Mastodawn

Brandon 17h ago

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

A Journalist Security Checklist: Preparing Devices for Travel Through a US Border

We wrote this checklist to help journalists prepare for transit through a U.S. port of entry while preserving the confidentiality of your most sensitive information, such as unpublished reporting materials or source contact information. It’s important to think about your strategy in advance, and begin planning which options in this checklist make sense for you.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Chad Zahara 21h ago

@evacide It's ridiculous that it has come to this. I live an hour or so from the U.S. border. We used to go on day trips there just for fun, shop, get a bite to eat... Not anymore.

Stay safe, stay away.

David J. Atkinson 21h ago

@evacide Thanks for the timely reminder. I strongly support the work of #EFF . Everyone who has demonstrated or even expressed as little as a sentiment contrary to the regime should be concerned about what could happen when you in a border zone or crossing a border into or out of the US. If you are or become a “person of interest” then you must take personal #infosec seriously. I will never take the device I’m typing on right now across a border. Nor my personal smartphone.

The Galactic Janitor 21h ago

@evacide There was a time, growing up, that the USA was called "The Land of the Free"....

What is happening now is so ludicrously insane that words fail me.

@natharari @evacide
It was always a façade.

Heathen 🐈20h ago

@natharari @evacide
Ask most black people if they remember that time. I don't mean this as a "gotcha", the country has always been like this, it's just affecting white people more now.

Ricardo Harvin 20h ago

@heathen_cat @natharari @evacide

It seemed to be getting better, finally, but now it feels much closer to Jim Crow days, than true freedom.

It's a limbo that fills me with existential dread.

Deb Nam-Krane 20h ago

@heathen_cat I'm AAPI, not Black, but the difference between the way I'm treated vs the way my white husband is treated is amazing. (And I have witnesses: our children.) Conventions that he thinks are suggestions I have to observe scrupulously.

I've seen people be more hostile and aggressive with my Black friends. Yeah, they don't remember Land of the Free very well.

@natharari @evacide

The Galactic Janitor 5h ago

@heathen_cat @evacide

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.

Vysogota 20h ago

@evacide sorry, I am defo too afraid of getting a soldering iron up my rectum to bring any encrypted devices through the US border...

Barry Cook 🇨🇦20h ago

@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

Fazal Majid 19h ago

@evacide one flaw in the guidance is it assumes there is still the rule of law in the US, e.g. the difference between US citizens and not. Minneapolis has shown otherwise.

If I were a journalist or any other enemy of the gangster state, I'd basically rely on Tails OS on a flash drive purchased locally, with all information stored on encrypted storage overseas. Also to be prepared for rubber-hose cryptanalysis.

d3adpaul 19h ago

@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?"

Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️18h ago

@d3adpaul @evacide
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.

d3adpaul 18h ago

@Orca @evacide very hard to prove you tampered with evidence if you had over a perfectly good phone and they input your password and it's nuked. good luck proving it wasn't their incompetence.

Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️18h ago

@d3adpaul @evacide
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 18h ago

@Orca @evacide you can send duress via sms too and I think in practice enforcement is nowhere near that competent. before it ever gets to a techie it passes through a bunch of beat cops.

an besides prove it to a judge.

Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️18h ago

@d3adpaul @evacide
Oops.
One of the standard practice of LE is: they would put the devices into farady bags the second they seized it.

Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️18h ago

@d3adpaul @evacide 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.

LukefromDC 10h ago

@Orca @evacide @d3adpaul

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.

Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️2h ago

@LukefromDC @evacide @d3adpaul
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.)

Meneer de Bruin 🚂🍉🔻19h ago

@evacide The best way to avoid all the hassle is to not go.

The Stoic King 18h ago

@evacide Interesting...

Jan ☕🎼🎹☁️🏋️‍♂️18h ago

@evacide I see so many reasons just to not go at all.

TopKnot 16h ago

@evacide
The Land of the Free now has many new rules that don't exactly sing of freedom.

https://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/the-lyrics.aspx

NMAH | The Lyrics

Francis Scott Key was a gifted amateur poet. Inspired by the sight of the American flag flying over Fort McHenry the morning after the bombardment, he scribbled the initial verse of his song on the back of a letter. Back in Baltimore, he completed the four verses and copied them onto a sheet of paper, probably making more than one copy. A local printer issued the new song as a broadside. Shortly afterward, two Baltimore newspapers published it, and by mid-October it had appeared in at least seventeen other papers in cities up and down the East Coast.

Dopes The Frogman 15h ago

@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.)

@evacide alternate solution: Take Amtrak :P

pauldotm 13h ago

@evacide the believers of free speech Ha.

LukefromDC 11h ago

@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.

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).

Martin Seeger 11h ago

@evacide The most important tip from my PoV:

Bring as few sensitive devices as possible — only what you need.

Why? You should discard any device you travelled with into the U.S. upon returning.

evacide 10h ago

@masek Because not everyone has the money to buy brand new devices every time they travel.

LukefromDC 10h ago

@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.

Martin Seeger 7h ago

@evacide I know that my statement sounds harsh. I do not like to cause people discomfort. But I see no alternative.

If you your own data security is important to you, especially if the current administration might look negatively upon your environments activity, this is the only way.

That is why I avoid travel to such countries as much as possible.

A few years back, I had to travel to a country, where the government was "not a nice one" and also not known for fair play. Luckily it was only for a few days.

So I ditched my smartphone and switched to a $25 dumb phone for the trip. I bought a used $100 tablet as disposable internet device and sold it for $50 before I left. So the costs were bearable. Of course I felt severely limited during that time.

I know that people on tight budget may find those costs prohibitive already.

But be aware: you may loose your device anyway if the border agent wishes so, even if you are innocent of everything. That is nothing you can control. They do not care that you cannot afford a new device.

Another important thought (at least for me): I do not bear the risk alone. As I may work or be friends with people on the administrations shit list, any leak on my side may cause them harm. That thought scares me most.

evacide 14s ago

@masek I think that you fundamentally don't understand harm reduction and I hope you don't do privacy/security trainings.

Softspeak 6h ago

That is a hard "NOPE".

Traveling with brown skin, I would rather drive a week long road trip than go near an airport.

@evacide - good information.