don't wipe your device", I mean "if you want to wipe your device, wipe it before the cops get your devices if you can, because doing it afterwards is legally risky".
Relying on cops to trigger duress wipe then playing dumb is extremely risky advice that can get people behind bars while they're not expecting it (unlike you, maybe). You're willing to wipe your device in front of cops and serve time in jail so your comrades won't be captured? Good for you. But suggesting that to the general public? Bad idea. (Also I'm not suggesting that solidarity is a bad thing here.) -
@masek I think that you fundamentally don't understand harm reduction and I hope you don't do privacy/security trainings.
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@LukefromDC@kolektiva.social @evacide@hachyderm.io @d3adpaul@mastodon.social
If you want to wipe your device (either using "factory reset" feature or with the duress feature you set, doesn't matter), wipe it before you're served a search warrant, instead of relying on cops to trigger the wipe by offering the duress password to the cops.
Wiping it beforehand, you have "oh I was testing something on this phone and it went very bad", a plausible reason for the phone to be in a broken state w/ all data unreadable. Wiping it in front of the cops, you throw yourself into prison due to evidence tampering for no reason or benefit compared to the former situation. (Well unless you didn't get a chance to do the former)
This is what I meant. I don't mean "don't wipe your device", I mean "if you want to wipe your device, wipe it before the cops get your devices if you can, because doing it afterwards is legally risky".
Relying on cops to trigger duress wipe then playing dumb is extremely risky advice that can get people behind bars while they're not expecting it (unlike you, maybe). You're willing to wipe your device in front of cops and serve time in jail so your comrades won't be captured? Good for you. But suggesting that to the general public? Bad idea. (Also I'm not suggesting that solidarity is a bad thing here.)@Orca @evacide @d3adpaul Remember that I am NOT talking from a civilian viewpoint here but rather as a combatant against an oppressive regime.
The rules are completely different if you have reason to believe information in your phone could expose others to arrest and prison. In today's US environment, a contact list of other activists who do candelight vigils is quite enough to trigger this concern.
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That is a hard "NOPE".
Traveling with brown skin, I would rather drive a week long road trip than go near an airport.
@softspeak @evacide As would I
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@Orca @evacide @d3adpaul Remember that I am NOT talking from a civilian viewpoint here but rather as a combatant against an oppressive regime.
The rules are completely different if you have reason to believe information in your phone could expose others to arrest and prison. In today's US environment, a contact list of other activists who do candelight vigils is quite enough to trigger this concern.
@LukefromDC@kolektiva.social @evacide@hachyderm.io @d3adpaul@mastodon.social
And this
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/journalist-security-checklist-preparing-devices-travel-through-us-border
piece of advice is for combatant and political activists?
The original post is about civilians and journalists.
If you want to talk about your experience being a combatant, you can start your own thread documenting your experience, you know?
Also all I have against that d3adpaul person's post is "relying on cops to trigger duress wipe then playing dumb is bad advice for civilians", is it that hard to see what I was trying to say??? -
@LukefromDC@kolektiva.social @evacide@hachyderm.io @d3adpaul@mastodon.social
And this
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/journalist-security-checklist-preparing-devices-travel-through-us-border
piece of advice is for combatant and political activists?
The original post is about civilians and journalists.
If you want to talk about your experience being a combatant, you can start your own thread documenting your experience, you know?
Also all I have against that d3adpaul person's post is "relying on cops to trigger duress wipe then playing dumb is bad advice for civilians", is it that hard to see what I was trying to say???@Orca @evacide @d3adpaul The post seemed more general than that. Remember that to Trump, anyone who takes to the streets to protest much less take direct action is considered a combatant. We know that from the Prarieland case.
EVERYONE who has data in their phone that would bring police attention to another person is obligated to protect that data or to wipe it.
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