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Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop?

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Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop?

#1

Post by eemph »

Hi everyone,

So, I'm a 17 year old high school student from one of the countries participating in the US Visa Waiver Program, and I'm planning to go to the US to participate in a summer math program (unrelated to crypto, security or anything else like that).

The thing is, my only laptop has Linux installed with full disk encryption using LUKS, so turning it on first reveals GRUB, and then the passphrase prompt. I would imagine that this could seem rather suspicious to a border official, which (judging from all the horror stories I've heard about US border officials) could lead to a detention, extended questioning, confiscation of the laptop, etc etc. The laptop doesn't really have anything that illegal, but I wouldn't expect them to take my word for it.

I realise that my best course of action would be to just leave my laptop at home, but that would be very inconvenient. I could also replace the hard drive temporarily and just install plain Windows, but I don't really have a spare hard drive.

My question, therefore, would be: how likely is it that anyone at the US border will actually want to examine my laptop, and, if they happen to find that it runs Linux and is completely encrypted, how screwed am I?

Re: Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop?

#3

Post by venomsnake »

According to EFF you are at the mercy of the agents.

https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-gui...

Why make your life harder?

Make gz image of the drive. Upload it somewhere, wipe laptop, when inside the US just download it and unzip from live cd on the fly.

Re: Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop?

#4

Post by mo »

You best move a copy of your filesystem or all files encrypted to some online storage, and travel with a barebones installation. Most people I know have a second, travel drive or even travel laptop, and only put a subset of files online (eg. on your private hidden service, HiddenServiceAuthorizeClient is very useful for that).

Happy times.

Re: Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop?

#6

Post by cjbprime »

I'm a US permanent resident, which means I've gone through a whole bunch of interviews and examinations and delays at the border and so on, and my encrypted laptop even has a Tor sticker on it, and no-one's ever asked to look at or been curious about it.

So you're probably fine.

Re: Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop?

#7

Post by auganov »

venomsnake wrote: post #3

According to EFF you are at the mercy of the agents. https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-gui... Why make your life harder? Make gz image of the drive. Upload it somewhere, wipe laptop, when inside the US just download it and unzip from live cd on the fly.

Well technically whatever you do, you always are at their mercy. But having looked at the document you linked to, it doesn't seem like having an encrypted drive would mean extra scrutiny. Unless you're actually planning on not giving them access when they ask. Which still, according to the document, should not mean an automatic denied entry.

Re: Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop?

#8

Post by opless »

mo wrote: post #4

You best move a copy of your filesystem or all files encrypted to some online storage, and travel with a barebones installation. Most people I know have a second, travel drive or even travel laptop, and only put a subset of files online (eg. on your private hidden service, HiddenServiceAuthorizeClient is very useful for that). Happy times.

Agreed. Travel laptop is the way to go. Slurp encrypted /essential/ files from central storage. Say an Amazon bucket, dropbox, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop?

#9

Post by mmozeiko »

I'm on H1B visa and during past 4 years I have entered US around 10 times. Every time I had laptop with my that had full disk encryption either on Windows (TrueCrypt) or on Linux (LUKS). Also I had with me external HDD with full disk encryption on it (TrueCrypt).

Nobody ever asked me to look at my laptop or my external hdd. Two times they looked through my larger suitcase, but not my carry-on where I have my laptop.

Re: Ask HN: How screwed is a 17-year-old trying to enter US with encrypted laptop?

#10

Post by Someone »

Do what you normally do (or at least, _should_ do):

Make regular backups that you do not carry with the laptop.

That protects you against both hardware defects and overly-aggressive border personnel.

I think the first is way more likely than the second. I have never had to show that a laptop actually was a laptop, not even when traveling with two laptops, an Ethernet switch, a few lengths of cat-5 cable, some JTAG stuff, a prototype device, a few screwdrivers, and a box containing the innards of a GSM phone that came with a power brick and a 2 feet or so plug-in antenna (that was before 9-11, though)

And VISA waiver/ESTA means that the U.S. got early warning about you, so chances are they already checked whether you are considered a risk before you show up at the border.

Also, many business laptops 'boot' into a pre-Windows environment that requests a password.

If you still are worried, would running Windows on a second, small, partition be an option? Alternatively, make the laptop login directly from booting into a demo account that shows some GUI with overlapping windows (could also be a different Linux OS on another partition)

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