How To Keep Your Data Safe While Crossing Borders
Political unrest has created harsh environments when crossing borders. Learn how to keep your information safe as you travel.
It’s hard to fathom how much the American political situation has changed compared to one year ago. This tension has an effect on anything and everything, and personal cyber security is no exception.
A concrete areas of concern resulting from political unrest includes passwords to devices and sensitive accounts. Indeed, in the age of increased surveillance and tougher border controls, there has been growing concern around governments or security officials forcing travellers to hand over their passwords to devices and email/social media accounts.
Times of Trouble
This is quite troubling to many people who often cross borders for work or pleasure. So much so that privacy advocates are already lobbying for legislation to prevent this security breach.
According to TechCrunch, this concern goes all the way up to the congressional level, spurring Oregon Senator Ron Wyden to write a letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. The letter calls for “accountability around reports that U.S. Customs and Border agents are obtaining the passwords to locked devices that belong to detainees at the border. Invoking the Fourth Amendment, Wyden dismissed such practices as extralegal, lacking probable cause and a warrant required for such searches.”
Protecting Yourself
While it’s slightly heartening to know that lawmakers are taking up this cause, it’s simply not enough. Individual precautions are necessary if you work with sensitive information or if you simply value your freedom of speech and your right to privacy as it pertains to the private digital information stored on your devices. Though the exact legality or constitutionality remains in the balance—Wired says it remains “in a kind of legal limbo”.
Here are the best precautions against security infiltration according to the experts:
Put your devices on lockdown.
When you’re preparing to go through security, prepare your devices for the worst. According to Wired, best practice includes “encrypting your hard drive with tools like BitLocker, TrueCrypt, or Apple’s Filevault, and choosing a strong passphrase.” In addition, it’s essential to turn your devices off, as “hard drive encryption tools only offer full protection when a computer is fully powered down.”
Know your rights.
The truth is that border patrol or customs agents have a broader set of rights to invade your privacy than police officers do. However, that doesn’t mean you have no rights. According to experts in the New York Times, border patrol agents cannot force you to unlock your phone or laptop—but they can make your life quite difficult in the short term if you don’t. And keep in mind, if you refuse to unlock it, “you may end up losing your device, since agents could seize the device for weeks before it is returned.”
Travel clean.
The most sure-fire way to protect your privacy and data when travelling is to simply not take it with you. Travel with “clean” devices that aren’t linked to your sensitive accounts. If you have to set up, say, an iCloud or Apple ID with that device, use a different email to your real account. As one expert in Wired noted, “If they ask for access and you can’t refuse, you want to be able to give them access without losing any sensitive information.”
Keep social media safe.
Social media is admittedly harder to keep on lockdown than your devices. If you’ve been saying critical things on social media that you think could get you in trouble, security experts recommend making decoy accounts that “can be offered up to customs officials while keeping a more sensitive account secret.” While this is risky if they find that you do indeed have an authentic account, it’s better than taking no precautions.
“Lose” your passwords.
In the most James Bond-esq of moves, experts recommend rendering yourself unable to give up access or passwords to your accounts. To do this, set up two factor authentication on your accounts so that the code is sent to a phone via text message. Then, before you travel, remove the SIM card from that phone and either mail it to yourself or destroy it (and recover your accounts with codes you keep stored or encrypted at home). That way, the code will be sent to a phone number you simply don’t have access to when customs officials want you to give it up.