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Pair Locking Your iPhone

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Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#11

Post by hughes »

14 wrote: post #10
sdan wrote: post #9

Asking general HN audience: Are you willing to do this? I don't travel often, but this looks like a good option to have... although I don't really do any finicky stuff with machines/phones/etc that I use regularly. if I were using a RPI3 as a phone then I'd 100% do something like this (hope you understand the analogy).

I would say the only good option is to try only travel to countries that respect privacy and realise scanning phones is security theatre. Because if you go to a country and they want access to your phone these kind of tricks will prevent them from opening it but ultimately I imagine you would be sent back to where you came from.

I don't think avoiding the USA is a realistic option for a lot of HN readers.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#15

Post by latchkey »

Spivak wrote: post #7
kazinator wrote: post #2

> Pair locking is a useful feature to protect yourself against invasive device searches. Probably also a good way to get onto no-fly lists, and spend hours in detention, etc.

Pair locking is also probably enabled on a lot of people’s work phones so you at least get plausible deniability there.

Yes, just set the organization to 'Apple, Inc.'

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#16

Post by maximente »

sdan wrote: post #9

Asking general HN audience: Are you willing to do this? I don't travel often, but this looks like a good option to have... although I don't really do any finicky stuff with machines/phones/etc that I use regularly. if I were using a RPI3 as a phone then I'd 100% do something like this (hope you understand the analogy).

it is much simpler operationally to have a second phone if you frequently leave and enter the US and care about US agents potentially demanding you unlock your phone upon entry (as i do)

almost everyone i know, even the staunchest pro-privacy types, are not willing to go toe to toe with a US customs and border agent over phone unlocking. they just aren't principled enough. i don't blame them.

worse, there's no telling what malware goes /in/ to your phone if it gets imaged. yeah yeah, call me a conspiracy nutter, i don't care after what snowden showed us. if one of their machines touches my unlocked phone, i'd consider it compromised.

so, naturally, i have a second phone. this offers many benefits:

- no potential mission critical disasters if i lose it via robbery, water, or power tripping US border patrol agents e.g. forgot to backup some particular important message or whatever

- keybase paper key lets me keep in touch with people i need to, provision new devices if need be, and means i can burn the keybase app upon re-entry into US as it's not something like SMS that they are cognizant of

- using whatsapp on foreign SIM gives me some cred as far as not having a purely empty phone, some human interaction, etc. yeah they'd get dragnetted but it's a smaller set of people than my main phone

- if it gets imaged by border agents, i can trade it in for a new one at some point in the future or just recycle via apple recycle program. no big deal.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#17

Post by urda »

clamprecht wrote: post #12

I wish Apple would introduce a "Border crossing mode". Not gonna happen.

Unrelated, 1Password has a great travel mode

https://support.1password.com/travel-mode/

It will only allow vaults marked "safe for travel", everything else is removed from device. Once you get past the security theater you can re-enable the non-travel vaults from your computer.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#18

Post by noident »

If you want to keep your phone secure, enable a long passcode, turn on full device encryption, and turn it off. If you are a US citizen, you can't be turned away at the border or forced to unlock the device. If you're not a US citizen or don't want to be harrassed by customs, bring a burner phone.

Tools like Cellebrite can and do take advantage of security vulnerabilities. Turning off pair locking lulls users into a false sense of security and is therefore harmful. Further, only restricting CBP searches to "manual" searches isn't enough and does plenty of damage to your privacy.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#19

Post by StavrosK »

pfundstein wrote: post #5
jakobdabo wrote: post #4

You can also do a hardware mod by swapping some data pins on the connector and soldering a special cable just for you.

Sneaky, I like it. But you'll definitely will need an above-average soldering station, and skill.

Way above average. Those USB ports are nigh-impossible to solder, I'm not even sure how you'd "swap the data pins".

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#20

Post by m0zg »

This is a dumb idea if you want to actually take your flight in this situation instead of spending hours discussing privacy with TSA agents.

But I also wonder what is it that they expect to find during these searches. In the world where I can transfer my criminal activity data through the likes of Dropbox (in encrypted form, of course), why would I have it on my phone or a laptop? What's the goal here?

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