Taking your laptop into the US? How to protect yourself
In April this year I remember reading about how a US court had ruled that Customs or Border agents, whichever side of the pond you’re from, could search your laptop. In fact they could search any electronic device. I remember at the time that I have nothing to hide or do I? I work for Casino’s … is that Cool in the eyes of the border control officers? I knew already that I protected my browser history and cookies, I delete them on closing Firefox down, but what about My email? Ok I don’t need years of email but it’s nice to be able to jump back in time a little so this is what I thought would be the best solution ( btw of course I was way too lazy to implement any of this )
I have a Lenovo X300, awesome laptop, it runs Vista and has a Biometric finger printer reader 
Account One:
Border agents account, I would set up one account using my right hand because I’m right handed. This will be the dummy account so not to alert the border guards. I felt it might look a little odd if I swiped my left hand across the sensor if they thought I was right handed. In this account I would have Family photos of my parents and wife etc, No Firefox installed, a link to a hotmail email account on my desktop. I would have subscribed this account to a few websites like Fishing weekly and Home Husband World and possibly even Knitting weekly. But that I think that would be enough to get me through customs
Account Two:
This time I use my left hand and one finger off my right hand just in case I lost the hand in a freak accident. I would want to still get access to the good stuff wouldn’t I! I would set up VPN connections to my Home systems that I have my email client running on, Firefox fully loaded with loads of Voodoo plug ins, of course the finger scanner would only let me half way in. I would have PGP’d the whole drive up and made sure the password was never used anywhere else.
Account Three:
The Porn account, ok I needed to get my penis tattooed with a finger print and this is where I realised that maybe, just maybe, I was starting to get a little carried away.
Andy Blackburn 1711 days ago
Laughed my arse off at Account Three!
Very humorous, but surely the easiest is to have a VPN client back to a home/office machine that surely you won’t be obliged, under any law, to give Customs access to!???
robbothan 1711 days ago
http://www.ukonline.netQuite a few corporate companies in defence and mega budget’s + govt departments now only carry blank laptops with access to everything over VPN clients – as there was an incident with a British Aerospace exec being interogated as above… so pretty smart stuff…
Also harks back to olympics when a couple of Gordon Brown’s exec’s lost their blackberry’s in china…
Nick Wilsdon 1711 days ago
http://nickwilsdon.comPersonally I use one laptop per job. Pick up a clean XO-1* and VPN back home to Russia. Once finished it’s rigged to self-destruct. Toss it in the bin on the way to the airport and no one’s any the wiser.
*http://laptop.org/
Robert 1711 days ago
http://www.propdata.co.za/Account 3… would it be worth it?!
hahahahahahaha…
Paranoia, but a standard state of being!
Brad McAllister 1711 days ago
http://www.bradmcallister.comI have had my fun in America, phuk it – not worth all the police state shenanigans that the country has turned into if you spend as much time on digg as i do.. America is off the travel agenda for the forseeable future.
Andre 1711 days ago
It’s sad that society has come to this, where you have to think about government, big brother and their intrusion into your life.
Craig Mullins 1711 days ago
http://www.vacation-rental-wonderland.com/I just bring my old laptop on travel now. No stored anything.
Those damn TSA agetns think they are god. They are getting pretty damn close to god let me tell you.
Have you seen any TSA’s carrying offering baskets yet?
Allen 1710 days ago
http://unfubared.com/blogThe easiest way to secure your data is with an encrypted virtual drive. Keep anything sensitive in there and you’ll be fine. PGP is the most popular, I believe there are free versions which work ok as well.
seo tips 1710 days ago
http://seotips4.comPGP is pretty good to protect against basic attacks. But you’re in the US and i wouldn’t take any really sensative data in there to begin with.
Dean 1710 days ago
http://www.deano.deHaving been through the US customs many a time, i really recommend that you don’t subscribe to knitting weekly! You’re just asking for trouble!
vapparel 1707 days ago
http://www.vapparel.net/PGP is pretty good to protect against basic attacks
Are Blogs are waste of time in Google now 1707 days ago
[...] Taking your laptop into the US? How to protect yourself [...]
printers 1659 days ago
Actually, I was planning to go there next month and take my laptop with me. I didn’t know that there are certain rules you should obey when you want to do such a ‘difficult’ operation. But, anyway, thank you very much for saying this to us. I am very grateful because if I didn’t know who knows what would have happened. Thank you!