Also, carry multiple phones of the same model. I've been throwing my main phone anywhere besides in plain view and carrying a couple $5 Androids in my pockets instead when going thru TSA, better they try to search one of them than my main phone buried in my bag next to 2 others that look just like it.
"I don't bring my personal phone when traveling, because last time my 700$ iPhone was broken by stupid CBP agents" - that, or any reasonable excuse should work.
EDIT:
"I bring dumbphones when traveling because battery lasts two weeks, unlike iPhone"
"I heard that there are lot of thieves in the country I visited, so I was afraid to bring my real phone"
"I heard that airport X-ray machine can brick iPhone"
"I really like cheap, Chinese phones, they are so cute"
"iPhones are for hipsters, I prefer cheap, practical devices"
possibilities for excuse are endless. And, as the old rule goes, the stupider the excuse the better - if you can convince CBP agents that you are harmless idiot you win.
Why does anyone feel it's necessary to explain why they have the phone they have? There are plenty of people who use cheap phones, and not just as decoys. Why would they exist otherwise?
So it wouldn't be a problem, but if you carry a dumbphone, hand it over and then they search your luggage and find another phone, you'd be in deep trouble.
This is my main phone I use when crossing constitution-free zones.
> it's a felony to lie to a customs & border patrol officer
That makes me livid: "Oh, sorry, the constitutional laws (that apply to us) don't apply here, see it's not technically the US because reasons." [lies to officer] "FELONY!".
Why does that make you livid? Did you think you don't have to obey any laws simply because you're at a border? I guarantee you it's still a felony to murder someone there, so why would lying to a federal agent be any different?
Because the purpose of law is to protect people. The purpose of murder laws is to protect people from the act of murder. The purpose of constitutional law is to protect people from tyranny.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make. My point is that you can't reasonably claim that all laws go out the window just because some constitutional protections are suspended. Saying that it should be legal to lie to a federal agent under those circumstances is roughly equivalent to saying it should be legal to murder said federal agent under those circumstances (which is obviously not true).
The only other conclusion is that you think that the law against making false statements is somehow special and it alone should be thrown out under those circumstances. But there's no reason why that particular law should be special, so the much more straightforward assumption is that you think laws in general shouldn't apply in those circumstances.
"This is the phone owned by my employer for corporate use, I'd be glad to unlock it and you can look at corporate secrets all day, I don't care although I'll have to report the data breech to my employer. My personal phone doesn't have the hardware to work internationally and I don't pay for international service so its sitting on the shelf in my bedroom at home."
Remember they're not just dumping the contents for analysis, but also installing a rootkit, assuming the phone isn't already rooted, so once it leaves your presence or they plug anything into it, its no longer a trustworthy device.
Something I don't understand is the postal system is essentially wide open for transportation of drugs and stuff as per numerous dark web stories, so simply putting the phone in a box and mailing it would seem to reduce the chance of anyone in the .gov accessing it down to roughly 0% odds.
I'm convinced most of these stories are submarine marketing by big internet companies that have a wide open door to the NSA as most of the discussion revolves around the government not accessing your "private" Facebook activities where no such situation could possibly exist, so there's no point in not unlocking the phone. Ignore the man behind the curtain providing the NSA root privs on the server, the problem is individual officers gaining access to your CRUD app end user device LOL.
Given that the government already has all the data, the real battle is you are trying to appear to be an individual in their database and they'd like to know exactly who, which makes it about as nefarious as asking for your passport, and they know and understand that, so they freak if you won't give them access. As an analogy they know they have all the data on your drivers license and if you refuse to show them your drivers license that will make them extremely interested in why not, you claim you're j random hacker and you claim thats j random hackers drivers license and we have all the license data for j random hacker now why won't you show it, perhaps you have a fake ID for j random hacker or you're someone else trying to set up j random hacker or ...
"My main phone is SIM locked and I don't have international roaming on my plan, so there was no reason to carry it. I had to get a cheap phone so I could buy a SIM when traveling."
