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Pair Locking Your iPhone

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Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#31

Post by tlrobinson »

m0zg wrote: post #20

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?

A truly dumb idea is giving anyone unfettered access to your digital devices. Even/especially governments, depending on the government and your circumstances.

Missing a flight would probably waste less time than rotating passwords/keys for every service I’m logged into on my phone.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#33

Post by Nextgrid »

hughes wrote: post #11
14 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I somehow manage to have a comfortable career & good money while having never stepped foot in the US (and no intentions to do so). It’s not impossible or even that difficult.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#34

Post by cosmic_ape »

sjwright wrote: post #27
hughes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Excluding conferences^ and events there's nothing special about the HN audience (other than affluence) that makes them particularly likely—relative to people in a hundred other industries—to need to travel to the USA. ^ ...which are mostly money-making scams anyway, targeting fat corporate and university budgets in return for limited benefit. Rarely do you learn anything that you couldn't otherwise learn from publish…

re:conferences: That's not quite right. In conferences you also meet people, some of whom you knew before and some that you didn't. You get to talk, and ask questions. The ROI of this may be questionable, but it does have value.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#35

Post by jwr »

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.

I find this whole discussion (including the above comment) surreal, given that we are talking about the country that used to be called "the land of the free" and that claims superiority over countries that restrict freedoms.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#36

Post by kccqzy »

An alternative: make a full backup of your phone, then restore your phone with a different backup with less personal information, and then once you cross the border you restore your phone using the first backup.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#37

Post by epistasis »

noident wrote: post #18

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…

> If you are a US citizen, you can't be turned away at the border or forced to unlock the device.

There's an important divide between what customs is supposed to do, and what they might actually do in practice. Going through customs means putting yourself at the whims of people that you do not control.

If you're a white male, there's perhaps less of a chance that a bad employee will feel they can take advantage of you, but there's still the chance.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#38

Post by JumpCrisscross »

woutr_be wrote: post #29
noident wrote: post #18

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…

I really wish Apple would put something in place where you effectively have two user accounts. If you type your actually passcode, it's just your normal account. If you type another specific passcode, it's a burner account with minimal apps and information. It has enough info to make it look like it's being used, but nothing important. Obviously border control would quickly know about this, but there's no way to veri…

> there's no way to verify

Obscuring in this manner likely counts as lying to a federal officer, particularly if they catch on and ask if this is your main profile.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#39

Post by Osiris »

kccqzy wrote: post #36

An alternative: make a full backup of your phone, then restore your phone with a different backup with less personal information, and then once you cross the border you restore your phone using the first backup.

This was super easy when I had TWRP recovery.

Is there an official Android way to pull a full system backup?

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#40

Post by x220 »

jwr wrote: post #35
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.

I find this whole discussion (including the above comment) surreal, given that we are talking about the country that used to be called "the land of the free" and that claims superiority over countries that restrict freedoms.

Americans have freedom on paper but they don't have any freedoms that matter. They have "freedom of speech" in the technical sense, but that freedom goes away once they get an audience that matters.
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