On 21.03.2019 10:13, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
Hi Tzafrir!
Thanks for organizing DebConf20 in Israel, I'm looking forward to
traveling to Haifa, the Silicon Valley of the Middle East.
Now, I have done some initial research regarding traveling to Israel
on the website of my country's department of foreign affairs, I'm
traveling from Germany.
One note mentioned there is that at the airports, laptops might get
confiscated by border patrol agents for examination. This can last
several days and in such cases, the laptop is sent back for free [1].
Can you make any comment on this? Is this a common situation or rather
exceptional? I would definitely love going to Haifa for DebConf, but I
would have a problem with my laptop being confiscated for no particular
reasons.
As far I know, it is exceptional (and there are similar rules also here,
in Europe, and in other countries).
What I find nice of Israeli security policies, it is they make much less
security theater, and much more (effective) screening. BTW, one of the
large income of Israel is tourism, so it has not many very closed policies.
So they relay much on screening (you will see at airport: many
questions, different steps and queues, but you still can keep liquids).
I really doubts you will have the laptop confiscated for "no particular
reasons". As I wrote, Israeli security is very professional (and less
security theater), they, for sure, know that there is cloud, if one
should "import" nasty data.
As far I know, Israel is not on the list (made by different companies),
where a clean laptop is required (and provided).
ciao
cate
PS: but I would not store our GPG master private key on laptop (but this
is a general rule).
