I will be moving to Australia and I have made backups of my home server onto internal hard drives using free file sync and Borg backup. I do not plan to take the home server with me.
The backups are made using free file sync are encrypted with veracrypt so they can be stored off-site safely. Borg already has encryption enabled. Due to the distance, trying to make a backup would take days to do if the hard drives were blank. The largest files are films and tv shows as well as music. Is it safe send hard drives in with my other household items as part of my baggage shipment as long as I declare that I have computer components.
Or do I only have just have the large files and then restore over the internet once i am there? I have travelled to Australia with 2 external unencrypted portable hard drives without any issue back in 2019.
But these are the 3.5 inch mechanical hard drives that i store in a hard drive case that I am sending along with some other household items.
How have those that have faced a similar situation approached this?
I’m not knowledgeable on Australia in particular (though I’ve heard they have the right to check hard drives and demand encryption keys) but a good rule of thumb for safely crossing borders is to store any sensitive data encrypted in the cloud and download it once you’re at your destination. Of course this can be more expensive and time consuming if you’re dealing with terabytes of data so I realize it’s not the most convenient option.
VeraCrypt’s hidden volume might be useful but unless you’re 100% sure it’s legal to only decrypt part of your data without border protection’s knowledge, I wouldn’t even attempt it. No need to risk breaking the law if the cloud is a viable alternative or if your data isn’t very sensitive to begin with. If you go the cloud route, be sure to properly wipe your hard drives.
Thank you for your help. So I could take the drives as long as they are wiped, or it may be safer to buy new hard drives and download from the home server which would take a very long time. But is possible to do using a combination of ssh and talescale
From what I’ve heard about travel broadly (not specific to immigrating to Australia) is that tourists get denied entry and some (including citizens) might have their devices seized. I imagine some countries could charge you with a crime if you deny them keys.
Probably, I think mailed packages are scrutinized a lot less in this regard as mail security is usually about detecting drugs, weapons, etc. I’ve never heard of a hard drive being interdicted during shipping and the sender is asked for a decryption key. Unless the sender/receiver was under investigation, I’d find it surprising if that happened anywhere outside extremely strict countries like China or North Korea.
To add, many compressed files can look very random so veracrypt containers with some random game file BLABLA.bin will probably work too. Same size container as original can help too. Somehow I doubt there’s local NSA doing file hashing on everything that crosses border.
But OP, if you’re not taking the server with you I’d just use fixed price internet for both, and set it up with SSH/SFTP inside Tailscale facilitated P2P connection. You control the SSH keys, can dial the crypto to 11, and Tailscale punches NATs flawlessly.
Is it really necessary for you? If I were you I would just store all those files temporarily in an S3 cloud storage and download it back to hard drive because you never know what will happen at the airport.
Yes, I meant if you want to mask the container inside /path/to/game/blablq.bin
It’s easier if the container size doesn’t stand out compared to the original file. If it can’t be made the same size, I’d make it slightly smaller to imply some data is missing, which is why the file won’t work as game file. It’s not bulletproof but it at least requires bitwise comparison against the original file and that’s more annoying as you have to test all versions of that game file to tell it’s none of them.
This is what I do but the problem is that backing up from the server to the hard drives would take days to do and that’s leaving the server on 24/7. It is very likely I would not have access to the server during this time as well.
How much data are you actually travelling with? It’s highly unlikely you’ll be targeted to unlock your hard drives coming into the country anyway I’d say if you’re not a person of interest from a country that’s got decent relations.