How to Enter the US With Your Digital Privacy Intact

Finally, Wesler recommends that travelers be sure to update their operating systems on both laptops and phones before crossing the border. This is because CBP can, in some cases, use tools such as Cellebrite or Graykey to exploit the unqualified weaknesses in these devices, and reach them without opening the user. “Your operating system may be six months old, your device is weak,” Wesler says. “It may not be the latest version.”

Keep the passwords confidential

This is the difficult part. American citizens cannot be deported because they refuse to give up passwords for social media accounts or encrypted devices, says Wesler in the Civil Liberties Union. This means that if you stand on your land and do not reveal passwords or pins, you may be detained and your devices are confiscated – until they are sent to a criminal facility – but you will eventually continue with your privacy easier than if you reveal its secrets. “They can take over your device, even for months while trying to storm it,” Wesler says. “But you will return home.” (Despite the terrible treatment of the Trump administration in some cases of permanent foreign population, this protection applies to green cards as well, says Wesler.)

However, be careful that depriving customs officials could lead at least to hours of unconfirmed detention in a dark CBP office without windows. In some American airports and in various states, the court rulings have placed restrictions and restrictions on what CBP officials can do to reach your devices, but there is a guarantee guarantee that these restrictions will be followed in practice if the border agents have your computer or phone to reserve them without supervision.

On a large scale, CBP determines two types of search operations for devices: Basic, where the employee manually reviews the content of the device; And advanced research where the device is connected to external equipment and its contents can be reviewed, copied or analyzed. The latest research requires “reasonable complaints” of the crime, says CBP. The agency’s official guidance avoids that people say explicitly to deliver passwords, and hiking about the case by saying that the devices must be submitted “in a case of examination.”

“If the electronic device cannot be examined because it is protected by a traffic, encryption, or other safety mechanism, this device may be excluded, detention, procedures or other appropriate behaviors,” says the agency online.

For non -Americans who come to the United States with a visa or from a country -followed country, Wesler warns that they are facing a more clear dilemma: refusing to give up a traffic code or pin and you may be rejected from entering. “There is a very practical assessment that people should do about what is more important to them,” he says. “Entering the country, but sacrificing privacy or protecting your privacy – but the risk that you may revolve on the border.”

Reducing the data you bear

For the most vulnerable travelers, there is a clear solution to this dilemma: the best way to keep customs away from your data is simply not traveling with it. Instead, like Lackey, prepare devices that store the minimum sensitive data. Do not link these “dirty” devices with your personal accounts, and when you have to create an connected account – as with the Apple ID for iOS – create unique users names and passwords. “If they ask for access and you cannot reject it, you want to be able to give them access without losing any sensitive information,” says Laki.

(It is recognized that social media accounts cannot be eliminated easily. Some security experts recommend creating secondary personalities that can be presented to customs officials while maintaining a more sensitive account. But if CBP agents link your identity with an account you tried to hide, the result may be a longer detention period, and to search for non -residents, until they refuse to enter.)