Travel Woes

I just read an article on PC World.com that included some advice to travellers from the ACTE- Association of Corporate Travel Executives.

Now, while I'm sure no members of the ACTE read this blog, the advice is still good, so if you have time, read the story HERE.

If you don't, I'll sum it up for you. Because of a recent ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, U.S. Customs officials can now search laptops, PDA's, cell phones- even USB drives without reasonable cause.
Meaning if you have any data that you're carrying with you, even on your cell phone, they're allowed to take it, read it, and make all the copies they want.

My advice to you if you plan to travel- leave your data at home. Or, have electronic devices shipped seperately. Or, if you feel technically savvy enough, do what I did- encrypt the data and hide it on the computer itself. The program I use is called TrueCrypt, and you can get it HERE. It's free, and besides locking down your data with better encryption than the standard Windows login, it can also hide data from people that manage to get your password anyway.