“When Ryan Lackey travels to a country like Russia or China, he takes certain precautions: Instead of his usual gear, the Seattle-based security researcher and founder of a stealth security startup brings a locked-down Chromebook and an iPhone SE that’s set up to sync with a separate, non-sensitive Apple account,” Andy Greenberg reports for Wired. “He wipes both before every trip, and loads only the minimum data he’ll need. Lackey goes so far as to keep separate travel sets for each country, so that he can forensically analyze the devices when he gets home to check for signs of each country’s tampering.”
“Now, Lackey says, the countries that warrant that paranoid approach to travel might include not just Russia and China, but the United States, too — if not for Americans like him, than for anyone with a foreign passport who might come under the increasingly draconian and unpredictable scrutiny of the US Customs and Border Protection agency,” Greenberg reports. “In fact, US Customs and Border Protection has long considered US borders and airports a kind of loophole in the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections, one that allows them wide latitude to detain travelers and search their devices. For years, they’ve used that opportunity to hold border-crossers on the slightest suspicion, and demand access to their computers and phones with little formal cause or oversight. Even citizens are far from immune.”
“Wired has assembled the following advice from legal and security experts to preserve your digital privacy while crossing American borders,” Greenberg reports. “On your phone — preferably an iPhone, given Apple’s track record of foiling federal cracking — set a strong PIN and disable Siri from the lockscreen by switching off ‘Access When Locked’ under the Siri menu in Settings.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Preferably an iPhone.”
Those who value their privacy use Apple products.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David G.” for the heads up.]