US / UK Customs can search laptops / electronic equipment

[KnowItAll]

Read me first: Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first | Technology | The Guardian

If you thought having a rubber gloved finger probing your anal cavity was not bad enough, the US customs now have the power to download and examine the data on your computers / PDA etc.

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.

But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it's a fact. So how do you protect yourself?

[Boris]

There was a similar breaking story on CNET a while ago. It worked the Geek side of it regarding the program used to interrogate the laptop and read disks etc.

[KnowItAll]

The article above is not a breaking story .. but a "how to" on protecting your data.

[Claire ex-ax]

How long before some cheeky chappie "introduces" a virus or worm to the Customs' computer?

[jgl]

"If you can't, consider putting your sensitive data on a USB drive or even a camera memory card: even 16GB cards are reasonably priced these days. Encrypt it, of course, because it's easy to lose something that small. Slip it in your pocket, and it's likely to remain unnoticed even if the customs agent pokes through your laptop."

I have too much time on my hands and think about stuff like this. Far as I can tell, the best way to carry sensitive information is an encrypted external device, which will just look like an unformatted drive. Another way would be to have an smaller encrypted volume on your main hard drive, and rename it to something like .iso (though this would only stand up to casual scrutiny as it is clearly random data and nothing like a real .iso).

By the way, Truecrypt is dead easy to use and is available for both Macs and PCs.

PS: Claire- there is no risk to Customs as they don't attach your machine to a network.

[hktraveller]

By the way, Truecrypt is dead easy to use and is available for both Macs and PCs.

If you don't know what you do, truecrypt makes you feel safe while you are not. It is very important to read their manual thoroughly. For example the swapfile or the hybernation file may contain decrypted data if not properly set up with swapfile encryption and disabling hibernation. There are more potential security leaks.