How to Enter the US With Your Digital Privacy Intact

Wired [unpaywalled] – Crossing into the United States has become increasingly dangerous for digital privacy. Here are a few steps you can take to minimize the risk of Customs and Border Protection accessing your data…That de facto border crackdown is set to become far more explicit if the Trump administration follows through on a plan to enact a new “travel ban” on more than 40 countries, which would reportedly bar entry entirely from at least 10 nations and subject visitors from another five to new scrutiny and automatic interviews at the border. Another 26 countries would fall into a third category where their status will be decided in the 60 days after the policy goes into effect. All of these changes suggest that US borders are about to become far less friendly places to foreigners and even to Americans returning from abroad. And these new border enforcement measures will no doubt be accompanied by aggressive attempts at surveillance extending to travellers’ electronic devices—a threat to digital privacy and free expression that extends to foreigners and US residents alike. “We’re seeing extraordinarily disturbing examples of retaliatory action based on people’s speech and political opinions,” says Nathan Wessler, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “When that’s combined with really sweeping authority to mine the contents of our phones and laptops, looking at things we’ve written, things people have sent us, it should be a particular cause for concern for people across the political spectrum—and people with all kinds of citizenship and immigration statuses.”..