492
No Warrant Needed: Border Agents in NY, CT, and VT Can Now Search Your Phone
(www.gadgetreview.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
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Remember to turn off all biometrics for unlocking your phone, if not now, then at least when traveling internationally. They can scan your face or your fingerprint without a warrant. But they can't compel you to provide potentially incriminating information including passwords, codes and patterns. Self-destruct codes will likely get you arrested for obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence though, so use those at your own risk. I wouldn't recommend it.
Best to never keep anything you wouldn't want a cop or fed seeing anywhere on your device. If you have any materials that you wish to keep private, store them elsewhere as much as possible. Either never store them on your device or regularly back them up somewhere secure and wipe your device clean. Make sure all remote access to those materials are behind secure encrypted password protected connections.
Remember, know the law so that you may follow it to its letter and no further. If you must comply, comply. If you can, don't comply. Know your rights and practice them. Never volunteer information to law enforcement even if you're innocent. You don't know what they know, what they are wanting to hear, what can be misunderstood, confused or contorted to put you into trouble. Every day is shut the fuck up Friday. Nobody will protect you but you.
Or just don't travel to North Korea, because we are talking about the fascist dictatorship of North Korea, right? No western democracy would do this.
traveling to actual north korea would likely be safer at this point
Who's gonna tell them?
Refusing to unlock your properly secured device for them will result in its confiscation and perhaps your detention.
Password managers and browser history are sticking points. You could not use your device for anything, but one of your services might rat you out.
You kinda need a travel phone.
If you're a us citizen, they cannot detain you indefinitely. What that means isn't legally defined yet, but seems to be around 4 - 8 hours.
Edit: apparently no longer true.
CPB statement
And that's 2021 before things started getting hot.
Thanks for that correction.
How long until they're caught planting fake data on phones to arrest people they don't like though?
That kind of thing has been happening since the 90s.
My pin is eleven digits, a number I'll never forget, and I enter it every time. No face ID for me.
Also, don't call the cops unless getting arrested is better than whatever is happening. Because, they'll use any excuse to arrest you no matter how innocent you think you are.
I don't know how a self-destruct code will work, but if you have password A get into profile A, while password B gets you into a plausibly looking and normal profile B while profile A and password A get deleted, then you can claim your phone was always and ever the way profile B shows it. It doesn't look or feel "destroyed." It's just a normal profile with mundane messages, browsing history, contact list that makes sense, etc.
Good luck proving that anything fishy happened when the whole operation looks and feels like unlocking a normal phone.
You can even setup biometric login to be password B. So if someone gets into your phone with a fingerprint, which feels very normal, they see a normal boring and completely plausible profile.
There is absolutely a way to make phones secure if there is enough will.
That said, it's a political problem that's begging for a political rather than a tech solution.
Finally some common sense comment on this topic.
This will be seen as a red flag and get you a few nights-weeks stay in the Gulag.
I don't mean wipe your device of all data. I mean wipe any of your sensitive data. Keep your texts to friends, photos of your daughter, apps and stuff.
I'd be cautious of keeping photos of your daughter on your phone with this administration.
My institution has a travel warning to the US.
We cannot cross the border by car, only in airports.
We cannot travel without a phone, with a burner, or with a wiped phone. We have to memorize our lawyer's number when we are detained. We are told we have no rights and have to comply to any request, this means bend over. Fuck that. No more US travel.
Don't blame you. Shits fucked.