Scnneier on Crossing Borders with Laptops

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Randall Webmail <rvh40 () insightbb com>
Date: June 15, 2008 12:19:24 AM EDT
Subject: Scnneier on Crossing Borders with Laptops


      Crossing Borders with Laptops and PDAs



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 U.S. 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?

Encrypting your entire hard drive, something you should certainly do for
security in case your computer is lost or stolen, won't work here. The
border agent is likely to start this whole process with a "please type
in your password". Of course you can refuse, but the agent can search
you further, detain you longer, refuse you entry into the country and
otherwise ruin your day.

You're going to have to hide your data. Set a portion of your hard drive
to be encrypted with a different key - even if you also encrypt your
entire hard drive - and keep your sensitive data there. Lots of programs
allow you to do this. I use PGP Disk . TrueCrypt is also good, and free.

While customs agents might poke around on your laptop, they're unlikely
to find the encrypted partition. (You can make the icon invisible, for
some added protection.) And if they download the contents of your hard
drive to examine later, you won't care.

Be sure to choose a strong encryption password. Details are too
complicated for a quick tip, but basically anything easy to remember is
easy to guess. Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect solution. Your
computer might have left a copy of the password on the disk somewhere,
and (as I also describe at the above link) smart forensic software will
find it.

So your best defense is to clean up your laptop. A customs agent can't
read what you don't have. You don't need five years' worth of e-mail and
client data. You don't need your old love letters and those photos (you
know the ones I'm talking about). Delete everything you don't absolutely
need. And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you're at
it, delete your browser's cookies, cache and browsing history. It's
nobody's business what websites you've visited. And turn your computer
off -- don't just put it to sleep -- before you go through customs; that
deletes other things. Think of all this as the last thing to do before
you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give
their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them
download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they've
entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete
everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good
idea if you can do it.

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. If someone does discover
it, you can try saying: "I don't know what's on there. My boss told me
to give it to the head of the New York office." If you've chosen a
strong encryption password, you won't care if he confiscates it.

Lastly, don't forget your phone and PDA. Customs agents can search those
too: e-mails, your phone book, your calendar. Unfortunately, there's
nothing you can do here except delete things.

I know this all sounds like work, and that it's easier to just ignore
everything here and hope you don't get searched. Today, the odds are in
your favor. But new forensic tools are making automatic searches easier
and easier, and the recent US court ruling is likely to embolden other
countries. It's better to be safe than sorry.

Addendum:  Many people have pointed out to me that I advise people to
lie to a government agent.  That is, of course, illegal in the U.S. and
probably most other countries -- and probably not the best advice for me
to be on record as giving.  So be sure you clear your story first with
both your boss and the New York office.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05/protecting-yourself-suspicionless-searches-while-t
or http://tinyurl.com/5ghk3j
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05/border-search-answers
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9935170-46.htmlhttp://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9892897-38.html
or http://tinyurl.com/68xgz4

My password advice:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-148.html

This essay originally appeared in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/15/computing.security




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