I remember how Google's internal guidelines for travel circa 2011 required to remove any material under NDA from your laptop when traveling to China or Russia; you had to restore it over the VPN after a safe arrival. Funny that now the same precautions apply to the US :((
I would like to add as a reminder to encrypt all devices as well. Leave as little plaintext data as possible.
Veracrypt has the ability to create hidden volumes, regardless of OS.
How do you restore it via VPN? Don't you first need a workable OS to connect to VPN first?
I have never encountered a phone-related problem that could not be solved with:
1. A print out. 2. Asking someone. 3. Using your web browser on your computer. 4. Using some kind of voip if audio communication is needed.
Yes, it is not as convenient as the surveillance and privacy nightmares of today, but if your life is only about convenience, then send your money to the government, and let them just decide for you how much money you need, and you don't even have to think about that.
A minor inconvenience is a price well paid for freedom from surveillance and excellent mental health.
The ones who complain about inconvenience don't really care about privacy, democracy and freedom, so should not complain when these things are attacked.
New cars are being fitted with cell modems to ping cell towers.
Maybe it's because I went nearly 50 years with no cell phone?
It seems reasonable to shut the phone off—check it through with your luggage.
(One of my favorite travel memories was trying to ask people in Tokyo for directions to my hotel—I speak only English.)
I have tried really really hard to break the phone addiction too. Though so far without durable success, unfortunately. :-(
But you knew that already and decided to just post bait.
Any idea what happened? New CEO? Acquisition?
Those don't exist. I guess you haven't traveled with Alaska for a while.
https://worldaviationfestival.com/blog/airlines/alaska-airli...
I don't think the tsa is at sfo. They use a private contractor for tsa functions. Is the quote made-up?
> Ms. Lopez-Jimenez, 41, a native of Guatemala, and her daughter, Wendy Godinez-Lopez, were flagged by T.S.A. officials on Friday when they showed up on a passenger list for a Sunday flight from San Francisco to Miami. The agency then tipped off Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the documents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/us/politics/immigration-t...
> Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers are sharing names and birth dates of travelers believed to have been ordered out of the country by an immigration judge. ICE can then send agents to the airport to detain and quickly deport those people.
They don't have to be at the airport to do this; airlines have to send them the manifest.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-19/chapter-I/part-122/sub...
> Except as provided in paragraph (c) of this section, an appropriate official of each commercial aircraft (carrier) departing from the United States en route to any port or place outside the United States must transmit to the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS; referred to in this section as the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) system), the electronic data interchange system approved by CBP for such transmissions, an electronic passenger departure manifest covering all passengers checked in for the flight.
What might confuse things a bit is that this incident happened hours before ICE agents started reinforcing TSA at checkpoints and seems mostly unrelated, other than establishing the general principle that ICE will arrest people at airports based on tips from TSA's flight booking records.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/ice-agents-arrest-crying-woman-sfo
They are still active for accessing anything in the wallet, however.
"No, I don't have to."
Detained in a room for twelve hours.
"Okay, okay, here's my phone."
I'm in my 50s and I don't know where this stance comes from. Sure, you physically can in the same sense that anywhere can be walked to if you're willing to walk long enough. But so many businesses and services have gone "mobile-first" or "mobile-only" to the point that if you're traveling for leisure you're doing extra work on your vacation, and if you're traveling for business you're wasting time that could be used doing your job. Just as a first order, the denizens of every airline subreddit will tell you that the most useful tool during a trip is the airline's mobile app and that's either tied with or just above or below the Flighty app if anything goes wrong.
Combine that with QR codes for everything from menus to parking, public transit tickets and fare cards that can be easily loaded into a phone instead of using a ticket machine made when we were kids, or paper maps increasingly hard to find if they're available at all, and you're looking at a real challenge. How are you going to talk to and plan with your travel partner or colleagues with payphones removed?
It's also not incumbent upon us to make the government's life easier by making our lives harder. "Just leave your phone at home" is ludicrous behavior to expect when it's the government being the intrusive jerks.
Sure, you can do without them, but it will be much more difficult.
Sure it’s inconvenient sometimes, but on the whole I’d say my life is better than those I see glued to their phones.
This belief is reinforced whenever people ask for my number (dentist, doctor, whatever) The gusto which they invariably reply “OMG I WISH I could get rid of my phone!”
But in traveling is almost essential. GPS to navigate, search for hotels, places to eat, take fotos… yes, you could carry many devices… but seriously?! Ah btw… what about being in touch with family?
You're probably right, still...
I often wonder how I survived going for a random drive or even simply leaving the house from 1980 through to the advent of smart phones. Was I simply more brave and self-sufficient back then?
But then I note that there was some infrastructure and also some attitude differences back then that don't exist now.
When my car would break down in the 1980s or 1990s, typically there would be a pay phone nearby. One time in the early 90s, I just knocked on a random door and the resident let me use their land line to call a tow truck (I'm not sure anyone would let a random stranger into their home now, but maybe they still do). Breaking down in the boonies was no fun, but likely someone would come by eventually and help (or murder you, but probably help).
I was reminded recently of this when I went to park in the city in a garage that I frequently patronize only to find they had removed the payment terminal, which was replaced by a sign that said "use our app!". I have a low-data phone plan, so if I had to install their app, I would probably blow past my limit for the month. Also, there was no signal in the garage. So I just left and found another place to park (and was almost late for my appointment).
Also I don't like having to pay just to print my boarding pass at the check-in kiosk. Maybe I am not less brave but just more cheap.
Probably! A good reason to exercise those skills again
> (I'm not sure anyone would let a random stranger into their home now, but maybe they still do).
Curious what makes you think that. Perhaps as an exercise, do something that requires asking a favour of someone. You might be pleasantly surprised. Despite all the ills in society, faith can be restored be some amazing interactions with people offline
> So I just left and found another place to park
That's exactly the right response. Being late sucked but hopefully just a once off .
> Maybe I am not less brave but just more cheap.
This is honestly unsaid in a lot of these discussions! The non phone methods can be a bit more expensive. It's a good point but sometimes the difference isn't huge
I then tried to resist smart phones and stick with my nokia. But then you start to get into things like, the kiosk where they would print your boarding pass doesn't do that anymore. You need a QR code on your phone. You can't call places anymore, you need to do it on their website, etc.
Now the government is starting to treat a lack of social media or technology as a reason for suspicion. In the not-too-distant future I imagine it will not be possible to go to an airport without a smart phone and a digital history known to Palentir.
You do not want to spend an hour in the customer service line to find out that all open seats on the next flight out were scooped up 59 minutes ago.
They're full of outsourced agents whose contracts are very specific and don't include things like assisting customers during IRROPS, as I understand it. Or they have their hands tied by the airlines
I'd like government intervention now that the free market has failed - there is almost no choice you can make that offers real customer service
[0] since I'm spelling this out, one of those credentials should be a passphrase such that the server doesn't have access to your data
[1] modulo data/apps you actually want on a phone in a foreign country, of course
International travel is infinitely more difficult without a cell phone.
When I was younger and international roaming was expensive I travelled internationally without a phone. It’s possible, but it’s so much easier to do it with a phone. Later when I finally stopped being a cheap student and bought a data plan my trips were so much more efficient because I wasn’t losing so much time trying to figure everything out without a phone.
For international business trips, devices are mandatory. This isn’t even an option.
> the government is overreaching
> "well back in my day we used to walk uphill both ways!"
But how in 2026 when I travel am I going to get directions? Get an Uber? I am in a Spanish speaking country right now and I speak some Spanish. But it really is convenient just to take my cell phone out and translate.
What is your next piece of wisdom? That I also don’t need a computer with 16GB RAM because my first computer had 128KB?
Oh and I also don’t need the web because back in my day Gopher and Usenet were good enough
Anecdotally, I have been to the US a few times in the past year, and seen no change myself - where are you going and why? Thanks have a good trip. It was for short business trips, and I'm white with a number of documented entries/departures, so my experience might be very different from the next person though.
It'd be fun to see how they'd handle a CLI. Might result in getting detained, though.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could use the billions we waste on this repressive jackboot-theater for an actual safety net instead? We could live in a less brutal society.
If they were defunded, we could spend the money on fire departments (how many cities has the US lost in the last few years to forest fires, and how many cities to immigrants?), local police (to prosecute property and white collar crimes, and even government / police corruption), and mental health care (to reduce or even eliminate mass shootings - this worked in the US in the past, and works in every other country on earth right now).
Also, "social safety net" refers to things like social security, disability, not illegal deportations of non-criminals or what ever those organizations are focused on these days. The actual social safety net is on teetering on the edge of collapse because it's funding was stolen from the organizations you are defending.
https://abc7ny.com/archive/9192371/
This one's my favorite: If you want the police to keep ignoring complaints then don't steal service revolvers!
https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/3rd-sfo-baggage-handler...
Enable self-destruction mode caused by a special unlock PIN on each of them.
