In phone terms, that's the $5 wrench problem. The elaborate tech is not relevant if you can be simply coerced somehow to bypass it.

Again in phone terms, maybe bring a blank phone through that border.

Coercion was the reason from start, it's explained in the article.

"A motion filed by his defense argues the interrogation focused on child sexual abuse material as a pretext for investigating his connections to the protest movement."

So the message was simple: don't protest and you will be not harassed.

A blank phone is suspicious in and of itself and probably invites more questioning and suspicion.

And from personal experience, once a border guard is suspicious of you and you're a non-citizen, you're fighting a losing battle to get into that country, regardless of whether you're doing anything shady / illegal.

The most straightforward answer I think is to use common apps for more commonplace social media activities and separate apps that can be removed from your phone when you're crossing a border for things you want to keep private. It's not perfect privacy, but I think a border is one thing that for better or worse you'll need to accept some compromises on.

Why are you staying in this place?

(Is this in South Africa?)

Brazil maybe?

Iceland I think

Washington most likely

I live in Washington DC, and even though carjacking is a problem here, not to a degree that people plan on it happening to them. I would be surprised if OP's situation took place in DC.

Carjackings ramped up in 2021 through 2024. They appear to be headed back down the "low and steady" of the early 00s. Looking at the numbers, DC isn't alone in this trend - Chicago was pretty bad as well.

Gee… A lot of people lost their jobs at once and crime went up? Then when the economy recovered crime went down? It’s almost like keeping people educated and employed actually does work better than more police and longer sentences.

Also the rise of stressed delivery drivers leaving their cars running, and the kiaboys social media meme / subculture contributed.

Even for Brazil, even for the most dangerous cities, that's still an insane number of kidnappings. They happen enough that you need to be aware and be careful to not be an easy target, but it's still a rare event overall.

Was born there. It was Caracas in the 00s

As one does. Why, six of the eleven times I've had my car stolen, it was a carjacking with myself or my family member in it.

Six of the eleven times...

Crazy.

What city was this, if you don't mind me asking?

Jesus, what country?

Also what decade.

probably South Africa?

San Andreas?

That is insane. Where do you live?

Must be Gotham City

Joburg?

This was joking about GP, if that was not clear. A society simply cannot function with the cartoon levels of crime seen in Batman or Grand Theft Auto; People leave for abroad. Planning what you should do after you're kidnapped is a function reserved for if your life is too much of an apocalyptic disaster to plan not to be kidnapped, and even South Africa and El Salvador at their worst levels of unrest were not really at that level.

I don't think you really know what you're talking about and I'm struggling to answer to your dumb "joke". I was sharing a rough anecdote as an example of how technology fails when designed in isolation and your answer was ... Lol, Batman.

I invite you to read about daily life in latinamerica. Kidnappings were very common in the early 2000s and millions of people indeed leave leading to some of the biggest human refugee crises in the world ... Lol, GTA

People who get carjacked often enough to have an informed opinion about countermeasures don't exist in real life. Instead, refugees exist, and people trying to make first-principles opinions about carjacking-in-theory exist.

I've read this comment many times and still don't understand your point, there's no experts in kidnapping countermeasures? first hand experience doesn't count? kidnappings are not real? something about refugees for whatever reason?

I think you should sit this one out since you clearly don't know what you're talking about

And there's the problem that if the PIN or worse a biometric version of this becomes remotely well known you've now created an incentive for a car thief to kidnap people even if they only want the car.

Or anything else you can't easily transfer. I can't help but point at passkeys in particular (or 2FA in general).

A variant of this is the well-known scene from a previous century's movie involving extracting an eye to bypass retinal scanner.

Like when fingerprint readers were added to car doors in the 90s, and carjackers started cutting fingers off to get away...

That is a largely incorrect statement that is loosely based on a single incident, not a trend.

The single incident was an individual in Malaysia who added an after-market finger-print based engine immobilizer to his car in 2005. The attackers threatened the individual with machetes, so that he would put his finger on the sensor, and then drove off with him in the car. The attackers later cut off his finger believing it would let them restart it without him present.

Many cars already have internal/cabin view camera. I'd imagine it will sooner or later get detection for potential theft and kidnapping situations, where it can simply detect the driver by face and prevent driving if it doesn't recognize the invidual as one granted driving privileges.

What city was this, if you don't mind me asking?

Caracas

I have no idea what it was like to live there, but did visit circa-late-90s.

Remember noticing that "walls" in Caracas meant 10' high concrete or brick, topped by glass shards or razor wire.

And there were walls around everything: university professors' homes, social clubs, etc.

Yeah, it would have been way better not to have an alarm, and instead make it appear like the car broke down. Could even maybe somehow actually break it programmatically.

Oh god, I am glad you can still write here. That sounds terrifying