[Cryptography] detention and/or seizure if you don't give your passphrase to US CBP

Ray Dillinger bear at sonic.net
Wed Feb 15 14:57:29 EST 2017



> This leads to some hypothetical but entirely plausible situations
> with considerable downside potential:
> 
>   1)  Suppose your battery dies while you're on a day trip to
>    Tijuana.  Your device gets seized.
> 
>   2) Suppose you are on vacation. You give your phone and laptop
>    to your family to take home while you go on ahead, or stay
>    behind.  Your spouse and children miss their flight while
>    CBP tries to extract the passphrase from them.  Then the
>    devices get seized.
> 
>   3) Suppose your devices contains random numbers that you
>    cannot possibly decode, such as are attached below.  You
>    miss your flight, and your devices get seized.

4) Suppose you mail your device home (or ship it) before going to the
airport.

5) Suppose you buy a simple 'dumb' cell phone and don't program it with
any contact numbers.

				Bear

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