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Comment by defen | Hacker News Reader

At this point, spending $200 to get a burner laptop and dumb phone for international travel sounds like a really good investment - it doesn't seem to be worth the risk of taking your own hardware. Do you want TSA imaging your laptop (after you've unlocked it for them so they won't confiscate it) and putting whatever secret keys and embarrassing / private info is on there, into their own system, forever?

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I travel frequently enough internationally that I need to bring my devices with me. If ICE (not TSA) asked me to log into my computer or phone, I would say no and accept the risk that they confiscate my encrypted devices.

The likelihood of ICE asking me to log into my devices and confiscating them is quite low. The inconvenience of using burner devices is quite high.

This of course assumes that the government is unwilling or unable to defeat your encryption.

This assumes that you are a USA citizen; for non-citizens the risk is not accepting the risk of confiscating the devices but removing their current (and possibly future) ability to travel to and through USA, which is a major risk if one travels frequently.

Although ICE does have border search authority, the people who will normally perform border searches (and possibly ask you to unlock your device) are neither TSA nor ICE, but rather CBP! They're the people who staff the front-line immigration and customs checkpoints in the ports and perform the interviews there.

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