Don’t bring guns/drugs/knifes or liquids and you’ll be fine. Me I try to sneak a weapon through every time I board a plane some times I even get away with it. Most of the time TSA gets a new knife.
Have a fresh install of Linux on your laptop with nothing logged in. Do a boot and nuke before that.
I’m not going to say there’s nothing to worry about. I’ve found the after hand informative notes in my checked bags before (that only had clothes and maybe a book or something) saying the TSA searched my bags while in transit or something. I didn’t have a laptop at the time.
Laptops though you can carry on and have more control over, and they are so common they aren’t going to go through everything. Just keep it with you as a carry on and don’t make a big deal about it. Flying domestically, and granted I don’t fly a lot for many reasons including not liking the TSA, I have found that when I fly super cheap airlines the terminals tend to be in a far off section that have their own checkpoint, and that checkpoint has, for me, been clearly less busy, very quick, and less intrusive (they’ll let you just get in the line for the standard metal detector and such, even if there is a body scanner running, and the metal detector is also much quicker and as far as anyone can show data on, actually better security for them).
Also, pro tip, don’t wear loose clothing you can’t just take off at the checkpoint (like a hoddie with no shirt underneath or something). They will pat you down in that event at least, which is nothing else is annoying and takes extra time.
If you really want to be careful for something, encrypt your drives, though that may cause you extra headaches as they don’t like taking “no, I won’t give you my password” for an answer from any time I’ve heard. You could just leave anything meaningful on a different drive at home though (if you want to be SUPER paranoia safe about your data for some reason, you could just buy a small drive for the trip and leave your normal drive at home, so that they can’t try to recover any information off the drive even after it’s been formatted or deleted).
Or to avoid all possibilities of problems in this regard, you could just leave the laptop at home and enjoy your trip without it (assuming it’s not a business trip and you aren’t talking about a work laptop needed for it).
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Haha well part of the fun of this trip is going to be solitude at a resort and having time to hack, which I have been getting back to lately but haven’t had time to tear into my phones and tablets. I’ve come to that whatever machine I take I’ll 0 the drive out, 0 out my USB’s, burn a DVD with Ubuntu or something on it, and leave everything empty till I get there. Even my phones don’t have OS’s on them yet (though thats less intentional and more a problem at the moment…). And then when I get there and get ready to do stuff I’ll just teamviewer my shit at home and pull my files through that. Can’t be THAT slow after all, can it.
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It’s not possible to mail it to your destination?
I have attempted this before and it was smashed. And I didn’t pack it shitty either.
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Don’t sweat it. I’ve carried laptops dozens of times domestically and internationally. A slightly too large bottle of shampoo will cause you more headache than a laptop. They won’t even touch it. It just goes through the X-ray.
Try to relax and enjoy the miracle of human flight!
My only input is DO NOT check your electronics. I’m pretty sure they still allow it, i havent flown in years. If at all possible take your electronics onboard with you. If not get a cable lock like stores use for display models. You can get them for 20 bucks. Use that to secure your laptop to some portion of the inside of your checked bag. It can still be removed from the bag, but cannot be separated. If they give you any guff about the cable lock just raise a stink and ask for a supervisor.
Add another voice to the “don’t worry about it” crowd.
I’ve even gone through the ‘random’ gunpowder testing. Just be cooperative with the security theater.
I never see anyone actually opening a laptop or giving the TSA access to their phone, just hundreds of shoeless people shuffling through the scanners and collecting their stuff on the other side from the x-ray trays; occasional patdowns if the metal detector is being used instead. I’ve had that happen as well and made my flight just fine.
I never check bags though, with the exception of a shotgun once. They didn’t even open it.
I don’t fly as often as I used to but have been doing so since I was nine, cross-country, alone. Most of my experience has been in Portland (OR), Dulles (Washington DC), Minneapolis and Chicago, with a small smattering of Des Moines and Eugene, OR (that one’s nice and small, DSM being pretty quiet also).
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Government employees are slow and easily distracted, like puppies, bring a hand grenade to divert their attention
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How about a different perspective.
Consider your laptop was stolen, does it have an encrypted disk or encrypted home folder at least?
Protecting your device and data isn’t something only the paranoid or mischievous people do. Many corporate policies mandate fde with strong passwords. Not to mention the security conscious folks.
Now if you’re fucking with the public WiFi then you get what you deserve. latex glove snapping
I’m half worried about getting bugged, and then half worried about this TBH.
Theres been many reports of stolen items at my local AP but its always been tiny shit. According to my parents NorthWest Airlines is ok, but if by some miracle jet blue becomes an option I think I’ll be a lot happier about the whole ordeal in total.
My plan is thus: Choose either thinkpad or shitty gaming laptop, choose OS to burn to disk, wipe drives (HDD USB ETC), fly there, setup when I get there, have FTP or something to home. Then at least I can do some work while gone. Then they can look at everything all they want if they want to but a 0 is a 0 bruh.
You’re a drop in the bucket, nobody wants to bug you.
If you are evil enough to draw attention, you’re already being watched. And a simple ftp/VPN is easy enough to break compared to secretly installing a rootkits.
Take it as carry-on luggage, this is common practice for anything valuable.
Your laptop won’t get bugged, as @SudoSaibot pointed out, not that important.
If you are flying within the country then it should be fine. However I have seen reports of people having their devices searched by the border control because they were coming into the USA from different country. This happened even to USA citizens. Sometimes they even want your Facebook and Twitter usernames. I don’t think you need to wipe the devices but leave them empty. That way they won’t harass you about unlocking them and they won’t get any of your personal data. People will always call you paranoid until they get burned themselves. Just read the Reddit thread, lot of upset people there.
Tor developer’s laptop was bugged and he was not evil.
I think that was more of an /s sort of comment. In terms of governmental law enforcement we are all potential enemies, and has been proven (and is topical on this forum) any sort of self-enforced privacy is verboten to the goal of “security” of the state.
Not meaning to get political, such subjects have been covered on the L1T news.
No one is not important enough for the US government to bug
I forgot to take my laptop out of my bag once, all they did was pull it out and swab the exterior for traces of bad stuff and I was on my way.