
Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop? - eemph
Hi everyone,<p>So, I&#x27;m a 17 year old high school student from one of the countries participating in the US Visa Waiver Program, and I&#x27;m planning to go to the US to participate in a summer math program (unrelated to crypto, security or anything else like that).<p>The thing is, my only laptop has Linux installed with full disk encryption using LUKS, so turning it on first reveals GRUB, and then the passphrase prompt. I would imagine that this could seem rather suspicious to a border official, which (judging from all the horror stories I&#x27;ve heard about US border officials) could lead to a detention, extended questioning, confiscation of the laptop, etc etc. The laptop doesn&#x27;t really have anything <i>that</i> illegal, but I wouldn&#x27;t expect them to take my word for it.<p>I realise that my best course of action would be to just leave my laptop at home, but that would be very inconvenient. I could also replace the hard drive temporarily and just install plain Windows, but I don&#x27;t really have a spare hard drive.<p>My question, therefore, would be: how likely is it that anyone at the US border will actually want to examine my laptop, and, if they happen to find that it runs Linux and is completely encrypted, how screwed am I?
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jakejake
It makes me a little sad to hear an honest question like this because it means
that people have a horribly slanted impression of the US, which is a fantastic
place to visit and is generally very welcoming of visitors from other
countries.

Almost 70 million people enter the USA every year - that's over 190,000 per
day. We hear about 2 or 3 horrible stories and it seems like every tourist who
enters the country is harassed by immigration. I totally understand the
concern when one hears these stories though, it's important to keep in mind
how incredibly rarely they have occurred.

I would say your chances of immigration even looking twice at your laptop are
extremely small. When they want to look at any electronic device, generally
the only thing they want to see is for you to turn on the power to prove that
it is an actual working device and not just an empty case with explosive
materials inside it. They have no interest in whatever data you have on the
device.

Exceptions might be if you are involved in high profile, anti-US politics or
you suspect there is some reason you would be a person of interest to the US
homeland security. Or if you are entering illegally, planning to overstay your
visa or doing anything which you feel you will have to lie to immigration as
you enter the country. In those cases I would be concerned entering any
country, not just the US.

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tptacek
Your laptop looks pretty much exactly like about 4,500,000 other laptops
running Windows or OS X with their FDE enabled. Nobody cares; they don't have
time to.

Having said that: your rights to privacy are basically at their nadir in this
situation: you're opting into air travel, which gives the US administrative
search privileges; you're crossing borders, which virtually every country in
the world believes gives them the sovereign right to invade your privacy as a
condition of entrance; you're interacting with customs, whose job it is to
find reasons to hassle people.

So: not the craziest idea in the world to take your sensitive stuff, put it on
a USB drive, encrypt that, and just Fedex it to wherever you're going.

You won't need to go through that trouble, but it might make you feel better,
and it's cheap insurance.

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cjbprime
I'm a US permanent resident, which means I've gone through a whole bunch of
interviews and examinations and delays at the border and so on, and my
encrypted laptop even has a Tor sticker on it, and no-one's ever asked to look
at or been curious about it.

So you're probably fine.

------
Someone
Do what you normally do (or at least, _should_ do):

Make regular backups that you do not carry with the laptop.

That protects you against both hardware defects and overly-aggressive border
personnel.

I think the first is way more likely than the second. I have never had to show
that a laptop actually was a laptop, not even when traveling with two laptops,
an Ethernet switch, a few lengths of cat-5 cable, some JTAG stuff, a prototype
device, a few screwdrivers, and a box containing the innards of a GSM phone
that came with a power brick and a 2 feet or so plug-in antenna (that was
before 9-11, though)

And VISA waiver/ESTA means that the U.S. got early warning about you, so
chances are they already checked whether you are considered a risk before you
show up at the border.

Also, many business laptops 'boot' into a pre-Windows environment that
requests a password.

If you still are worried, would running Windows on a second, small, partition
be an option? Alternatively, make the laptop login directly from booting into
a demo account that shows some GUI with overlapping windows (could also be a
different Linux OS on another partition)

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mmozeiko
I'm on H1B visa and during past 4 years I have entered US around 10 times.
Every time I had laptop with my that had full disk encryption either on
Windows (TrueCrypt) or on Linux (LUKS). Also I had with me external HDD with
full disk encryption on it (TrueCrypt).

Nobody ever asked me to look at my laptop or my external hdd. Two times they
looked through my larger suitcase, but not my carry-on where I have my laptop.

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retrogradeorbit
Depends if you have been 'selected' or not. For example, Greenwald, Applebaum
and Poitras have been 'selected'. If you haven't been selected, you will have
no problems. If you have, you will have many problems.

All the people posting "I've never been stopped" are just saying "I have not
been selected".

Perhaps ask yourself the better question, "is it likely I have been selected?"

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gpav
About your sentence that begins "The laptop doesn't really have anything THAT
illegal..." Being legal or not isn't exactly like being pregnant or not,
because pregnant is a state that is related to the physical condition of the
person, but legality is related to the geographical location or to the
citizenship status of the person. That said, there is an old saying that there
is no such thing as a little bit pregnant. If you think that there is anything
on your hard drive that is illegal in any place where you are traveling to, or
your flight might divert to in an in-flight emergency, the smart thing to do
is to scrub it off your hard drive and use a tool to wipe the empty space on
your drive to United States Department of Defense standard DoD 5220.22M -- and
do all that BEFORE you travel.

If you have something that is perfectly legal where you are, but illegal where
you are going, you have not broken the law where you are going if you don't
take the illegal thing with you. If you do take it, and you DON'T get away
with crossing with it, the very best you can hope for is that you won't be
jailed. Instead, you can expect to have your computer seized and destroyed,
yourself deported and legally barred from ever returning to that country. Oh,
and kiss your airfare goodbye, too. Or, all those unpleasant things could
happen to you AFTER you spend a period of time in jail.

Not sure whether something really is illegal in the US, best advice is to ask
a US lawyer. Second best is to ask a lawyer in your country who is
knowledgeable in US law. Third best might be the US Consulate in your country.
You can always ask HN, but in that case you get what you get and most of us
are not lawyers.

Good luck in your travels, have a great time at the math program, and try real
hard not to wind up in Gitmo.

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yetanotheracc
_how likely is it that anyone at the US border will actually want to examine
my laptop_

Not very likely.

------
mo
You best move a copy of your filesystem or all files encrypted to some online
storage, and travel with a barebones installation. Most people I know have a
second, travel drive or even travel laptop, and only put a subset of files
online (eg. on your private hidden service, HiddenServiceAuthorizeClient is
very useful for that).

Happy times.

~~~
opless
Agreed. Travel laptop is the way to go. Slurp encrypted /essential/ files from
central storage. Say an Amazon bucket, dropbox, etc.

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Sean-Der
I have taken my Thinkpad through a couple of times and it has had FreeBSD or
Debian + LUKS on it.

Most of the time the people that have problems are arrogant. I see people
trying to lecture agents and other oneupman-ship, you win nothing from this.
If you are polite, and maybe even act a bit clueless no one will bother you.

~~~
GFischer
That's good advice. I haven't gone through U.S. customs but I have been
through Canadian and European customs, and both times the people at the border
were very polite (they did have a dog sniffing my luggage, but nothing beyond
that).

The chance of them making trouble is small, but I would try to implement some
measure others suggested just in case (having a Windows dual-boot or
something).

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venomsnake
According to EFF you are at the mercy of the agents.

[https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-
gui...](https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-
travelers-carrying-digital-devices)

Why make your life harder?

Make gz image of the drive. Upload it somewhere, wipe laptop, when inside the
US just download it and unzip from live cd on the fly.

~~~
auganov
Well technically whatever you do, you always are at their mercy. But having
looked at the document you linked to, it doesn't seem like having an encrypted
drive would mean extra scrutiny. Unless you're actually planning on not giving
them access when they ask. Which still, according to the document, should not
mean an automatic denied entry.

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singold
In the rare case, they decide to see your laptop, i dont think they care if it
is encrypted if you login or tell them the password.

IMO, the problem in this case is not the encryption itself, but the act of
hiding something, if you try to hide somenthing, then you could be in
problems.

If you login to your pc, they are not going to know if it is encrypted ;-)

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justintbassett
I've entered into the US dozens of times, never once have I been asked to even
turn on my laptop. You'll be fine

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ender89
Eh, the tsa can't find shit. just don't give them a hard time and you'll be
fine.

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supergirl
you would've been fine before posting this. now, I don't know.

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46Bit
Incredibly, incredibly unlikely to be a problem. Don't worry.

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informatimago
You'd be crazy to enter the USA territory.

Stay out.

~~~
jakejake
Why would you say that? Have you ever been to the US?

~~~
informatimago
Yes, BEFORE 9/11\. After that, I wouldn't dare.

~~~
jakejake
Not that the U.S. Is necessarily better than any other place, but avoiding it
out of fear is certainly not necessary.

