Curbside security guard asked a couple basic questions ("How long were you in Israel? Where are you traveling to?"). The guard at the first security gate inside asked ~20 questions (4-8 is normal). I think answering that I'm a SW engineer to "What do you do for a living?" made her suspicious. I was then directed to a side security area where they searched my bags and discovered my laptop. A few guards then escorted me to a side room. Here there was one guard interrogating me on and off for ~2 hours. Just about any question I asked was met with "We can't tell you that." They confiscated my laptop b/c they had to "run more tests". I said several times I would wait for the tests, but they 'insisted' I leave. As soon as I was through security I went to Turkish airlines for help, but their immediate (read: scripted) response was "We do not deal with airport security."
Yes this could have been worse, and is relatively minor compared to other mideast travel horror stories. Nonetheless I feel frustrated not only losing my computer and non-backed up materials, but because this occurs as I am helping an Israeli tech company by sharing my knowledge and expertise. There has been incredible outreach initiative in the AI research community as of late -- e.g., DL Indaba in Africa -- but this makes us feel unwanted. I will continue working with the Israeli startup, but from my office in SF.
This is a good argument for never taking any electronic devices outside your home region.<p>Even if you get your device back, after someone takes it behind the curtain and fiddles with it ... How can you be sure that they have not compromised it for its onward journey?
This is particularly why I leave my good MacBook at home and depend on a decent Chromebook and a throwaway Gmail acct. I can use Citrix or an Amazon Workspace if I need something more secure. If I lose it or if it’s stolen, I’m out $200-400 instead of $1200 and my data.
I was traveling through Istanbul and there were multiple tiers of security before reaching my plane. One of the checkpoints was run by private security, and they took my laptop out of my bag and asked me a ton of questions. They asked me to open my computer and log in so they can review data in my machine.<p>Lucky for me, my laptop was completely out of battery, so when they opened my MBP, all they saw was the red blinking battery symbol. They mumbled to each other under their breathes, handed me my laptop, and waved me through.
Just a tangent: TLV is the most secure airport in the world though.[1] You wouldn't think the most secure airport is in the middle east but it is. Compare to Israelis' human approach, the billions dollars the U.S. spent by the corrupted TSA on invasive cancer causing body scanners and still have tons security breaches is a joke. The wikipedia page has a few reports explained in details why it works at TLV. Worth a read.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Gurion_Airport" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Gurion_Airport</a>
Must've triggered something when they questioned you. Maybe you just made yourself non-Grata over there too by sharing this story.<p>At least they should have said, wait, let's clone it and here is your laptop back. Unless they suspected you of economic espionage or whatever and didn't you to have it with you. Either way, unless charged with a crime it's theft.
I thought that all sovereign nations had the authority to seize whatever they want at border crossings. I always travel with the assumption that all my belongings (on my person) are subject to confiscation.<p>This has two consequences: 1. I travel light and 2. If something doesn’t get seized that’s great news!
Do not take electronic devices with you when you leave your country. Use a burner instead. Counts for USA, China, Russia, and apparently also for Israel
Don't travel. Or use a disposable laptop when traveling. Something like the Thinkpad x240 is rather sturdy, small form factor, with perfect linux support. Shouldn't set you back more than ~150-200€.<p>Pull in whatever data you need after passing these risky checkpoints. Destroy the data again afterwards.
I suspect they intentionally regularly interrogate people who they know are innocent to train what a normal false positive acts like. that helps detect the true positives in contrast while training on true positives is difficult as they are quite rare. the interrogation strategy is just to impose a high level of stress on someone. i suspect a false positive will act very confused in contrast to someone who wants to hide something.<p>(with positive I refer to someone who is considered dangerous or an enemy)<p>having said that I went twice to Israel from Germany and coming back from Istanbul and never had issues. actually I find it quite exciting to experience the perfectly orchestrated security measures. obviously though also because I never got the tough treatment so far.
Have anybody got any good experience with self-encrypting drives(SED)? Something that will allow you to pull the ssd out of laptop and carry it through security separately, not worrying about contents getting spied on if seized?
This is crazy. Does anyone know how common this kind of thing is ? I don't know anything about airport security. How can some data on a laptop be so dangerous ?