My view is that what happens at borders and airport security checkpoints is driven a lot by who (they think) you are rather than what you are carrying.
The scrutiny can begin before you even arrive at a border. The classic case is traveling to countries that require obtaining a visa in advance. But nowadays, many countries do background checks on incoming passengers while their planes are enroute. Consequently, a lot of potential triggers for problems can arise from one’s daily life online, specific actions, and demographic and occupational factors, depending on the country.
So, as I said earlier, if I were traveling to or transiting through a place where I believed there was a credible risk of extended questioning, searches, or detention, I would use a burner phone. That’s my personal view though; crossing borders is all about risk management and we all have different tolerances for risk.
@ddmiller I agree with your assessment about holding devices for extended periods and imaging them for later decryption attempts, and denial of entry is also an issue.
@neil1@Halfsmoke Clearly using a burner phone that you don’t care about unlocking is the safest approach. I think it is also true that for the average traveler between relatively friendly countries (e.g., US ↔ EU), the risk of being detained and being forced to unlock a phone for a search is very low.
Granted…times are a changing as Bob Dylan said…but in the past 18 months wife and I have been to the UK and Costa Rica and I’ve been to Tanzania via Amsterdam both ways…and it was painless. So unless you’re a high value target or have some other…well let’s call it an issue depending on circumstance/desination/whatever else…super precautions are for most people probably over rated.
It would be awesome if Apple sold this as an iCloud+ feature.
You upload your entire iPhone to iCloud where it is encrypted per your choice. Then you select which apps you want to remain on the phone and if they should include any personal data, such as keep Safari but do not maintain any of my bookmarks. Then allow users to set a timer for a duration they choose and only they know. Only after that time will Apple send you the code needed to initiate the download (of course in addition to E2E and your chosen auth, FaceID/TouchID or long password) and copy back all your data onto your phone.
That way you could show customs a completely sterile phone and in good conscience still tell them you have no password to restore. Because you actually don’t. You can even give them the 4-digit lock code because that is all you’ll have and they can happily access all that’s there using it to their delight. And when Apple does send you your download code after the predetermined time (that only you know) and you authenticate with it to restore your iPhone, after just a brief download session the iPhone reboots and puts you exactly back where you were before, as if nothing ever happened. Apple can then delete your upload copy. Needless to say, since your upload was E2E encrypted from the start, you don’t really have to worry about the copy that was with Apple because without your auth, it’s a useless pile of bits.
Now the idea would hinge on having access to good wifi, not everybody on travel will have that. It also means that in principle Homeland could just lock you up until they figure by now you would have received the code and then try to force you to divulge, but I would hope that that reaches sufficiently deep into 4th Amendment territory (even these days) that it’s not just that simple. Especially when tens of thousands of people start using the feature. OTOH it would strike me as a whole lot simpler than buying and operating a burner abroad — assuming Apple would implement this in typical Apple fashion (it just works, and all).
I’d be more than willing to pay for such an iCloud feature. Perhaps even pay per use. Or otherwise, just another great reason to pay more for extra iCloud storage.
In principle, yes. However, I suspect that governments would see this as crossing a line. Allow folks end-to-end encryption for messaging? That serves a valuable purpose in a lot of use cases but only incidentally foils government surveillance. Offer a service that appears custom-designed for thwarting “lawful interception” or whatever they want to call monitoring the flow of information across their borders, and I think you’d quickly find governments demanding that Apple provide backdoors. But, of course, “only for the good guys.”
If I were Apple marketing, I’d just argue that they’re being great patriots by supporting everybody in exercising their 4th Amendment rights (the 5th too actually).
@rda , the really simplest might be to leave your iPhone at home and do without during your trip, or as others have suggested, order a ‘burner’ or ‘rental’ one delivered to your destination and return it before flying back to US. Or borrow a device from an EU based host etc etc. Consider whether the device is really essential for your travels…
Ah, that need not be your issue, but that of someone with a similar name. In which case, there could be something not involving your phone that you may want to do.
Specifically, if, you travel either domestically or internationally and:
You were unable to print a boarding pass from an airline ticketing kiosk or from the Internet;
You were delayed or denied boarding an aircraft;
The airline ticket agent informed you that the Federal Government was not authorizing you to travel;
You are repeatedly referred for secondary screening when clearing U.S. Customs or were denied entry into the United States;
You were told by CBP at a U.S. port of entry that your fingerprints need to be corrected.
You wish to amend a traveler record because of an overstay as a result of not submitting the required I-94 when exiting the United States; or
You believe you were incorrectly denied ESTA authorization.
You believe your personal information was inappropriately exposed or shared by a government agent?
… then the DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (DHS TRIP) “could potentially assist with your travel experience”.
“… exiting the USA” … a couple of years ago I visited Detroit and returned to Australia via a domestic flight to LA then an international flight to Australia. I only had carry on luggage and when I landed in LA I was told to board a shuttle bus that would take me to the international terminal. The bus took me to the secure (gate) area of the international terminal - I did not pass through the immigration system. I was therefore concerned that there was no record of me leaving the USA.
After arriving in Australia I eventually managed to contact the US border authorities who assured me that they had the flight manifest and so knew I had left the USA.
Regarding the current topic, my view is that an obvious burner phone could be a trigger for deeper investigation by border authorities. Same for a traveller with no smart phone.
Best sanitise my usual phone and maybe temporarily remove some non-essential email accounts before travelling.
One option is to move old/sensitive emails from online accounts (eg icloud) to local mailboxes on a Mac (that is not travelling with you) using Mac Mail. This is probably good housekeeping anyway so that the number of emails stored in the icloud account does not become unmanageable. For example I like to create “on my Mac” mailboxes for each year and move the inbox and sent emails to those mailboxes after 12 months or so. Those archived emails can then be backed up with Time Machine.
Similar archiving practices can be used for Contacts and other private information.
I was in a situation where I needed a backup phone. Bought a used iphone on Gazelle, sold it back to Gazelle when I was done. Obviously I took a loss, but I was hardly out the full price of the phone.
I remember it being pretty easy to backup an iPhone, wipe it, then later restore the backup. After being wiped it could be set up with only the absolute basics.
When travelling I always just bought a prepaid SIM in each country.
Testing software or getting perfect screenshots often means factory resetting my iPhone, and then restoring from backup at day’s end. I always make sure I am doubly or triply backed up first, but it’s pretty easy to wipe & restore.
I’m still of the opinion that this is an edge case issue and most people it is down in the weeds. YMMV of course…and individual cases will vary…but for the most part I don’t think this is a serious issue.
The Financial Times reported today that The European Commission (EU) is issuing “basic devices” (aka burner phones) to their officials heading to the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington DC next week.
The Commission did not confirm the issuing of burner phones to the Financial Times, but did say that all EU officials traveling to the U.S. were told to turn off their phones and hide them in “special sleeves” at the border amid a rise in phone seizures from border agents in recent weeks. The times also noted that a number of tourists and visiting academics have been turned away at the US border for having criticism of the White House on their phone.
Other news media are just now picking up this story, and The New Republic noted that this is the kind of security measure typically saved for trips to China or the Ukraine, where the fear of IT surveillance is high.
I have a trip coming up and have been thinking about this. Perfect timing.
I’m amazed by all the advocacy for burner phones. The presumption appears to be that you normally only brought your iPhone for the purposes of making phone calls. Or at least that you could get by with just phone calls.
For starters, who are you going to call? What’s their number? It’s in Contacts. iCloud contacts. I don’t even have the numbers of all my kids memorized.
You won’t need access to email? Critical things that might pop up at work or with family or your finances or alarm systems?
And I got the iPhone 16 Pro to serve as my main camera for everything that doesn’t require heavy zoom. This is a site seeing trip and pix will be central. A burner phone camera will be a big regression.
My iPhone is also my main computer while traveling. I will probably skip the laptop. So this device is my ticket to getting boarding passes, checking in, Uber rides, and many other things that require credentials.
And these are super long flights. So access to News and Games and Books and Movies will be helpful. All require credentials, many iCloud.
I could go on. I love the idea of being off the grid. I just don’t get how a burner phone is plausible by anyone but a fringe minority. But I could be wrong :-)
But yes it creates a data privacy challenge. I don’t have the answer yet…
We’ve perhaps strayed from the OP’s original question but I’ve found all the contributions fascinating and useful.
For myself, I am bemused.
The last time I went to France was just before Covid with an iPhone that I found the absolute bee’s knees. Maps, reviews, easy ticketing, quick calls to friends to verify dinner dates . . . the list goes on and on. . . .
But then, I remember being a student in France in 1972 and I had no such device and everything was fine. You didn’t call back to the family because a 20 minute call would have been a hundred bucks. You didn’t waltz off to some new place before checking maps and reading reviews in Frommer’s Europe On $5 A Day. Train schedules? Well, you bought the continent-wide book of them (thick!) and it solved the problem. If you needed dough, you went to American Express and cashed a couple traveler’s checks. Want to let your Prof stateside know what’s happening? That’s what airmail blanks are for and you’ll get a reply in three weeks or more. That was OK. Traveling to Italy? Best memorize some simple Italian 'cause it’s courteous and there is no magic translator in your pocket. In general, I felt no need to be in contact with the States, what was in front of me was far more interesting.
So, when I read how people say you have to have this and that minor convenience or disaster will occur I am bemused. Really?
It’s always wise to be prudent and conservative when you travel to countries you know nothing about (even though you think you do), but you know? I don’t think I’ll be deleting references to my preferences for warm toast rather than cold on my trip to England.
Maybe. I had a much similar experience about a decade or so later and I remember doing all that stuff as well. I also remember wandering from exchange office to exchange office trying to get a reasonable rate for my dollars;* getting lost late at night in cities because I had no map available (and no, not in the fun, romantic way, in the I’m going to have to sleep in the street because I can’t find my tiny hotel way); lugging around 20 undeveloped rolls of film to carry home with me; missing a train because the printed schedules weren’t the schedules they were actually using; packing a lot of extra weight in the form of guide books, maps, schedules, books to read, etc;** and quite a few other things.
Note also that a lot of the things you mention no longer exist, so the pre-smartphone approach is no longer possible.
Finally, I’m pretty sure if you hadn’t had access to all the analog versions of things that the smartphone gives you now (schedules, reviews, airmail, AMEX traveller’s checks, etc) you would have felt then the same way people are feeling now.
It was still an amazing experience but let’s not ignore the difficulties that smartphones & networks have overcome.
*which made arriving at the airport internationally a pain because all the exchange offices in the airport were extortionate. Key was having some leftover local money from your last trip – just enough to get a ticket into center city where things were better. When ATMs went international and you could withdraw local money from your home bank account with your debit card – well, that was a game-changer.
**The trick was – when you had finished at a certain location – to rip out that section of the guidebook and leave it behind to lighten your load. Books for pleasure I would finish and “donate” to whatever hotel I was at that moment, which is why there may be a fair bit of golden age SF sprinkled around France, Spain, and Italy.
Hehe. Of course only for the good guys. 
