[madisfun]

Might be a good idea to have a throwaway SIM and a phone for travelling, not logged in into any cloud or social network services, and not tied to your main google account. Maybe just a couple of chat apps to stay in touch with your friends/relatives. Switch SIM back to your main number and reset phone once you're beyond the border... It seems exactly what EFF recommends by the way. With a laptop it's more complicated.

[r_singh]

I would actually be more afraid doing something like this, since having no data on me could raise unwarranted suspicion from border security.

[primroot]

10 years ago I was attending a US college with a Student Visa. The few times I was returning from my home country I would bring only a backpack with barely anything inside it (all the clothes I needed were already in my dorm). This was cause for suspicion and further questioning each time.

[raxxorrax]

Every false action, they are forced to follow through with, is a win.

[Simon_says]

> to stay in touch with your friends/relatives.

That's a mistake. One of your friends/relatives can say something inconvenient.

[philpem]

Put the files you need on an encrypted online share, then download them when you need them?

Then of course zero-write the hard drive and reload the software when you're done.

[tsss]

That looks suspicious. You need to have at least some personal data on you for them to drool over.

[bluejekyll]

Just be honest: “whenever I travel, for security reasons, I always wipe my laptop and phone of any personal data as I’m extremely concerned about it being stolen while traveling.”

[deelly]

Agent: please write login/pw/url to you data on this piece of paper. Now.

[bluejekyll]

To be clear. I don’t support this policy. What I’m suggesting is that by misleading/lying to an agent you might make it worse.

This sucks and is stupid, all forms of dragnet type operations are.

In this particular context, you could specifically discard 2fa tokens, etc., such that a password isn’t enough to login to these accounts. Now this might mean that your entry will be denied, but you will be incapable of giving them access to what they’re asking for.

[philpem]

Household budget, a couple of old bank statements, some Github clones...?

[blunte]

Aha, but make sure none of the contributors to the repos you cloned are on a bad list, or you have now accidentally associated yourself with them.

It's a bit of a stretch maybe, but not beyond possibility.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Could you say something like:

"Lost everything in a hard drive crash literally two days ago, pretty busy getting ready to travel and just had time to reinstall before I jumped on the plane."

[colejohnson66]

No. Because lying is a serious federal felony.

[Roark66]

So what, you just say, this is a new phone and I lost my previous one. Conversation over.

[LurkersWillLurk]

That is called "making false statements", a serious federal felony. 18 U.S.C. § 1001.