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What is your threat model regarding your laptop when you travel internationally? I used to have my laptop with me 100% of the time while travelling by airline

• tzs 10y ago
  My guess is that the purpose of this is intelligence gathering (assuming that it is security related at all, as opposed to being retaliation against unfair competition by state subsidized airlines as some have speculated). Perhaps something like this: 1. Some international criminal group has been under surveillance. Security agencies know quite a bit more about the group than the group thinks they do. 2. Security agencies do not have much information on the membership and organization of the group within the United States. 3. There is some good reason to believe that the group is about to undertake some major action, such as a terrorist attack, in the United States, and that a specific known officer of the organization will be traveling to the US to direct the attack. 4. Security agencies want to get some alone time with something that traveler will take with him when meeting with his comrades in the US, so they can install spying equipment like a listening device, a tracking device, a key logger if the device has a keyboard, and so on. They want this so that they can get information about the organization's US membership. 5. They don't want to do anything that would tip off the organization that their officer has been targeted. Hence, they need to cover up doctoring his electronics by making it appear that it is part of a very broad operation. This restriction on electronics fits this well. Checked electronics will spend lots of time away from the owner, giving plenty of time to doctor it.