Mastodawn

evacide Mar 19, 2025

If you're critical of the US government and you are planning to cross the US border any time soon, today is a good day to review EFF's border search pocket guide: https://www.eff.org/document/eff-border-search-pocket-guide

EFF Border Search Pocket Guide

border-pocket-guide-2.pdf

Electronic Frontier Foundation

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Serge Droz

@evacide I'm not sure having the device powered down is a good idea. I was forced several times to open a laptop to show it's indeed a laptop. And when it'' locked, with a good password, I think high tech attacks would be very hard.

Also you blend in less with a laptop or phone off

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Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️Mar 20, 2025

@sergedroz @evacide
Powering it off clears all kinds of sensitive information stored in your computer memory (like disk encryption key if you have it, all modern phone have disk encryption ^1 enabled by default), making it hard for anyone to extract your data.
Electronics forensics for Before First Unlock ^2 (before the device is unlocked for the first time, including powered off and phones powered on but not unlocked yet) and After First Unlock devices have very different difficulties.

^1 For Android it's file-based encryption for most morden Android devices, to be precise, iOS I'm not sure but there's definitely some data-at-rest encryption.
^2 For iOS devices repeatedly click power button 5 times put a device into BFU mode. Android can only reboot or power-off to achieve the same effect.

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Serge Droz Mar 20, 2025

@Orca @evacide thanks, good points I wasn't aware of.