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 Interesting...
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@d3adpaul@mastodon.social @evacide@hachyderm.io
How is it hard? Law enforcement organizations have standard procedures of dealing with seized devices, they're not going to own it to incompetence if you told them a code and the code break the OS.
Also competent law enforcement organizations likely already knows what will happen if a duress password is entered (what happens immediately, and after a while) for a OS that's provided in public. They would have proof of you tampering with evidence if your device functions exactly like it has duress feature activated, after entering your password. -
@d3adpaul@mastodon.social @evacide@hachyderm.io
How is it hard? Law enforcement organizations have standard procedures of dealing with seized devices, they're not going to own it to incompetence if you told them a code and the code break the OS.
Also competent law enforcement organizations likely already knows what will happen if a duress password is entered (what happens immediately, and after a while) for a OS that's provided in public. They would have proof of you tampering with evidence if your device functions exactly like it has duress feature activated, after entering your password. -
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 I see so many reasons just to not go at all.
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@d3adpaul@mastodon.social @evacide@hachyderm.io
Oops.
One of the standard practice of LE is: they would put the devices into farady bags the second they seized it. -
@d3adpaul@mastodon.social @evacide@hachyderm.io
Oops.
One of the standard practice of LE is: they would put the devices into farady bags the second they seized it.@d3adpaul@mastodon.social @evacide@hachyderm.io They don't give it to the techies immediately. They follow whatever the techies said until they can hand it to the techies.
That's called cooperation. -
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 All
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@evacide - a significant number of Canadians have resolved the problem by stopping going into the country at all. This action by Canadians alone has cost the USA tens of millions.
@bazcook @evacide And you are right doing so... Honestly, who wants travelling to the current top hated country in the world? #StupidTrump
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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
The Land of the Free now has many new rules that don't exactly sing of freedom. -
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 In regards to the "uploading sensitive documents to the cloud, " please encrypt that data first. Either put them in a folder and password protect it, or encrypt it using other means.
I say this because cloud services can and do keep your data indefinitely (looking at you Google,) and there is no point giving them data they can read (especially sensitive stuff.)
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@evacide duress codes, play dumb "It was working when I handed it to you,. my password is my DOB..what did you do officer? why is my phone broken?"
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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.
