9th Circuit: Customs Can Rummage Through Your Laptop
 

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/...h/0650581p.pdf

With respect to these searches, the Supreme Court has
refused to draw distinctions between containers of informa-
tion and contraband with respect to their quality or nature for
purposes of determining the appropriate level of Fourth
Amendment protection. Arnold’s analogy to a search of a
home based on a laptop’s storage capacity is without merit.

Precisely why TrueCrypt is a beautiful tool.

FileVault as well, though perhaps not as strong cryptographically.

Either way they're not gonna bother for the average customs search.

But surely the CBP officers can force you to input your password (or otherwise unlock your data)? It's just like unlocking your suitcase. If you refuse, they confiscate it.

So do what TrueCrypt recommends - encrypt a volume within a volume. You freely give them the password to the outervolume. The inner volume simply sits and looks like any ordinary file.

IronKey Flash Drive.

Physically destroys itself after 10 sequential failed password attempts. ^

If they ask you to enter the password there and contribute to its destruction or the destruction of its contents so as to obstruct an investigation, couldn't it invite charges of obstruction of justice or other charges?

TrueCrypt works well in terms of plausible deniability so as to mitigate risk of charges, but there are approaches that work better than any single one of the approaches mentioned here.

One approach is to combine the above mentioned approaches to make sure the key to decrypt is never in your possession when crossing the border.

I have a new laptop and I'm seriously considering keeping nothing personal or work related on it. I can do my email online, keep my bookmarks online, and download documents when I need them.

Imagine crossing a border with an empty mail program and a browser with no bookmarks. :D

Don't forget to delete the browser cache & rewrite every "unused" sector on the disk drive. It can take a while if you want to be truly paranoid.

I wonder whether solid state drives leave an afterimage?

When I received my new laptop from work, I immediately purchased a second hard drive and installed it. My day-to-day, intra-US work is performed on that second hard drive. The original hard drive, with it's virgin installation of our corporate image, remains locked in my safe at home. It will be installed in the computer prior to any international travel.

It already has PGP and CCleaner installed, to permit the requisite cache deletion and free-space wipes prior to transiting Customs on my return.

I also carry a single 4GB Flash drive with me, in order to be able to work on customer-provided documents. That drive is also re-formatted and complete free-space wiped prior to returning stateside.

Don't you watch primetime dramas?! Of course they do! Besides, all anyone ever has to do to recover the most recent few bits of data is to "check the buffer" and you'll have immediate access to the RSA SecurID algorithm. Right? :rolleyes:

Some of them are based on flash technology... so I'd expect the contents to be present after they're erased. Since they're faster than regular hard drives, wiping them won't be as much of a pain. Also, they don't have the same properties as magentic hard drives, so a single pseudorandom data write should be sufficient to "scramble" the contents of empty space.

They can't force you to disclose the password as there are Fifth Amendment issues.

I've heard that customs sometimes clones drives. Since people generally have the default copyright on their writing, what permits the copyright violation? How about after the "investigation" is over; aren't they obligated to wipe any copyrighted material they have?

What happens if the drive contains material protected by attorney-client or doctor-patient privilege? Can the US gov't bring charges against the client or patient based on what is found?