# Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first



## TechGuy (Feb 12, 1999)

[WEBQUOTE="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/15/computing.security"]Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.[/WEBQUOTE]


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## jonasdatum (Jul 15, 2000)

LOL, let us see if they are willing to spend the time cracking my encrypted files only to discover useless data. LOL I can hear it now "My word, he has moderate to high encryption on his computer. Multiple files with two different applications! is he a terrorist or somebody who just had enough sense to protect his personal data?" Let us waste more valuable tax dollars to find out. 

My point is will this turn into a form of digital profiling? Everybody has some capacity of digital data on them at any given time. How do you know who to stop? How do you know if the data is erased from their database after it has been 'inspected'?

Think I better by better encryption software.


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## TechGuy (Feb 12, 1999)

I've also heard of some encryption software that will allow you to create two keys -- one that will unlock "safe" data if force to type in a key, and one that will unlock "private" data when you're not under the gun.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I need that dual key program, just to tick them off!


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## STAW (May 15, 2008)

Seriously. That's madness.
What can they possibly gain by doing that? Carrying a computer across national borders doesn't seem like a way that anyone would use to hide their data.


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## 1002richards (Jan 29, 2006)

JohnWill,
TrueCrypt allows "plausible deniability" - a conealed hidden area within the obvious hidden area. 
But on the sunny side - think of all the IT jobs that this policy will offer! Unless everyone stores stuff on remote backups. 

Richard.


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## CDATech (May 1, 2008)

/Adds to the paranoia

Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

Glad I don't travel anywhere, I'd have a really hard time letting go of my precious ol' Thinkpad to some random people to search it. I store everything on my network anyway, with the exception of some music. That way it's backed up nightly.

I don't understand their logic in all this airport security. They can't prevent everything, why bother trying?


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## firestormer (Sep 16, 2005)

One of the many reasons i dont plan to go to the US.

Seriously though how anoying you've just got of 16 hour filight or whatever and you get to customs where they spend another hour donwloading your eniter 500 GB HD. If i where to go to the US i would do what jonasdatum does and encrypt everything to hell.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

...if they found everything horribly encrypted they'd probably never give up until they broke through. It would be hilarious to do that to irritate them, though. 

I still don't see the point...couldn't a potential terrorist still just ship the laptop over and get on the plane without it?


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## 1002richards (Jan 29, 2006)

... or have the stuff e-mailed to him/her once through Customs?


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## hairybusdriver (Mar 13, 2008)

Yeah, i would purposely encrypt documents and photoshopped pictures that read 
*Ha Ha, you guys just waisted your whole day cracking my hdd for nothing!!*
oh the expressions on there faces would be priceless, and i would not stop laughing.


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## DragonMasterNYC (May 20, 2008)

If I turned back to doing what I used to do I would make a program for free to give to all people that go in and out of the US that when they try to copy any data when activated disables any hardware that can be used to move or copy any data (Network cars, USB, CD/DVD...)

Shoot if I could I would make new security screws for all laptops that we only have the screwdrivers for.

It's bad enough they listen to our phone calls.

US Government Leave us alone start boosting our internet speeds, pull our people out of the middle east, and do something about these ISPs we have. (packet shaping or network management AKA blocking or slowing down the net for us)

Dragon Out


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

DragonMasterNYC said:


> US Government Leave us alone start boosting our internet speeds, pull our people out of the middle east, and do something about these ISPs we have. (packet shaping or network management AKA blocking or slowing down the net for us)


Well, at least they did one of them.


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## ~Candy~ (Jan 27, 2001)

I posted this somewhere else, quite some time back.............


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## Rivera42 (Aug 3, 2007)

Another pointless show of force by US "security" agents. 
Considering that the sort of data this policy alleges to be sniffing out would probably fit on a micro SD card (which are available >4GB, quite ample even for a PDF copy of the "Anarchist's Cookbook"), and considering the physical size of said SD cards and the ease with which they can be concealed, I really don't see any reason why we should expect this policy to catch any actual criminals. This is just another excuse to pry into our personal business under the pretense of "protecting" us.


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## jonasdatum (Jul 15, 2000)

Rivera42 said:


> Another pointless show of force by US "security" agents.
> Considering that the sort of data this policy alleges to be sniffing out would probably fit on a micro SD card (which are available >4GB, quite ample even for a PDF copy of the "Anarchist's Cookbook"), and considering the physical size of said SD cards and the ease with which they can be concealed, I really don't see any reason why we should expect this policy to catch any actual criminals. This is just another excuse to pry into our personal business under the pretense of "protecting" us.


Yep! :up::up::up:


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## Rivera42 (Aug 3, 2007)

It's not just the US, either.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/108305
Not quite the same practice, but certainly just as bad.


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