2026-08-08

Should you encrypt sensitive files before crossing an international border?

U.S. Customs and Border Protection searched 55,318 electronic devices in fiscal year 2025 — up 17.6% from 47,047 in FY2024, and up 32.4% from 41,767 in FY2023, according to CBP's own published statistics as reported by the Immigration Policy Tracking Project. Searches of devices belonging to U.S. citizens specifically rose from 8,657 in 2023 to 13,590 in 2025. Whether you're a journalist, a lawyer, a researcher, or just someone crossing with a laptop full of client work, that trend line is worth knowing about before the trip, not during it — because the protection most people already rely on turns out to have a specific, well-documented gap at exactly the moment it matters.

Basic search vs. advanced search — what CBP can actually do

CBP policy splits device searches into two tiers. A basic search is an officer manually reviewing what's on a device — no external tools, no suspicion required. An advanced search is different in kind: an officer connects external equipment to copy or analyze the device's contents, and per CBP's own policy that requires both "reasonable suspicion of a legal issue or national security concern" and "approval from a senior CBP officer," as summarized by immigration law firm AZITA Law's 2025 explainer of the policy. Under the border search exception to the Fourth Amendment, CBP can search a device without probable cause or a warrant at all — a legal standard that's meaningfully different from what applies almost everywhere else in the country. Of the 55,318 FY2025 searches, the large majority — 50,922 — were basic searches; only 4,396 were the advanced kind. That matters for what follows: the tier most travelers actually encounter is the one where an officer just looks at whatever the device is already showing.

A device passcode is one secret — and it unlocks everything at once

Full-disk encryption (BitLocker on Windows, FileVault on macOS, and default on modern phones) is real, standard protection — but it's protection that lives entirely behind a single secret: the passcode or biometric that unlocks the screen. The moment that one secret is handed over, whatever's on the device is visible in full — photos, notes, messages, and any file that isn't separately protected. Two recent, on-the-record cases show exactly how that plays out. Writer Alistair Kitchen was detained for about 12 hours by CBP at Los Angeles International Airport in June 2025; he initially declined to give his phone's passcode, but complied after being told he'd otherwise be deported immediately. In his own account, given to Democracy Now, the officer then "disappeared" with the phone and came back having downloaded its contents — and Kitchen was deported anyway, on unrelated grounds CBP found once the phone was open. Separately, Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal was detained for roughly two hours at Washington Dulles International Airport on July 11, 2026, returning from a reporting trip to Iran; CBP confiscated two phones, and days later they still had not been returned, per the Committee to Protect Journalists' reporting. Blumenthal has said he declined to provide passcodes and the devices were detained instead, according to an interview with The Dissenter. Two different choices, two different outcomes — comply and everything on the device becomes visible to the officer holding it; decline and the device itself can be held instead, for days, without a guarantee of when or whether it comes back. Neither outcome is something full-disk encryption, on its own, changes once you're standing at the counter.

A file's own passphrase is a second, independent secret

This is the specific gap file-level encryption addresses — not by making that choice go away, but by giving the file inside the device a second, separate lock that doesn't open with the same key as the screen. NearSeal encrypts one file at a time, entirely in the browser, with a key derived from a passphrase you set yourself; nothing is uploaded anywhere in the process. Handing over a device passcode, or unlocking a phone for a basic search, reveals whatever's readable on that device — but a file that was individually encrypted before the trip is still ciphertext inside that unlocked device, because its passphrase was never the same secret as the screen lock, and was never asked for or given during a device unlock. It's a genuinely different question, asked separately, if it comes up at all — not a bypass of the first one.

What this doesn't do — being honest about the limits

Encrypting a specific file doesn't erase the decision an officer's questions can still put in front of you. If an advanced search turns up a file that's visibly ciphertext and an officer asks about its passphrase specifically, that's the same category of choice as a device passcode — comply, or the file (or the device holding it) can still be detained — EFF's own guidance is clear that only a judge, not a border officer, can compel you to reveal a passphrase, but notes the real-world consequence range runs from device seizure for citizens to denial of entry for noncitizens either way. An encrypted file is also visibly a file someone chose to lock — it doesn't hide the fact that something was worth protecting, only its contents. And this isn't a replacement for EFF's stronger, more established advice for anyone carrying genuinely sensitive material: EFF's June 2025 journalist security checklist recommends moving unpublished reporting materials and source information off the device entirely before travel, not just locking them in place, and notes plainly that "a password-protected laptop screen lock is usually insufficient" on its own. File-level encryption is a layer to add on top of that advice, not a substitute for it.

A practical routine before you travel

Keep full-disk encryption on, as usual — it's still the right default and protects against a lost or stolen device outright. Before the trip, decide which specific files are sensitive enough that you don't want them casually visible during an ordinary basic search: client documents, unpublished notes, financial records, anything with someone else's information in it. For files that genuinely need to travel with you, encrypt just those individually — in the browser, nothing uploaded — with a passphrase that's different from your device's own unlock code and lives in your memory, not written next to the file. For anything that doesn't strictly need to be on the device during the crossing at all, EFF's minimization advice still comes first: it isn't on the device, isn't a choice anyone can ask you about, and isn't something a file-level passphrase needs to protect in the first place.