Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 363 posts

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#201

Post by beloch »

>Don’t just take a wiped phone: If you are especially worried about your data, you may think about wiping your phone or computer entirely before a trip and restoring from a backup later. However, a nearly blank device can create its own problems.

Wipe your phone. If more people do this before travelling to the U.S. it'll quickly become less "suspicious". This is a privacy issue. I don't have anything to hide, but I also don't like the idea of having the contents of my phone backed up and saved for 15 years. It's just like how there's nothing under my pants that is of interest to the authorities. I just prefer wearing pants.

Another good tip for travelling to the U.S. is to fly, rather than drive, and to do a TSA pre-check at your point of departure. That way, if the Americans get too paranoid, you're not trapped on foreign soil and subject to their whims. You can just cancel your flight and go home.

Better yet, don't travel to the U.S. right now unless you absolutely have to. It's not a good time to vacation there. Your country may have travel advisories in effect for the U.S. (mine does). Listen to them.

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#202

Post by jancsika »

redczar wrote: post #172
redserk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’ll add a few more freedoms. 1. Can’t walk about drinking a beer. 2. Can’t carry too much cash or it’s at risk of being confiscated. 3. Criminalization of walking. https://illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-2017-no-3/the-crimin... 4. Pretty much have to own a car in most places. 5. Thousands of polling stations closed since the Voting Rights Act was gutted. 6. Federal politics held hostage by low population states. It’…

Regarding #2 through #7: they are all true and important. I'm aware of different efforts over the years to address some of them, but they are all definitely active problems.

Regarding #1-- is it possible you have a drinking problem?

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#203

Post by fragmede »

jancsika wrote: post #202
redczar wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll add a few more freedoms. 1. Can’t walk about drinking a beer. 2. Can’t carry too much cash or it’s at risk of being confiscated. 3. Criminalization of walking. https://illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-2017-no-3/the-crimin... 4. Pretty much have to own a car in most places. 5. Thousands of polling stations closed since the Voting Rights Act was gutted. 6. Federal politics held hostage by low population states. It’…

Regarding #2 through #7: they are all true and important. I'm aware of different efforts over the years to address some of them, but they are all definitely active problems. Regarding #1-- is it possible you have a drinking problem?

you buy a coca cola and walk 50 feet from one venue to the next and nobody bats an eye, but you do that with a twisted tea and suddenly people are asking you if you suffer from alcoholism

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#204

Post by fragmede »

redczar wrote: post #172
redserk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’ll add a few more freedoms. 1. Can’t walk about drinking a beer. 2. Can’t carry too much cash or it’s at risk of being confiscated. 3. Criminalization of walking. https://illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-2017-no-3/the-crimin... 4. Pretty much have to own a car in most places. 5. Thousands of polling stations closed since the Voting Rights Act was gutted. 6. Federal politics held hostage by low population states. It’…

free to build whatever I want on my land, as long as it follows all the rules in this really big rule book

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#205

Post by tverbeure »

jancsika wrote: post #202
redczar wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll add a few more freedoms. 1. Can’t walk about drinking a beer. 2. Can’t carry too much cash or it’s at risk of being confiscated. 3. Criminalization of walking. https://illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-2017-no-3/the-crimin... 4. Pretty much have to own a car in most places. 5. Thousands of polling stations closed since the Voting Rights Act was gutted. 6. Federal politics held hostage by low population states. It’…

Regarding #2 through #7: they are all true and important. I'm aware of different efforts over the years to address some of them, but they are all definitely active problems. Regarding #1-- is it possible you have a drinking problem?

> Regarding #1-- is it possible you have a drinking problem?

You don't have to be an alcoholic (I don't even drink) to agree that with OP that #1 is an arbitrary reduction of freedom. Especially when walking around with a gun is totally fine. Which one has a larger potential of killing somebody?

(And before you make some other ridiculous insinuation, we're talking here about walking, not driving.)

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#206

Post by klausa »

redczar wrote: post #173
ta1243 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP was talking the "leader of the free world" You are talking about America That's two very different things

Leader of the free world almost always refers to the U.S. President or the U.S. itself depending on context.

The joke/point/suggestion the person you're replying to is making, is that the US has lost that title.

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#207

Post by lazyeye »

senderista wrote: post #169

I would love to visit Russia or Iran as a tourist, but I'll probably never be able to do that safely, and if I weren't a US citizen I would feel the same about the US. The US has many beautiful and fascinating things to see and do, but so do lots of other countries that won't throw you in a gulag.

The amount of insanely overblown hyperbole in HN comments is extraordinary...

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#208

Post by aeternum »

standeven wrote: post #179
aeternum wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't travel, in many countries the penalty for disparaging the leader of that country is quite severe.

It’s sad that the USA is becoming one of these countries. But yes, that’s what I’m doing - travelling to free countries and avoiding the backwards ones.

IMO the USA is not becoming one of those countries and people are just fearmongering. But legally they can do it so it's better to take precautions anyway.

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#209

Post by fragmede »

gorgoiler wrote: post #106
IncandescentGas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your phone could become damaged and inoperable every day. From dropping it in the toilet, being stolen, a house fire, etc. If you're "petrified" of losing your data, it's worth the work to ensure your data backup procedures are adequate.

You’re right, but also I know I have enough backed up to survive a catastrophe. What I don’t want to do is to test my backup in a non catastrophe situation and invalidate all my TOTP, WhatsApp history, mail settings etc. just because I wanted to test disaster recovery. It feels like buying a fire safe (phone and app backups) without any kind of understanding if it works then burning your house down to see if it works…

Analogies only go so far. Going to the store, buying gasoline and rags and a lighter and then committing arson and burning my house down is maybe a little bit different from sitting down for a few hours with my laptop connected to my phone.

Re: How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S.

#210

Post by selimthegrim »

actionfromafar wrote: post #192
Jare wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarianism always finds a way, but it's shocking that 60 million invited it for dinner.

They thought it would only be a TV dinner . The bad stuff wasn't supposed to happen on their side of the TV screen.

Brown Girl in The Ring, in other words.
Post reply on HN