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Comment by bonestamp2 | Hacker News Reader

I actually had my laptop searched once.

First of all, if you won't enter your password, they confiscate your computer.

Since I wanted to keep my computer, they opened windows explorer and searched for all JPGs and GIFs. Then they asked me, "What kind of photos am I going to find on here?" It was a female agent, and the conclusion I came to is that they're looking for kiddie porn.

I had no exciting photos on my computer, but I did have a shit-ton of boring photos so it wasted 30 minutes of my time and made me think that they think I look like a perv.

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What would happen if you have a non-standard setup? For example, on my computer, I could show them `locate *.jpg`, but I doubt they would take my word for what that does. I think I have Gnome and Unity installed, which probably have GUI searches. Of course, I could always arrow down to my Windows installation at the grub boot screen, but than they would never know about all of the pictures I don't have on my main installation. Thats not even counting the encrypted loopback file I have, or the "/ram" directory I have which is hidden by the tmpfs filesystem mounted on top of it.

Of course, these are all without me trying to hide anything (the encrypted loopback is mostly a matter of principle, I don't actually have anything stored in it).

That would be a quite interesting scenario. I have a certain amount of home-made kinky porn on my hard drive. I would love to see the border agents try to not get uncomfortable as they look on pictures of me and my sex partners in very compromising positions. It's obviously very disturbing that I would have to put up with that when entering the USA, but I'm quite sure that the "female agent" would be more freaked out than I would.

Still, this is a bad policy which you guys should try to get repealed. If they do this regularly, they must obviously stumble across home-made porn all the time. None of my sex partners have ever consented to have their naked bodies examined by some high-school dropout border guard somewhere.

Border guards are federal agents, not TSA agents, right? I'm thinking the education requirements are greater.

wow you know what would be fun? A filesystem that synthesizes infinite numbers of large jpgs and gifs on the fly :)

I reckon a way of getting through this, if you are up to no good (well, I say no good, I mean no good in their terms, so like Snowden), is to look a bit like a perv, and have a few iffy pics and vids on the laptop. Maybe a bit of perv browsing history and what not. That way, you look shify, they pull you in, search, find the pics, reaslise why you look shifty, also realise the pics are actually legal, and send you on your way. Humans being human are likely to stop searching as soon as they find the smut, and miss what you might be really hiding.

Using a hidden volume seems like a better idea than hoping they get distracted by "perv" sites.

Not to mention, the legality of porn varies drastically over jurisdictions.

All you need is a bad connecting flight through Dubai and you're in the poop.

For this kind of scenario, I have a 2011ish MB Air that is too small to do anything (4gb RAM) and gets re-puppeted fairly frequently to test the system. When I worked in China, I took my iPad, Bluetooth keyboard, and strongvpn account.

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