Border agents seizing devices

Our family is traveling to San Fransisco this summer. I usually bring a laptop when I travel. We’re only bringing our phones on this trip. I will be turning over my passwords if asked by a border agent. This makes me uncomfortable.
How do you plan to handle this situation if it happens?

Canada Border Services seizes lawyer’s phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

in both the US and canada the answer is yes you have to hand over your passwords if asked by border agents, this has been taken to court, in both countries and found to be valid

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I haven’t been to the USA since Trump. But been to Europe 3 times. I’ve never been asked for passwords.

Anything important is in an encrypted container volume online. Not on my devices. So that stuff is never at risk.

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Same. We last went to the USA in July 2016. At least we’ll be in California ( a Trump-free zone). Haha. :slight_smile:

CBSA officers are directed to disable any internet connection and only examine content that is already stored on a device, said Scott Bardsley, spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, in an email.

So that’s basically what I do. They can have my passwords, but all my data is in the cloud, or on servers in my house. none of that data is “crossing the border” so they don’t have a right to search it.

So log out of all your cloud accounts / e-mail accounts / social media accounts etc. None of those are crossing the border. All they can legally search is your storage devices, including your hard drive or local storage on your phone.

BC Civil Liberties Association has a nice guide: https://bccla.org/our_work/electronic-devices-privacy-handbook-a-guide-to-your-rights-at-the-border/

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Never had an issue when we went to Vegas in October last year and we went the day after pot became legal.

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Just be the average user I seem to deal with.
It doesn’t have a password. Oh it’s 1234… joe@ghotmail.com… oh the one to get on the computer?.. Ugghhh - try password. With a capital P. No? Change the "A"s to 4s… no? Let me look it up in the notebook of every password I’ve ever had since 1996 with no mention of WTF they’re for…

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