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Encrypt and lock your electronic devices, because the border agents want to touch them:
Customs officers stationed at the American border and at airports searched an estimated 30,200 cellphones, computers and other electronic devices of people entering and leaving the United States last year — an almost 60 percent increase from 2016, according to Homeland Security Department data released on Friday.
Despite the surge, Customs and Border Protection officials said the searches affected fewer than 1 percent of the more than 300 million travelers who arrived in the United States last year.
Homeland Security officials say border searches are an important investigative tool and are used sparingly by its agents. "In this digital age, border searches of electronic devices are essential to enforcing the law at the U.S. border and to protecting the American people," said John Wagner, the deputy executive assistant commissioner at Customs and Border Protection. Mr. Wagner said the agency was committed to preserving the rights and civil liberties of travelers whose devices are searched.
Also at ABC.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 06 2018, @09:20PM (7 children)
Don't carry anything with primary accounts sounds like a good idea. Or, just don't carry electronics. How hard can it be, to cross the border without anything, then purchase a throwaway, log into whatever you want to log into, then discard that throwaway before re-entering the country. There is nothing to search, nothing to decrypt, nothing to nothing. Your data resides safely in a cloud account, or an FTP account, or wherever you stashed it. They want your social media account? Well, you made a throwaway account there, too, didn't you? Hey - it's not your fault that there are sixteen Will Smiths from your hometown on Facebook, is it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 06 2018, @09:31PM (3 children)
Is there now a law that you need to have one?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:53PM (2 children)
If they ask you if you a social media accound and you say no its instantly suspicious.
Probably grounds enough to hook you up right then and there and frog march you to a holding cell.
You've after all, lied to a federal agent.
Even your account here at SN qualifies as social media.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:44AM (1 child)
Ha! That's why I don't have one! I'll be laughing all the way till the holding cell!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday January 07 2018, @08:54PM
But to the holding cell you'll be going anyway.
Because you DO have a social media account somewhere.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @09:31PM
Waste of time. Carry nothing and relax. Everything is in my head. Nothing to see. I can get another machine anywhere.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:49PM
Even that is getting harder to do. Especially in the US. Its getting harder to get a truly undocumented phone.
We had a story about this last year https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/02/03/1315244 [soylentnews.org]
Its actually smarter to have a cheap pre-paid in-country phone (or at least an in-country SIM) to call a taxi or order a pizza.
Cheap candy-bar format cell phones start right around $30 in walmart and amazon. Who knows how cheap they might
be on the street.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:57PM
That would be great, but most of the time it's "quick trips" for business; either a secondary employer or for yourself. Not even in the realm of possibility for the majority of people or companies.
It does appear that if the "don't search the cloud" restrictions are real guidelines that will be followed, that it does give an opening for a good number of products to keep all data off of the main device.
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One sig, two sig, red sig, blue sig.