France’s research minister said a French scientist was denied entry to the US this month after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration.
France’s research minister said a French scientist was denied entry to the US this month after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration.
So people these days still not understand that border crossing are a sensitive location?
Like, literally, anywhere you go, the first thing you should do before leaving is encrypt and reinstall / factory reset (which should delete all encryption keys to the old data) the devices. And if you have very sensitive stuff, use a disk overwrite program, and for phones start recording a video with the phone aimed at like a wall (and turn off the audio recording). Leave it recording overnight and it should fill up your phone. Use 4K recording to fill the storage faster. Then just wipe the phone again. Now, DONT DOWNLOAD ANYTHING THAT COULD BE CONSIDERED SENSITIVE. Load the phone with innocuous things like pet photos, nature, etc… and act like a “normie”. Don’t have anything critical of any politician, especially not of the country you’re visiting, nor of its allies. Its best to not have any social media apps, preferrably, you should never post things under your name, but if you already did have such accounts, delete them.
If they ask you “Do you have any social media accounts” you say “I don’t recall having any” or “I don’t think so” and “I’m not the type of person to use social media”. Or alternatively, you can have a social media account that have only non-political posts, and show then that.
Edit: To be clear, don’t travel to the US. But this should be how you prepare for border crossings, even if it isn’t the US.
This is completely unnecessary if you travel to a western democracy, like an EU country, Canada, Australia, etc. America is no longer part of that group though, sadly.
This might be normal opsec for a foreign agent, but absolutely ridiculous to expect average people or some French doctor to adhere to.
The reality is this issue would never have happened just three months ago, and the reason it’s happening now is fascism.
I think Europeans, coming from a sane place where border crossings are more of a formality than anything else, don’t expect a plane to the US to be a time machine/teleporter to East Berlin.