What do we do if we travel to the U.S. ? the country that spies on its citizens, its friends and foes, allies, pretty much everybody? The country that gives us Windows 10, Cortana and Alexa Step down from your moral heights Mr. David Allen Gewirtz, U.S. policy advisor.
Damn. But hey, just carry disposable devices when traveling. Get stuff as needed from secure online storage. And put it back online after use, before moving around. That's how the pros do it now.
I would rather have my data stolen by Russia or China, because it is much less likely to come back and bite me. I don't live there, so what can they do to me? But if my data is stolen by a Western country, they have me under their thumb.
True enough, I guess. For most of us, anyway. When another nation cares that much about you, your own usually has your back. But if it doesn't, then you're really hosed. Or at least, you're ~OK if at least one has some use for you, e.g. Snowden.
Leaving aside the usual madness in these type of threads, it is a good subject to explore. I have traveled a fair bit and the first few times, with expensive equipment, I had that paranoid cycle of ‘if it is on me I could be robbed, if it is in my room it could be stolen, or in the safe just disappear’; it never happened. In the old days you needed to find internet cafes, which were a nightmare for any of your passwords. With Wi-Fi these days you really only need to worry about sniffers or more complex systems attached to it. These are more likely nefarious than government based. I follow these practices, similar to the article, and it would be good to hear from other travelers with their advice. 1. Never take anything travelling that you are not prepared to lose or walk away from. 2. Have a piece of paper with all your details that you carry on you, you can do some simple codes, but it is unlikely it will be taken. You should be able to walk into a police station/hotel with nothing but this piece of paper and continue on your trip. 3. Use a travel email account, with forwarding from others. If you do use social media, the same applies. Last time I traveled I used Countermail with the usb key option only because I have an account. 4. Leave the details with someone at home, usually a copy of your paper from 2 above, as well as other info such as banking, so they can do anything you need done in the worst case scenario. 5. Use low limit credit cards, a debit card with low balance or travel cards. Notify your bank or it may be cancelled; had this happen. But most importantly, not everyone who goes travelling has bad things happen, so enjoy yourself.
Exactly, your own nation (and those with easy extradition and data sharing) has the ability to lock you up, and deport you, deny you services or jobs, or put you on a large number of secretive extra-judicial lists which will harm your interests where you have no redress. It's not only the ambiguity and false positives of the data you think you "own", unfortunately governments do keep information on citizens which is both partial and inaccurate, and they tend to lose it or destroy it. One of the "features" of data that does not have sufficient prominence now, given concerns over privacy and the effect of AI, is the old one of Garbage In Garbage Out - and government databases are replete with dodgy and outright false data, and mis-attributions etc. The problem being that they do not bear the costs of this rubbish data, the citizens do. Even worse, the AI bases its decision on this dodgy data in an inscrutable way, with tick-box human involvement if at all. Again, no incentive to clean up their act, sometimes the opposite. Regarding jurisdiction, this is a reasonable argument for spreading VPNs across hostile jurisdictions.
@XenMan - That's excellent advice. It's pretty much what I do. Re #1, to me that means taking throwaway devices, which don't contain anything which would attract attention, or be problematic if stolen or impounded. As I've said, you get stuff as needed from secure online storage. Could be just files, or a full LUKS filesystem. And re #2, that paper would need to include whatever information you need to know to reach your secure online storage. Using coding to obscure is a little iffy. I prefer to use Shamir's Secret Sharing System. I split information, and put each share in an online paste. Then your piece of paper just needs hints for remembering the paste URLs.
