The point is even if they become suspicious all they can do is seize the burner ask you a bunch of questions etc. search you, etc they can't get access to your data. You can't get in real trouble, just majorly inconvenienced.
So yeah you can be imprisoned, brought to ERs while they run up private medical bills (they told doctors I had drugs up my ass), have a search warrant executed, and then at the end of the day be chased by debt collectors for the search that turned up nothing.
(I've never done it, but I suspect you could get rid of a significant percentage of real debts like this, just on the strength of the industry's terrible record keeping practices.)
Just something I deal with every year or two, doing the process over again every time they resell it.
Probably even more suspicious if you make sketchy excuses when the truth is fine. I’d go with “I (or %COMPANY%) figure electronic devices get imaged at borders or potentially stolen abroad, so we don’t carry them when we travel.” Blame the other country you’re coming from if you want.
Although I’d just not carry a phone across a border in the first place.
Related, regarding the “hiding a partition on a thumb drive” thing (8 days ago, 287 / 166; project is cool but note that tptacek and others in the comments know what they’re talking about):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48974862
And the immortal words of James Mickens come to mind:
It is the same advice that cops give to young black men in “the talk”. Comply, don’t get killed, hire a lawyer and fight injustice in court.
You have the right to refuse to unlock your phone as far as I know. You do not have the right to refuse lawful orders. So you cant resist being arrested or being searched, or them taking your stuff but you can refuse to answer questions, you don't have to tell them anything, whether that is the best plan of course varies.
But in general you don't know what they know, where their questions are leading, what minor detail in your answers may corroborate your "guilt" or minor inconsistencies may be construed as lying and obstructing.
So you are in general better off not answering police questions.
That of course excludes questions you are legally obligated to answer. Which in the specific case of CBP interactions is most questions.
You should also always keep in mind what the consequences of your actions are don't commit a felony to avoid a misdemeanour, in the case in the article if this guy had child sexual abuse material on his phone, or chats conspiring to commit major felonies his call was probably the right one. If his phone was clean and he was being adversarial, he chose poorly.
You have to try to strike a balance between being respectful, generally agreeable and cooperative while exercising your rights.
With CBP, we are in a gray zone. It is hard to know what to do.
Thanks for that, it's been a few years and I'd forgotten about this.
<https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf> (PDF)
Truth-in-parody.
Even having a burner phone without any personal information on it can be deemed suspicious. It would be best for your phone to have a recently-reinstalled OS, with a few critical apps like Whatsapp or iMessage set up with a few personal messages sent. You need to be able to set those up without a password manager. Anything else needs to take place on devices that you aren't carrying with you. Fortunately enough people don't update their Facebook these days that just having an account that exists but you don't use will probably work, assuming you don't look like someone that would be obsessed with their socials.
Maybe there are USB thumb drives that operate like a YubiKey unless special setup is performed to access the storage inside? That's one way to carry data with you if you have to.