Moxie Marlinspike's laptop and cellphone seized and searched
The well-known whitehat hacker and security researcher that goes by the handle Moxie Marlinspike has recently experienced firsthand the electronical device search that travelers are sometimes submitted to by border agents when entering the country.
He was returning from the Dominican Republic by plane, and when he landed at JFK airport, he was greeted by two U.S. Customs officials and taken to a detention room where they kept him for almost five hours, took his laptop and two cell phones and asked for the passwords needed to access the encrypted material on them.
He refused to do so, and all the devices were returned to him before he was released, but he thinks that there is a high possibility that the contents were copied and that hardware was modified or new keyboard firmware was installed. “I can’t trust any of these devices now,” Marlinspike said to Wired.
