Question regarding immigrating to the US with my hard drive

Privacy Questions
1

My first question was about whether U.S. border authorities would check my hard drive when I travel from [south asian country] to the USA, considering it contains pirated movies, games, and other files. I was concerned about the potential inspection and the legal or practical implications of carrying such content.

I don’t need to have this hard drive with myself, I am okay with it being in my luggage that will be sent over to the plane. However I am wondering if my hard drive/ssd can be damaged due to xray scanning the luggage?

I am also wondering if they will still bother to check my hard drive/ssd.

My second question focused on the confusing behavior of VeraCrypt’s hidden volume feature. I’m trying to understand the discrepancy when mounting the drive in Windows: if I set up an outer decoy volume with 100GB of data and a hidden volume with 400GB for my actual files on a 500GB drive, Windows would report almost no free space available. This seems suspicious because the visible outer volume only shows 100GB of data, leaving 400GB unaccounted for, which could raise questions about where the rest of the space is being used. What do I do?

2

If you are not actively drawing attention and/or have an “interesting” name or previous country in passport, airport should be fine.

Not to support piracy, but pirated games are indistinguishable from DRM free games delivered by services like GoG, so you can just change file names and be fine if someone takes a cursory glance (but to emphasize again, it is not an issue unless you draw attention).

If they confiscate your drive, and that is a big if, your data will be lost, so have backups. Just don’t have illegal content on the drive (DRM free game files are not illegal to possess).

Same goes for DRM free music and movies.

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3

I think more threat can potentially come from the cracked executable files.

If you have to go to the bay for these kind of things, might as well get the illicit GOG version - at least there is no need to replace files with questionable executable binary ones. I understand not all games gets released there.

As with movies, there is no plausible way of having a copy of a movie in your possessions without seemingly “breaking the law”. Delete and redownload them if you have to.

Having drives checked in should have less eyes but don’t count on it being not inspected. If you trip the TSA’s spider sense you could be forced to open it and potentially be forced to be delayed at your inconvenience (and travel expense).

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4

Yes most of my games are from GoG. The issue is with the music and movies. I can hide it by burying it under 20 different folders, and then having the main drive folder be just some random files game names etc. I do have backups on my home pc at home.

5

almost 350 gb of movies and music is no joke :frowning: and I’m also moving away from my country so downloading over is gonna take a long while

6

If you are an international student or someone else with valid visa, I don’t think anyone would have a second glance if you bring the correct papers. However, you will never know what will happen nowadays.

You could consider uploading the files to an encrypted cloud drive provider or use cryptomator. Otherwise, I don’t really advise “breaking the law” when entering customs.

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7

Everyone in the thread has a point.

But I think this is overthinking.

As long as all your paperwork is in order and you don’t act “weird”, nothing of the sort is really necessary.

I say this as someone who had emigrated to the US 3 times in the last 13 years - I have traveled enough so I would know.

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8

This

I’ve lost more data messing around with Jellyfin, TrueNAS and my media archive folder. You’ll be fine. I am sure when you move overseas the internet will be faster anyway.

True but you know, don’t give ammunition to trigger happy people itching to deport people for no apparent reason.

You are likely right and OP might just pass through customs and TSA intact but why risk it?

9

VeraCrypt hidden volume is a gigantic “i have something to hide” beacon. I would not use that.

10

read only (bind) mounts and snapshots are your friend
and make backups!

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11

Just upload it to your cloud, cleanup your drives from “illegal” content. If you are short on money, get Proton Drive monthly sub instead of yearly, or any other drive which you trust.

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12

I’m really confused as to what to do. Personally I like the choice and easiness of carrying a portable ssd/hdd. However I also see the point in uploading everything to the cloud (although idk if I will have the time for that).

Another issue is that I might also end up on the radar of college IT because I’ll be downloading like 400 gigs of stuff which they might find weird?

13

They have seen worse. You are not the first one with questionable content downloader, and surely not the last, and 400 GB is nothing.

14

It appears you didn’t set up your drive correctly. Your VeraCrypt outer decoy volume should be larger than the hidden volume, because the hidden volume is inside the outer volume.

Beginner's Tutorial_Image_024
Beginner's Tutorial_Image_024606×412 9.44 KB

Read the veracrypt documentation.

Some additional notes:

A Veracrypt outer volume is supposed to appears to be a drive, partition, or file that was erased or otherwise filled with random data. However, the true “deniability” of disk encryption is fragile; The presence of VeraCrypt software can lead any competent forensic examiner to assume, but not necessarily prove, that any “random data” hard drives you have are in fact VeraCrypt drives. Your operating system, and applications such as mediaplayers accessing files on the drive, probably makes logs of what you’ve accessed and when you accessed them. This may disprove claims you make about a drive not being in use, or strongly point to the existence of a hidden volume.

Making a Veracrypt volume out of an entire disk is preferable, because a singular disk that appeared to be erased is more explainable than one disk with one partition with a normal filesystem, and another with random data. For this reason, files on any “plausibly deniable” encrypted drives should be created and accessed from a live OS like Tails, so traces of what you accessed on the drive are are not stored on an unsafe medium.

If you were asked by a border security officer and it is obvious you have veracrypt (for example if you’re on windows and have full disk encryption), its probably wise to open the decoy drive. If you’re using Tails, and the drive is not an SSD, you may have the ability to plausible deny that an encrypted drive is even a Veracrypt one to begin with.

Ensure your passphrase is secure. Diceware is a great method for generating random, cryptographically secure, and easily memorable passphrase.

It is not possible to know for sure, unless you are somehow familiar with the organizations (border police, potential covert FBI employees)’ procedures, which are usually kept secret. It also may come to the decisions of an individual guard who had a bad day and decides to harass you in particular.

Be prepared to explain what you have.

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