DHS: HOWTO stop (other governments') creepy spooks from reading your hard drive and email

Adam sez, "WikiLeaks has a copy of the 2008 DHS Travel assessment, which includes a number of key findings warning US travelers that their laptops can be searched and seized, that their data can be copied, etc. It then talks about precautions to take to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Is this a case of 'It's OK for US to do it to you, but not them'?"

Risks associated with use of electronic media overseas can be reduced through proper handling techniques. The simplest of these is to leave such devices at home. Barring that, protective measures should include using designated “travel” computers, single-use cell phones, and temporary e-mail addresses as well as refraining from communicating with a home organization’s information technology systems... Travelers should use strong passwords on devices and encryption programs for electronic files and e-mails.

US DHS: Foreign Travel Threat Assessment: Electronic Communications Vulnerabilities 2008 (Thanks, Adam!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

I got it!

1) On your dual-boot laptop, make sure Windows is the default OS, and set the timer to just a few seconds so it boots without your apparent intervention at the airport. Keep all your non-critical stuff there, and put some random documents on the desktop so it looks, you know, convincing. Make sure your background image is patriotic for your outbound flight (do avoid any references to 9/11, war, etc., but firefighters are always good) and culturally sensitive for the return flight (flowers? children? a Canadian flag?).

2) Keep all your critical, encrypted stuff on the other partition.

3) Keep a copy of the DHS document mentioned in this post on both partitions.
jso

Yes, Rench, I recall that they wanted “vigilance” against these shady types that use pre-paid cell phones and email accounts that constantly change.
WeightedCompanionCube

NiceGuyUK – Of course you could s/foreign/US/g. Why assume our customs agency is more or less nosy than anyone else’s?

For purposes of espionage, stealing your stuff at customs is blatant. It works, but it raises all hell, especially when foreign countries do it to US citizens.

There are sneakier ways to get at it. Never leave anything sensitive in a hotel room, anywhere, ever.
Modusoperandi

Mackenzie “I can’t wait to turn over the phone numbers and text messages of my friends.”
They’ve already got those.
frankiez

I think this is pretty normal as few years ago US government created a law against export of cryptography/PGP (a law that considered OK to check people’s LAPTOPs) and that was the seed of this new law…

again: day by day USA is turning into a non socialist USSR…
jdw242b

once again, if you’re traveling abroad, why not post your HDD to your destination?

Live CDs are readily available for keeping busy with games while flying…
dfornika

Don’t be so sure about that non-socialist stuff, Frankiez. Tough economic times call for tough economic measures, comrade. It won’t be long before Great Leader Obama lays out his first 5-year plan.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are now under government control. I’m no economist but I can see which way the winds are blowing.

At least US citizens might start to get decent health-care, at long last.
Oren Beck

Telling travelers to encrypt drives while abroad and seizing the drives upon return home? That is an example of applied doublethink. The seemingly inevitable end point of this is Gitmo. That could be a new destination for you. If you follow directions and encrypt that drive as DHS suggests.

As in replacing the Multiple S boarding pass “procedures” with a waterboarding session. Oh? If you object to the routine waterboarding of someone daring to encrypt a hard drive you might be a terrorist. Or at least not a “Good patriot”
hiroken

@ #1:

I find it ironic and delicious that at first glance, I thought the file was called DONTREADONME.txt
Tom Lee

The society is that once was free is now becoming more and more a police-state, where the authorities can confiscate any information you are carrying with you on portable devices. I use PGP encryption on my hd, it is in fact so good that even FBI can’t crack the algorithm.
eustace

Shhh! Don’t make that sound like a challenge…
LightningCrash

#24: That’s a good idea.
I like the idea of dual partitions, though. Set GRUB to boot your inconspicuous OS, have your real crap somewhere else.
I already set my USB flash drives to have a 1GB normal partition and the remainder as a Luks encrypted disk anyway. It only makes sense to do something similar to your laptop disks if your OS is going to be facing scrutiny.
Oliver

# 2 Ranch…

Exactly!

This ‘suspicious behaviour’ is what would get you into trouble first place!
(Stack of single use cellphones: I can remember cases of citizens with arabian heritage getting arrested just for that!)

But I guess they expect every law o-bejing citizen to protect his data only aboard. Back home he has nothing to hide.

So next time when your plane is rolling to the parking position you’ll hear the familiar notice “Please stay seated and straped until we reached the gate and make sure to deactivate all your encryption and hold a note ready with all neccessary pwds and pins for your devices and accounts in order help your friendly DHS officer!”

Have a nice day!
Anonyman

Terrorists would never use anything as clever as ‘passwords’ or ‘encryption’. Everyone knows they keep their secret terrorist plans on the desktop in a file named DONTREADME.txt
Rench

Yeah, isn’t this the kind of behavior we have been told to watch out for and report to authorities?
NiceGuyUK

Whoa, you guys just blew the mercury on my irony-o-meter! I’m strongly tempted to remix this one, replacing all instances of “foreign” with “U.S.” – it would make just as much sense….
jackie31337

@16 I would be more worried about another TLA than the FBI.

Also, I am officially a paranoid nut. I tried to add a comment earlier, but I got some kind of error about “incorrect text” or something along those lines, and when I came back to the comments page, I was no longer logged in to my account. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation…
Nelson.C

It’s IK for US to do it to you

It’s pretty ikky whoever does it, really.
Mackenzie

I suppose that next the cellphone will be up for inspection. I can’t wait to turn over the phone numbers and text messages of my friends.
Master Mahan

The Department of Homeland Security is helping me preserve my privacy?

*checks calendar to see if it’s Opposite Day*
imipak

Gives inbound non-US citizens something amusing to print out and leave between the keyboard and closed screen of their laptops, anyway. “Sure officer, here’s my laptop and these are my passwords. Oh this? This is some /excellent/ advice from your “Dept of Homeland Security”, which I read and scrupulously obeyed before I set off for the airport. ‘YHBT/YHL/HAND’? That’s the codename for a project I’m working on at the moment…”
EH

Naturally, using the DHS’ own security information gives probable cause that you have something to hide.
Antinous

Or, you could just make tubgirl your wallpaper.
Baldhead

Wait… hypocracy from a government bureau? NEVER! IMPOSSIBLE!
squib

Yeah and whatever you do, don’t wear a novelty cap that sez FBI

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24223277-3102,00.html
Takuan

mmph… OK, the official Fatherland Security position is that only criminals want to visit the USA. Wonder what that leads to?