This new guide shows you how to protect your smartphone at the U.S.-Canada border
The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) has released a handbook to help travellers between Canada and the U.S. protect their personal data from being viewed, used or stored by border agencies in either country.
At the moment, Meghan McDermott, staff counsel with BCCLA, says border guards can basically search anything they want — they don't need a court warrant or reasonable suspicion.
"What the privacy commissioner of Canada is recommending — and we do agree with him — is that the best protection is to leave your devices at home," says McDermott. "However we do realize that is inconvenient — especially if you're traveling for work, it's just not an option to leave your device at home for many people. So [the handbook] provides practical tips on how you can best mitigate the risk of your privacy being invaded. Everything from switching off your computer or smartphone right before you get to the border, to making secure backups of everything in advance."
Other ways to protect yourself include ensuring your device has a strong password, enabling two-step authentication, or wiping the phone clean of data — although the group warns that some agencies have acquired sophisticated forensic tools, and may use them to access data that, on the surface, appears to have been deleted.
The tips echo what security experts have been saying for some time, after a wave of incidents in early 2017 of American border guards seizing mobile devices and demanding passwords.
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