Is it safe to travel with your phone right now?
Is it safe to travel with your phone right now?
www.theverge.com Is it safe to travel with your phone right now?
Know your rights, but also minimize your risk.
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31 comments
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If you're in the US and a citizen, you do not have to divulge your password to the authorities or even a judge, per the 5th Amendment. However, they can force you to use your fingerprint or FaceID to unlock your phone.
If you think there's a chance the police might want to search your phone, be sure that you have a difficult pin pattern or password to unlock your phone at a minimum. Consider if bringing your phone is necessary. If you're going to a protest, do not bring your primary phone. Get a cheap burner or go without.
If you're not a citizen, you need to think about leaving. Seek asylum anywhere but here. Vacation in Canada. The US is no longer safe for foreigners.
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On Android, hold the power button until the menu shows up, them choose "lockdown". The next unlock will require a PIN.
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On iOS, hold down power and volume up (like you’re going to power down or go into emergency mode) then cancel. Next unlock will require your PIN.
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Another way on iOS is pressing the Power button 5 times. Same result, but I think it can be accomplished a little easier.
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This can also call Emergency Services if you have it set up.
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Fucking Gemini comes up for me now when I do that...
Edit: there's a system gesture setting to change it back. Search for power menu in settings.
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Appreciate you!
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Or restart. When you first boot your device the drive is encrypted until you enter your code or password.
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"on Android" is a mostly useless statement. There are many flavours of it and they do not all behave the same. My phone does not have this.
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Your biometrics work the first time you log in after a restart? That seems insecure to me.
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That's not what was suggested.
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Oh yeah my bad, I read "lockdown" and "shutdown" lol
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I should have been more specific that this was a Pixel. Does your phone have a way to accomplish the same thing?
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Restarting should also disable biometrics until you put a pin in once
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I have a motorola running LineageOS and it's available on mine. Seems like a relatively standard option, though it may need to be enabled under Settings -> System -> Buttons (or whatever it looks like on your flavor of android).
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Just a note - most LineageOS installs aren't secure unless you re-lock the bootloader, as data can be extracted with some fairly standard mobile phone forensics kits. Unfortunately, not many devices support bootloader re-lock. The Google Pixel series is a notable exception.
Ideally, you would want a security hardened Android OS like GrapheneOS. Graphene only runs on Pixels as the development team specifically disallows it running on hardware with an unlocked bootloader for security reasons.
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I appreciate the info, I think that's good information that I hadn't fully thought through (but probably could have figured out had I thought about it). I'm not too interested in a Pixel, and the unlocked bootloader is really only useful if someone has my physical phone. My hard drive is encrypted, of course, so my thought as to a way they could gain information if they modify the bootloader and let me decrypt the phone for them. I wonder if the only next best thing is to basically have an alert, or refuse to boot, if there is a change in the bootloader detected, so I can do a clean install.
Most manufacturers don't allow re-locking of the bootloader unless it's official Android, so it sucks the only other option would be buy from Google.
I'm interested in what you say about the forensics kit. What could I look for to find more info?
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IIRC, you have to enable it on some versions of Android. I don't see the option to disable it on my Android 15 phone but I do recall having to enable it before on older versions. A quick Google search for your version should help.
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Negative, it is not available on my OS.
Lmao who downvoted me cause my phone OS doesn't have a feature? Wild.
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If you’re in the US and a citizen, you do not have to divulge your password to the authorities or even a judge, per the 5th Amendment. However, they can force you to use your fingerprint or FaceID to unlock your phone.
They can, however, probably seize your phone, and refuse to return it to you. Something to keep in mind when deciding to take your primary device, or a burner.
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Yep. They absolutely can do this with "reasonable suspicion" as legally valid justification.
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I've set my phone so it will erase if someone enters the PIN backwards (GrapheneOS duress code). It would be fun to watch the authorities wipe the phone.
I'd probably get deported over it, but whatever.
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No guarantees you wouldn't get deported anyway, citizen or not. But always good to have a backup plan!
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31 comments