A way to hit a button and have the contents of my laptop or phone encrypted locally, shipped off to some secure cloud storage, and then purged from my laptop. I'll take the empty device through. I can just tell them that it's a gift for a friend, or something work asked me to bring over to a co-worker. Then when I'm on the other side, I hit the button... download, decrypt, and restore my stuff -- then wipe it from the cloud.
Anyone who makes this service, I'll gladly pay you $100 per use.
(Dear BackBlaze... I know you're close, just build out the UX and automation a bit better.)
It sucks, but I guess I'll just take an old phone and tell them I'm planning on getting a SIM card when I land... I only really need it for finding my way around anyway. I can FedEx my laptop and have it waiting for me. But what a pain in the ass all of this is.
What would be the purpose of having it? Getting entry to US denied because "you are clearly hiding something, you used highly-sophisticated technology to deny US government agents access to your information"? Even if they don't see you doing it and find no evidence of it - they can say having only one completely empty phone is suspicious. For used laptop, even more suspicious. In fact, that's exactly what they did in the article. Only way it won't be suspicious if virtually everybody did it - but that's not going to happen.
Moreover, if you tell them anything but the truth about the device and how it ended up empty, you've just committed a felony and if they ever find out about it by any means, they have grounds to deny you entry forever. They probably also have grounds to prosecute you but that never happens, entry ban though does happen.
I find it more surprising that such a thing hasn't been done yet, or is too painful using existing tools. But you've definitely inspired me to give it a try.
this doesn't help at all - in this scenario, if a gov't body wants you data, they lock you up in some room and beat you until you give them all of the passwords to the encrypted data...
Where did this "and beat you" part come from? I often hear this in this context, but I've never heard of any case in the U.S. where this has actually happened. (I'm working on a guide to help people protect their data from searches at the U.S. border, and have worked on court cases related to government attempts to force people to help access encrypted data.)
I'm not sure I read the parent same way you did. What he proposed is a way to circumvent border data check by having no data on your devices during that time. If there's no encrypted data then device passwords will do nothing for them.
So throw the phone in a gift box and tell them you're bringing it to a friend who lost theirs because of the exchange rate. Plausible deniability, right? Throw your SIM card into an old Nokia 3310 if you're worried about them thinking you don't have a working phone...
A way to hit a button and have the contents of my laptop or phone encrypted locally, shipped off to some secure cloud storage, and then purged from my laptop. I'll take the empty device through. I can just tell them that it's a gift for a friend, or something work asked me to bring over to a co-worker. Then when I'm on the other side, I hit the button... download, decrypt, and restore my stuff -- then wipe it from the cloud.
Anyone who makes this service, I'll gladly pay you $100 per use.
(Dear BackBlaze... I know you're close, just build out the UX and automation a bit better.)
It sucks, but I guess I'll just take an old phone and tell them I'm planning on getting a SIM card when I land... I only really need it for finding my way around anyway. I can FedEx my laptop and have it waiting for me. But what a pain in the ass all of this is.