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Second Circuit allows government to search electronic devices at the border

131 points · 79 comments · HotGarbage

  1. k310 · · focus · HN ↗
    Everyone please read Surveillance Self Defense from EFF [0]

    My advice, take a burner phone to the airport (and elsewhere?), and since devices are subject to warrantless search anywhere and everywhere, via exceptions to the fourth amendment [1] (the constitution seems designed to be bent or outright ignored), keep your data at home and encrypted. The "cloud" is a government data supermarket.

    For example.

    > While the Fourth Amendment is the foundation, federal and state laws can add layers of complexity. For example, the Patriot Act expanded the government's ability to conduct surveillance and searches, particularly in national security cases, sometimes with a lower burden of proof than traditional criminal investigations.

    MUCH lower.

    [0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssd.eff.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssd.eff.org&#x2F;

    [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uslawexplained.com&#x2F;warrantless_search" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uslawexplained.com&#x2F;warrantless_search

    1. rconti · · focus · HN ↗
      The resources you link to are helpful; however, this is not really practical advice for most people most of the time. To the extent that our smartphones are a very helpful device to have in our day-to-day lives at home, they&#x27;re even more useful in a foreign country where they become our only available computing device; indispensable for keeping in touch back home, navigation on unfamiliar transit systems, translation of unfamiliar languages, and so on.

      Of course, with great effort and moderate expense, you could setup a burner phone with access to many of your same accounts and resources, but the more features you add to the burner phone, the more it begins to look like the device you&#x27;re leaving &quot;safe&quot; at home.

      I&#x27;m traveling overseas tomorrow and my partner and I will both be taking our phones with us as we do every day in our home country.

      1. zrm · · focus · HN ↗
        &gt; the more features you add to the burner phone, the more it begins to look like the device you&#x27;re leaving &quot;safe&quot; at home.

        Wouldn&#x27;t a sensible way to do this be to create an encrypted backup of your device on a VPS, then restore it to the &quot;burner phone&quot; once you&#x27;re on the other side of the border, and wipe the device again before you come back?

        The idea being that whenever you&#x27;re at the border crossing, the device contains nothing, and the passphrase for the backup is in your head.

        1. rconti · · focus · HN ↗
          I don&#x27;t dispute the beneficial OPSEC here but it does nothing to reduce the burden.
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