What would be the best way to get through customs at an airport with your Btc?

[NotATether]

(should they focus on it  they would not get access to its internals)

If they have the device and you, you may be forced to share it depending on the law of the country. Some countries have gone mad already:

Section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 contains the relevant power.

If your phone has been seized, or in circumstances where they have the power to inspect it, the police can give you notice that they require you to provide the PIN or “encryption key” to allow them access. The same applies to other devices such as computers.
~
If you do not comply with a properly given notice, you can be prosecuted. If you know the information required and refuse to provide it, you can be sentenced to a maximum of 2 years imprisonment or 5 years imprisonment for an offence involving national security or child indecency.

Good luck proving you forgot the key.

They're only going to inspect your devices and USB drives if you act suspicious towards them or your travel plans and bookings are quite unusual. Customs have to process normal travelers very quickly to avoid long queues.

Personally, I like satscraper's option the best. Get an encrypted USB key, but only put a file that has the seed phrase on it. Remember the password - don't write it down - and make sure you have paper backups in another location, not with you, if you ever forget the password. For added security, encrypt the file again with GPG using an ECDSA public key and the same password, guarding against disk cloning or dd attacks. Only use the resulting USB on an OS such as Linux or Tails where you can be sure there are no keyloggers.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Customs would argue you can't use a credit card anonymously.

In the US at least, anonymity has nothing to do with it. For physical currencies CBP (Customs & Border Patrol) only cares about value. btw: the $10k threshold does also apply to preloaded credit cards and gift cards though I'm unaware of CBP actually asking about them. Probably because no folks/smugglers would directly pay >10k in cash to load the cards - though they could of course pay a 3rd party in cash to have them load the cards... Oh, and in the US the $10k threshold for currencies (and gold, gems, etc.) is set by the IRS, CBP is only enforcing the IRS rule.

It's not only cash, if the value is for instance in gold you'll still need to declare it.

Duh.
Same applies to any goods, food, other items of value though they of course may be subject to other specific restrictions or import duties based on value.

[Synchronice]

(should they focus on it  they would not get access to its internals)

If they have the device and you, you may be forced to share it depending on the law of the country. Some countries have gone mad already:

|snip|

Good luck proving you forgot the key.

I really wonder, what do they do if you pretend that you forgot keys? I think that they might give up on a very average person but if there is a guy with 10k and higher number of bitcoins in front of them, what do they do? Do they use so called Truth Serums? I really wonder about that because if person hesitates to reveal the password, they can't publicly torture him but there are medicines that pushes us to reveal some of our secrets, like alcohol, right? There should be some drugs in governments that will force the person to be very open and speak truth.

It's not only cash, if the value is for instance in gold you'll still need to declare it.

If you are not a public figure and don't publicly claim that you have bitcoins, then customs will not mess with you. I have crossed borders with Electrum installed on my smartphone and PC but no one has ever asked me anything.
If no one knows, that means that it didn't happen, which means no need to declare anything.

[LoyceV]

I really wonder, what do they do if you pretend that you forgot keys? I think that they might give up on a very average person but if there is a guy with 10k and higher number of bitcoins in front of them, what do they do?

That's what the 5 years in prison is for.

I have crossed borders with Electrum installed on my smartphone and PC but no one has ever asked me anything.
If no one knows, that means that it didn't happen, which means no need to declare anything.

That's the wrong approach. I always declare everything I have to, up to an apple in some countries. If it's not allowed, I'll throw it away. But at least I won't get into any kind of trouble.

For Bitcoin, this is my reasoning:

You could argue you're not bringing anything physical. Otherwise hiding it from customs would be illegal.
Bitcoin isn't in your wallet, Bitcoin is on the blockchain.

You should probably not bring a copy of the blockchain holding 19,774,912 BTC if you use this argument
Seriously though, it's like bringing a key to a safe deposit box. You don't have to declare that key.

[dkbit98]

Different countries have different rules with customs and airports, but encrypted Satochip card in for of regular payment card won't bring much attention.
I am not recommending anything but nobody is going to check and confiscate your good old (and now discontinued) G-shock G-2900 watch that has data memory and password protection.
Just saying.

[bizeodal]

Do not scramble the seed words. Do not write the words on random pages in a book, Do not change the order of the words. Do not omit one or more words.  Do not encrypt the words in a MS-Word file or Veracrypt or anything. Do not write only the first four characters. Do not write the index numbers of the words

All those things corrupt the fundamental purpose of the BIP39 recovery design - recovery

The chances of losing your coins because your obfuscation method was too confusing (later, when you need to do a recovery) are about 1000 times higher than the chance of being questioned at an international border

Do not store the seed words in the cloud, or anywhere electronically. This has two risks. The cloud is not a reliable storage method. The cloud is accessible to the entire Internet

The BIP39 specification has a passphrase option

Write the seed words on paper. Carry the paper. Keep other copies in safe places

Make two wallets (or 2 accounts in a Trezor or other cold wallet). One account is the seed words and no passphrase, with a few thousand Satoshis. The other account is the same seed words and a strong pass phrase, for your Bitcoin

Make a 6-word diceware passphrase. Add one random alphabetical character. This is easy to remember, and 81-bits secure
https://theworld.com/~reinhold/diceware.html

Memorize the passphrase

At the border: if you're questioned about your cold wallet (if you're carrying it), tell them what it is. If you're questioned about your seed phrase, tell them what it is. If they want to see the Bitcoin wallet, use the seed phrase to recover the no-passphrase wallet. Show them your few thousand Satoshis. That should be further than any border guard could possibly understand, today. In the future they may be better trained. Or you could be a special person (read about the constant border harassment of Glenn Greenwald and his partner for years after Greenwald reported on Snowden). If they ask whether there's a second account, you don't understand how that's possible. Your device has only one wallet

[Forsyth Jones]

A news was published on a famous brazilian portal, Livecoins, where agents from the brazilian dederal revenue were invited for an interview on a podcast. There, they discussed various topics about traveling with physical or digital money exceeding $10,000, until someone brought up the subject of Bitcoin:

"That’s because money is in the cloud now, right?"

"Pen drives (referring to wallets in the form of pen drives like Ledger, etc), do you inspect pen drives? Those Bitcoin wallets? Do you analyze those Bitcoin wallets?”

The auditor, besides stating that the legislation only covers physical cash and that it’s not the RFB’s (brazilian dederal revenue) role to handle this type of work, mentioned that a suspect can only be investigated if they are already under investigation for a crime.

In a "playful tone," the podcast host (I’m not entirely sure) explained to one of the agents that a device like that (referring to hardware wallets) can hold values reaching up to 1 million (not necessarily in dollars, but referring to the local brazilian currency, the real).

"This 'badass' here, the Ledger wallet", said Carioca, pointing to his notebook. "This one here — look, I f*** a lot of people over, look how cool, it’s called a Ledger wallet, here the guy carries the Bitcoin, got it? And here you can carry up to more than 1 million reais. If you find this thing, you say: "open it for me, please", and then you’ll get your 1 million."

From the language used, it’s clear that the participants don’t understand much about how Bitcoin works, and besides, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a hardware wallet to carry amounts like these, because any self-respecting Bitcoin wallet has no limits or borders.

When I read this news, I remembered this thread. It’s interesting to hear the opinion of those who already work in the area.

News link: https://livecoins.com.br/agentes-da-receita-federal-fiscalizacao-de-carteiras-de-bitcoin-aeroportos

[JayJuanGee]

A news was published on a famous brazilian portal, Livecoins, where agents from the brazilian dederal revenue were invited for an interview on a podcast. There, they discussed various topics about traveling with physical or digital money exceeding $10,000, until someone brought up the subject of Bitcoin:

"That’s because money is in the cloud now, right?"

"Pen drives (referring to wallets in the form of pen drives like Ledger, etc), do you inspect pen drives? Those Bitcoin wallets? Do you analyze those Bitcoin wallets?”

The auditor, besides stating that the legislation only covers physical cash and that it’s not the RFB’s (brazilian dederal revenue) role to handle this type of work, mentioned that a suspect can only be investigated if they are already under investigation for a crime.

In a "playful tone," the podcast host (I’m not entirely sure) explained to one of the agents that a device like that (referring to hardware wallets) can hold values reaching up to 1 million (not necessarily in dollars, but referring to the local brazilian currency, the real).

"This 'badass' here, the Ledger wallet", said Carioca, pointing to his notebook. "This one here — look, I f*** a lot of people over, look how cool, it’s called a Ledger wallet, here the guy carries the Bitcoin, got it? And here you can carry up to more than 1 million reais. If you find this thing, you say: "open it for me, please", and then you’ll get your 1 million."

From the language used, it’s clear that the participants don’t understand much about how Bitcoin works, and besides, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a hardware wallet to carry amounts like these, because any self-respecting Bitcoin wallet has no limits or borders.

When I read this news, I remembered this thread. It’s interesting to hear the opinion of those who already work in the area.

News link: https://livecoins.com.br/agentes-da-receita-federal-fiscalizacao-de-carteiras-de-bitcoin-aeroportos

It seems a bit crazy also for guys to be describing bitcoin as being on the device, even though the private keys are on the device.  There are surely a lot of digital forms of information flowing over the borders and various kinds of devices that look like other kinds of devices, so yeah, the border agents might not really know how to focus on any particular kinds of devices, yet surely if like one of the border agents said they may well be more interested in what someone is carrying if they are already a suspected and/or targeted person... versus looking through the devices of everyone going through security and figuring out specific kinds of devices to try to target for the mere sake that the devices secure valuables.. information that happens to have value attached to it at the same time..

[Dump3er]

-

It seems a bit crazy also for guys to be describing bitcoin as being on the device, even though the private keys are on the device.  There are surely a lot of digital forms of information flowing over the borders and various kinds of devices that look like other kinds of devices, so yeah, the border agents might not really know how to focus on any particular kinds of devices, yet surely if like one of the border agents said they may well be more interested in what someone is carrying if they are already a suspected and/or targeted person... versus looking through the devices of everyone going through security and figuring out specific kinds of devices to try to target for the mere sake that the devices secure valuables.. information that happens to have value attached to it at the same time..

This question has been around for a while and while I don't know what the rules are for most countries, this is what the usa.gov website says:

How much money do you have to declare when you travel to or from the U.S.?
If you are traveling with an excess of $10,000, you must report it to a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer when you enter or exit the U.S. But there is no limit to the amount of money you can travel with.

Currency and monetary instruments that are subject to this rule include U.S. and foreign:

Paper money and coins
Travelers’ checks
Cashier’s checks
Promissory notes
Money orders

Below this a link leads to further definitions, but there is nothing mentioning anything about bitcoin or digital currencies in general.

One of the interesting parts on that explanatory website is:

"Securities or stocks in bearer form"

and bitcoin has been declared by the SEC to not be a security. Somewhere else it talks about money that is declared legal tender in a country, but it specifies it as "coin and paper money", neither of which applies to bitcoin.

This will remain complicated, but frankly this can't be resolved anyway as bitcoin owners could transport keys in countless ways and how would they ever be able to fully monitor that. Scanners help with cash, but they can't help with anything not being physical. Perhaps if someone uses a hardware wallet, but then they would have to have the right to force someone to open it. 

[JayJuanGee]

-

It seems a bit crazy also for guys to be describing bitcoin as being on the device, even though the private keys are on the device.  There are surely a lot of digital forms of information flowing over the borders and various kinds of devices that look like other kinds of devices, so yeah, the border agents might not really know how to focus on any particular kinds of devices, yet surely if like one of the border agents said they may well be more interested in what someone is carrying if they are already a suspected and/or targeted person... versus looking through the devices of everyone going through security and figuring out specific kinds of devices to try to target for the mere sake that the devices secure valuables.. information that happens to have value attached to it at the same time..

This question has been around for a while and while I don't know what the rules are for most countries, this is what the usa.gov website says:

How much money do you have to declare when you travel to or from the U.S.?
If you are traveling with an excess of $10,000, you must report it to a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer when you enter or exit the U.S. But there is no limit to the amount of money you can travel with.

Currency and monetary instruments that are subject to this rule include U.S. and foreign:
Paper money and coins
Travelers’ checks
Cashier’s checks
Promissory notes
Money orders

Below this a link leads to further definitions, but there is nothing mentioning anything about bitcoin or digital currencies in general.

One of the interesting parts on that explanatory website is:
"Securities or stocks in bearer form"

and bitcoin has been declared by the SEC to not be a security. Somewhere else it talks about money that is declared legal tender in a country, but it specifies it as "coin and paper money", neither of which applies to bitcoin.

This will remain complicated, but frankly this can't be resolved anyway as bitcoin owners could transport keys in countless ways and how would they ever be able to fully monitor that. Scanners help with cash, but they can't help with anything not being physical. Perhaps if someone uses a hardware wallet, but then they would have to have the right to force someone to open it. 

A lot of slippery slopes if governments start to go down the road of trying to suggest that digital bearer instruments also need to be declared, even though they are not physical.  Surely, if we have our digital contents (or access) on electronic devices, then there are blurring of the lines, and digital devices are becoming so prolific that they surely would be creating impossible tasks to start to search and/or confiscate digital devices of individuals and trying to figure out where to draw the line. 

More draconian attempts at restricting digital information and the movement of digital information, even if there might be attempts to differentiate between bearer instruments (that do not require a third party) versus non-bearer instruments, these are not easy categorizations, and surely attempts to crack down will inspire more and more ways to obscure the information and/or to encrypt the information.. so then there surely can be attempts to require the giving up of passwords and perhaps even the creation of decoy passwords, which surely if the data and/or device is centrally controlled, then they could have back doors to the information, so I suppose we have to continue to promote various open source and decentralized efforts to develop tools that the non-technical folks are also able to use without losing their data (or their bitcoin.. hopefully not shitcoins.. but sure, evne shitcoins might have some value, too.. or serve as a way to obscure data/value in temporary ways)..

[DYING_S0UL]

Personally I would use steganography to hide the seeds as I believe this is a great way to conceal informations. In plain eyes, everything would look normal, but in reality things would be a little different. Anyway, I once used steganography to hide an app inside a video. Though I failed miserable to make it look normal because the file size became too big but for a simple seed, it should be a piece of cake. Frankly speaking, it should still fulfill the original plan to hide the seed without being detected. No one would suspect a thing. And it's not like customs checks everything from neck to toe, or set up a forensic lab at the airport, go through every message, photos, videos or documents.

[Forsyth Jones]

A lot of slippery slopes if governments start to go down the road of trying to suggest that digital bearer instruments also need to be declared, even though they are not physical.  Surely, if we have our digital contents (or access) on electronic devices, then there are blurring of the lines, and digital devices are becoming so prolific that they surely would be creating impossible tasks to start to search and/or confiscate digital devices of individuals and trying to figure out where to draw the line.  

More draconian attempts at restricting digital information and the movement of digital information, even if there might be attempts to differentiate between bearer instruments (that do not require a third party) versus non-bearer instruments, these are not easy categorizations, and surely attempts to crack down will inspire more and more ways to obscure the information and/or to encrypt the information.. so then there surely can be attempts to require the giving up of passwords and perhaps even the creation of decoy passwords, which surely if the data and/or device is centrally controlled, then they could have back doors to the information, so I suppose we have to continue to promote various open source and decentralized efforts to develop tools that the non-technical folks are also able to use without losing their data (or their bitcoin.. hopefully not shitcoins.. but sure, evne shitcoins might have some value, too.. or serve as a way to obscure data/value in temporary ways)..

I'll tell you something, I suspect that both the federal police (similar to the FBI in the EUA) and the IRS agents are receiving training to investigate targets who have crypto suspected of cybercrimes or tax crimes. This is true here in brazil as well as in any other country in the world, and if the target has hardware wallets, they can request the packaging box of the device, because since the packaging box comes with recovery sheets to write down seedphrases, the chances of them finding the wallet backup there are high, since most users write down the seedphrases on these standard recovery sheets.

Of course, this is not yet an official practice and I highly doubt it would be applied in airports. However, in cases of criminal investigations or even involving individuals who haven’t necessarily committed crimes, as you can see in the link I shared, they are already indicting people who are in debt with the country’s tax authority.

Personally I would use steganography to hide the seeds as I believe this is a great way to conceal informations. In plain eyes, everything would look normal, but in reality things would be a little different. Anyway, I once used steganography to hide an app inside a video. Though I failed miserable to make it look normal because the file size became too big but for a simple seed, it should be a piece of cake. Frankly speaking, it should still fulfill the original plan to hide the seed without being detected. No one would suspect a thing. And it's not like customs checks everything from neck to toe, or set up a forensic lab at the airport, go through every message, photos, videos or documents.

There’s Seed XOR, it’s perfect for this kind of situation. However, you would still be carrying a seed, even if it isn't your real seedphrase, in which case you can try steganography using an image.
For Windows, I’ve only tested one software, OpenStego. In it, you can add an optional AES encryption password. Of course, there are many other forms of steganography. Which one would you use?

[Dump3er]

-

A lot of slippery slopes if governments start to go down the road of trying to suggest that digital bearer instruments also need to be declared, even though they are not physical.  Surely, if we have our digital contents (or access) on electronic devices, then there are blurring of the lines, and digital devices are becoming so prolific that they surely would be creating impossible tasks to start to search and/or confiscate digital devices of individuals and trying to figure out where to draw the line. 

More draconian attempts at restricting digital information and the movement of digital information, even if there might be attempts to differentiate between bearer instruments (that do not require a third party) versus non-bearer instruments, these are not easy categorizations, and surely attempts to crack down will inspire more and more ways to obscure the information and/or to encrypt the information.. so then there surely can be attempts to require the giving up of passwords and perhaps even the creation of decoy passwords, which surely if the data and/or device is centrally controlled, then they could have back doors to the information, so I suppose we have to continue to promote various open source and decentralized efforts to develop tools that the non-technical folks are also able to use without losing their data (or their bitcoin.. hopefully not shitcoins.. but sure, evne shitcoins might have some value, too.. or serve as a way to obscure data/value in temporary ways)..

A ton of slippery slopes and this reminds me of some issues about using file sharing services or websites to stream copyrighted content. There were different discussions in different countries and one of the main questions was whether someone saved a copyrighted file locally on their device or not. It had some impact on how it was treated at court.

Now if we apply the same logic, what happens if (I hope nobody does that ) someone saves their wallet.dat on their email account hosted by an external provider. The slippery slope problem is gigantic and incalculable. What if I send the private key containing in excess of 10,000 USD to someone I know abroad and I get asked at the border whether I am carrying value in excess of 10,000 USD with me?

It feels to me like there can't be drawn a comprehensible line that treats all subjects equally in front of the law.

Personally I would use steganography to hide the seeds as I believe this is a great way to conceal informations. In plain eyes, everything would look normal, but in reality things would be a little different. Anyway, I once used steganography to hide an app inside a video. Though I failed miserable to make it look normal because the file size became too big but for a simple seed, it should be a piece of cake. Frankly speaking, it should still fulfill the original plan to hide the seed without being detected. No one would suspect a thing. And it's not like customs checks everything from neck to toe, or set up a forensic lab at the airport, go through every message, photos, videos or documents.

That's exactly what will be done. Even individuals who are not technically as literate could use instructions they obtain online to apply steganography and as you mentioned, file size won't be a problem when it's about hiding a simple seed. You can hide it in an image, in an mp3 file. You can hide it literally anywhere. If you assume that authorities would equip border controls with the technology to screen devices, fine, but the time required to do more than find one needle in the haystack per year, it's impossible to do. One individual could easily have three devices, a laptop, a mobile phone and an iPad or whatever else people carry around these days.

-

I'll tell you something, I suspect that both the federal police (similar to the FBI in the EUA) and the IRS agents are receiving training to investigate targets who have crypto suspected of cybercrimes or tax crimes. This is true here in brazil as well as in any other country in the world, and if the target has hardware wallets, they can request the packaging box of the device, because since the packaging box comes with recovery sheets to write down seedphrases, the chances of them finding the wallet backup there are high, since most users write down the seedphrases on these standard recovery sheets.

Of course, this is not yet an official practice and I highly doubt it would be applied in airports. However, in cases of criminal investigations or even involving individuals who haven’t necessarily committed crimes, as you can see in the link I shared, they are already indicting people who are in debt with the country’s tax authority.

If there is a target owning crypto suspected of cybercrimes, how likely is it that those targets will carry around hardware wallets when they have to pass border controls? Some will do that, but if they are able to pull off cybercrimes, I doubt there first choice would be a hardware wallet to carry with them with the aim to pass border controls at an airport. Wouldn't they probably be the first to come up with far more sophisticated approaches?

If they use a device with a huge hard drive, storing 10,000,000 files, it would take an eternity for border control at an airport to scan through it an find suspicious files.

[JayJuanGee]

A lot of slippery slopes if governments start to go down the road of trying to suggest that digital bearer instruments also need to be declared, even though they are not physical.  Surely, if we have our digital contents (or access) on electronic devices, then there are blurring of the lines, and digital devices are becoming so prolific that they surely would be creating impossible tasks to start to search and/or confiscate digital devices of individuals and trying to figure out where to draw the line.  

More draconian attempts at restricting digital information and the movement of digital information, even if there might be attempts to differentiate between bearer instruments (that do not require a third party) versus non-bearer instruments, these are not easy categorizations, and surely attempts to crack down will inspire more and more ways to obscure the information and/or to encrypt the information.. so then there surely can be attempts to require the giving up of passwords and perhaps even the creation of decoy passwords, which surely if the data and/or device is centrally controlled, then they could have back doors to the information, so I suppose we have to continue to promote various open source and decentralized efforts to develop tools that the non-technical folks are also able to use without losing their data (or their bitcoin.. hopefully not shitcoins.. but sure, evne shitcoins might have some value, too.. or serve as a way to obscure data/value in temporary ways)..

I'll tell you something, I suspect that both the federal police (similar to the FBI in the EUA) and the IRS agents are receiving training to investigate targets who have crypto suspected of cybercrimes or tax crimes. This is true here in brazil as well as in any other country in the world, and if the target has hardware wallets, they can request the packaging box of the device, because since the packaging box comes with recovery sheets to write down seedphrases, the chances of them finding the wallet backup there are high, since most users write down the seedphrases on these standard recovery sheets.

Whether right or wrong, many of us realize that our privacy rights tend to be lower when we are crossing borders, so I have difficulties imagining situations in which most people would be traveling with their back up seeds or their recovery seeds.  It could be true that regular folks are writing recovery phrases on the cards that come with the packaging, yet I have my doubts that large numbers of them are holding their packaging and recovery phrases together. Sure it could be true that people take the most lazy way out. .but it seems a bad practice to perhaps only have one back up too, in the event that their house burns down, then only one copy?

No doubt that agents are going to receive more and more training, and also the population in general are going to become more and more familiar with the various ways that seed phrases might be generated or how they might look or even to recognize that something looks like a seedphrase since they are random words on a list.

Of course, this is not yet an official practice and I highly doubt it would be applied in airports. However, in cases of criminal investigations or even involving individuals who haven’t necessarily committed crimes, as you can see in the link I shared, they are already indicting people who are in debt with the country’s tax authority.

I have no doubts that governments are going to be engaging in more creative ways to separate folks from their bitcoin or to try to get folks to reveal their various wallets, including to ask them to confirm various transactions or the location of bitcoin that they are declaring in their taxes, and yeah, they also may well be claiming that people are in possession of bitcoin yet not claiming bitcoin transactions in their taxes.  I have no doubt that there are going to be a variety of scenarios playing out in the future, which likely should inspire several of us to figure out our own ways of accounting, reporting and even how we might manage and/or maintain our bitcoin.. and sure some folks will get scared out of holding bitcoin or wanting to stay in bitcoin based on their fears about accounting and/or potential auditing attempts by government authorities.

Even jurisdictions that are supposedly friendly to bitcoin may well be speaking out of both sides of their mouths (asses) in regards to proclaiming friendliness while maintaining various kinds of draconian accounting and/or auditing practices.

-

A lot of slippery slopes if governments start to go down the road of trying to suggest that digital bearer instruments also need to be declared, even though they are not physical.  Surely, if we have our digital contents (or access) on electronic devices, then there are blurring of the lines, and digital devices are becoming so prolific that they surely would be creating impossible tasks to start to search and/or confiscate digital devices of individuals and trying to figure out where to draw the line.  

More draconian attempts at restricting digital information and the movement of digital information, even if there might be attempts to differentiate between bearer instruments (that do not require a third party) versus non-bearer instruments, these are not easy categorizations, and surely attempts to crack down will inspire more and more ways to obscure the information and/or to encrypt the information.. so then there surely can be attempts to require the giving up of passwords and perhaps even the creation of decoy passwords, which surely if the data and/or device is centrally controlled, then they could have back doors to the information, so I suppose we have to continue to promote various open source and decentralized efforts to develop tools that the non-technical folks are also able to use without losing their data (or their bitcoin.. hopefully not shitcoins.. but sure, evne shitcoins might have some value, too.. or serve as a way to obscure data/value in temporary ways)..

A ton of slippery slopes and this reminds me of some issues about using file sharing services or websites to stream copyrighted content. There were different discussions in different countries and one of the main questions was whether someone saved a copyrighted file locally on their device or not. It had some impact on how it was treated at court.

Now if we apply the same logic, what happens if (I hope nobody does that ) someone saves their wallet.dat on their email account hosted by an external provider. The slippery slope problem is gigantic and incalculable. What if I send the private key containing in excess of 10,000 USD to someone I know abroad and I get asked at the border whether I am carrying value in excess of 10,000 USD with me?

It feels to me like there can't be drawn a comprehensible line that treats all subjects equally in front of the law.

Laws are frequently disparately applied, but yeah frequently we can argue our case in regards to desires to be treated fairly and/or similarly to others.

I doubt that any of us need to be declaring our bitcoin at the borders, yet sure we have to use our judgement if it looks like we might get taken into custody or charged with some offense or beaten (tortured).  If we hear that the levels of searches of private electronic devices is increasing or if we believe that we might be within a category of someone who might be harassed (or show up on some suspected person list), then surely we would like to take additional cautionary measures.

We already know that it is possible to cross with thousands millions or even your whole life savings in bitcoin which could be in your head or could be in some cryptographic form or could be in some stenographic form  or otherwise obscured, and if you chose to declare it, then that would be up to you.. To me, it does not seem necessary, yet maybe the choice to declare would depend on the level of negative consequences that I perceive, especially if I were to be getting waterboarded, then maybe at some point, I would with to be able to not be tortured... to the extent that I then would still be able to reveal information that was sought... Surely there could also be situations in which some of us might end up on a target list, and there could be a mistake or maybe there had been some kind of a rule change, and we did not know about such rule, in which we end up being a target.

There surely can be inconsistencies at borders too, and I have crossed some borders in recent times in which I was hardly even noticed and then other times where it seems I get asked questions and even have some extra searches done on me.

So many folks are traveling with so many electronics that it might end up being that the threshold becomes higher before some of us might become a target in regards to how many electronics we have and how we are carrying them, whether in our checked luggage or in our carry on.

Personally I would use steganography to hide the seeds as I believe this is a great way to conceal informations. In plain eyes, everything would look normal, but in reality things would be a little different. Anyway, I once used steganography to hide an app inside a video. Though I failed miserable to make it look normal because the file size became too big but for a simple seed, it should be a piece of cake. Frankly speaking, it should still fulfill the original plan to hide the seed without being detected. No one would suspect a thing. And it's not like customs checks everything from neck to toe, or set up a forensic lab at the airport, go through every message, photos, videos or documents.

That's exactly what will be done. Even individuals who are not technically as literate could use instructions they obtain online to apply steganography and as you mentioned, file size won't be a problem when it's about hiding a simple seed. You can hide it in an image, in an mp3 file. You can hide it literally anywhere. If you assume that authorities would equip border controls with the technology to screen devices, fine, but the time required to do more than find one needle in the haystack per year, it's impossible to do. One individual could easily have three devices, a laptop, a mobile phone and an iPad or whatever else people carry around these days.

There are reading devices like kindles, and there are speakers and headphones, and there are USB drives and external hard drives, and other signing devices like yubikeys.  Many kids toys have various kinds of chips and batteries too... they are likely looking for bombs and weapons more than they are looking for money and valuables, even though surely it is different when you are leaving versus when you are arriving and it is different depending upon which country you are coming from and going to and the reason(s) why.

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I'll tell you something, I suspect that both the federal police (similar to the FBI in the EUA) and the IRS agents are receiving training to investigate targets who have crypto suspected of cybercrimes or tax crimes. This is true here in brazil as well as in any other country in the world, and if the target has hardware wallets, they can request the packaging box of the device, because since the packaging box comes with recovery sheets to write down seedphrases, the chances of them finding the wallet backup there are high, since most users write down the seedphrases on these standard recovery sheets.

Of course, this is not yet an official practice and I highly doubt it would be applied in airports. However, in cases of criminal investigations or even involving individuals who haven’t necessarily committed crimes, as you can see in the link I shared, they are already indicting people who are in debt with the country’s tax authority.

If there is a target owning crypto suspected of cybercrimes, how likely is it that those targets will carry around hardware wallets when they have to pass border controls?

They might not know that they are a target or on some kind of a "wanted" list.

Some will do that, but if they are able to pull off cybercrimes, I doubt there first choice would be a hardware wallet to carry with them with the aim to pass border controls at an airport. Wouldn't they probably be the first to come up with far more sophisticated approaches?

You can carry empty hardware wallets, and then load them after you cross the border.. and yeah, worse case scenario they get confiscated and you have to buy new ones at your destination. .to the extent that your destination has places where you can find such devices that you had been carrying.

If they use a device with a huge hard drive, storing 10,000,000 files, it would take an eternity for border control at an airport to scan through it an find suspicious files.

Do they have backdoors into my encrypted drives?  I will carry back up drives and sometimes more than one computer and more than one phone, and I see others engaged in similar practices.. and yeah if there is a whole family, then it can seem normal to have even more devices with chips and drives. I have had trips in which I have had more than 5 back up drives, and yeah, it is likely that I would know that they were scanning my drives since those tend to be in my carryons, but historically, i had left some encrypted drives in my checked luggage too.  that might not be a good practice, even if the drives were encrypted.

[DYING_S0UL]

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That's exactly what will be done. Even individuals who are not technically as literate could use instructions they obtain online to apply steganography and as you mentioned, file size won't be a problem when it's about hiding a simple seed. You can hide it in an image, in an mp3 file. You can hide it literally anywhere. If you assume that authorities would equip border controls with the technology to screen devices, fine, but the time required to do more than find one needle in the haystack per year, it's impossible to do. One individual could easily have three devices, a laptop, a mobile phone and an iPad or whatever else people carry around these days.

There are reading devices like kindles, and there are speakers and headphones, and there are USB drives and external hard drives, and other signing devices like yubikeys.  Many kids toys have various kinds of chips and batteries too... they are likely looking for bombs and weapons more than they are looking for money and valuables, even though surely it is different when you are leaving versus when you are arriving and it is different depending upon which country you are coming from and going to and the reason(s) why.

As for other offline methods for hiding the seed, I was thinking about postcards, letters etc. The seeds can be hidden inside the subject, the body in a form of normal texts with multiple recipient. But there are possibilities of physical damages. So I'm not so sure of that. Someone above said about using a book/notebook. Why not just use the dictionary then  ? It basically contains all the words, if I'm not wrong. Imo, that would be the best idea, if anyone wanna hide it offline.

There’s Seed XOR, it’s perfect for this kind of situation. However, you would still be carrying a seed, even if it isn't your real seedphrase, in which case you can try steganography using an image.
For Windows, I’ve only tested one software, OpenStego. In it, you can add an optional AES encryption password. Of course, there are many other forms of steganography. Which one would you use?

What's a seed XOR anyway? This is the first time I am hearing this crypto term. So before I commented, I googled a bit, but couldn't find enough information on this. All I could understand is that, it splits your seeds into multiple parts and then the rest of the concept is still unclear to me (I guess, I was a bit lazy, didn't read the article properly).

[LoyceV]

As for other offline methods for hiding the seed, I was thinking about postcards, letters etc. The seeds can be hidden inside the subject, the body in a form of normal texts with multiple recipient.

I wouldn't destroy my other backups when doing this If you need to remember which 24 words to find back in a pile of letters, chances are you forget some of them. And that's even ignoring the fact that you'll need to know the correct order.

[apogio]

What's a seed XOR anyway? This is the first time I am hearing this crypto term. So before I commented, I googled a bit, but couldn't find enough information on this. All I could understand is that, it splits your seeds into multiple parts and then the rest of the concept is still unclear to me (I guess, I was a bit lazy, didn't read the article properly).

I suppose these could be helpful:

Website: https://seedxor.com/
Video by BTCSessions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvquutZwNAg&t=178s
Article at Bitcoin Magazine: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/guides/how-to-use-coldcard-and-seed-xor
Question here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5433064.0  *

* I have the OP on my ignore list, but you can get some answers from reputable bitcoiners

[Dump3er]

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Laws are frequently disparately applied, but yeah frequently we can argue our case in regards to desires to be treated fairly and/or similarly to others.

I doubt that any of us need to be declaring our bitcoin at the borders, yet sure we have to use our judgement if it looks like we might get taken into custody or charged with some offense or beaten (tortured).  If we hear that the levels of searches of private electronic devices is increasing or if we believe that we might be within a category of someone who might be harassed (or show up on some suspected person list), then surely we would like to take additional cautionary measures.

We already know that it is possible to cross with thousands millions or even your whole life savings in bitcoin which could be in your head or could be in some cryptographic form or could be in some stenographic form  or otherwise obscured, and if you chose to declare it, then that would be up to you.. To me, it does not seem necessary, yet maybe the choice to declare would depend on the level of negative consequences that I perceive, especially if I were to be getting waterboarded, then maybe at some point, I would with to be able to not be tortured... to the extent that I then would still be able to reveal information that was sought... Surely there could also be situations in which some of us might end up on a target list, and there could be a mistake or maybe there had been some kind of a rule change, and we did not know about such rule, in which we end up being a target.

There surely can be inconsistencies at borders too, and I have crossed some borders in recent times in which I was hardly even noticed and then other times where it seems I get asked questions and even have some extra searches done on me.

So many folks are traveling with so many electronics that it might end up being that the threshold becomes higher before some of us might become a target in regards to how many electronics we have and how we are carrying them, whether in our checked luggage or in our carry on.

There are numerous important things explicitly or implicitly mentioned in your post. It is unlikely that there will be laws stating explicitly you have to declare digital assets at the border if you intent to access those assets outside your native country. But laws that might force you to declare it in some fashion are already in place or otherwise it could end in a lifetime hunt with the IRS if you are a US citizen. As soon as you access larger amounts of value outside your own country, it is possible that doesn't go unnoticed for very long depending on the county you are in. The "tax"-spiderwebs that some countries have spun around the world are close-meshed. You could end up on a target list that way and once you return authorities are waiting for you.

Inconsistencies at the borders can be insane. Whether that has to do with social profiling or is purely coincidence most times, don't know.

The target threshold could change, but what will be more important are the reports people make about their experiences and then travelers or people leaving their countries altogether will adjust their means of transportation of digital assets accordingly. I think the authorities' best call is to establish a strongly liberal framework that gives incentives to report or otherwise cost will become prohibitively high to identify, surveil and catch targets.

Personally I would use steganography to hide the seeds as I believe this is a great way to conceal informations. In plain eyes, everything would look normal, but in reality things would be a little different. Anyway, I once used steganography to hide an app inside a video. Though I failed miserable to make it look normal because the file size became too big but for a simple seed, it should be a piece of cake. Frankly speaking, it should still fulfill the original plan to hide the seed without being detected. No one would suspect a thing. And it's not like customs checks everything from neck to toe, or set up a forensic lab at the airport, go through every message, photos, videos or documents.

That's exactly what will be done. Even individuals who are not technically as literate could use instructions they obtain online to apply steganography and as you mentioned, file size won't be a problem when it's about hiding a simple seed. You can hide it in an image, in an mp3 file. You can hide it literally anywhere. If you assume that authorities would equip border controls with the technology to screen devices, fine, but the time required to do more than find one needle in the haystack per year, it's impossible to do. One individual could easily have three devices, a laptop, a mobile phone and an iPad or whatever else people carry around these days.

There are reading devices like kindles, and there are speakers and headphones, and there are USB drives and external hard drives, and other signing devices like yubikeys.  Many kids toys have various kinds of chips and batteries too... they are likely looking for bombs and weapons more than they are looking for money and valuables, even though surely it is different when you are leaving versus when you are arriving and it is different depending upon which country you are coming from and going to and the reason(s) why.

-

I'll tell you something, I suspect that both the federal police (similar to the FBI in the EUA) and the IRS agents are receiving training to investigate targets who have crypto suspected of cybercrimes or tax crimes. This is true here in brazil as well as in any other country in the world, and if the target has hardware wallets, they can request the packaging box of the device, because since the packaging box comes with recovery sheets to write down seedphrases, the chances of them finding the wallet backup there are high, since most users write down the seedphrases on these standard recovery sheets.

Of course, this is not yet an official practice and I highly doubt it would be applied in airports. However, in cases of criminal investigations or even involving individuals who haven’t necessarily committed crimes, as you can see in the link I shared, they are already indicting people who are in debt with the country’s tax authority.

If there is a target owning crypto suspected of cybercrimes, how likely is it that those targets will carry around hardware wallets when they have to pass border controls?

They might not know that they are a target or on some kind of a "wanted" list.

Yes but as mentioned above, it is a question of time until the information spreads about social profiles that make it onto that target list.

Some will do that, but if they are able to pull off cybercrimes, I doubt there first choice would be a hardware wallet to carry with them with the aim to pass border controls at an airport. Wouldn't they probably be the first to come up with far more sophisticated approaches?

You can carry empty hardware wallets, and then load them after you cross the border.. and yeah, worse case scenario they get confiscated and you have to buy new ones at your destination. .to the extent that your destination has places where you can find such devices that you had been carrying.

If they use a device with a huge hard drive, storing 10,000,000 files, it would take an eternity for border control at an airport to scan through it an find suspicious files.

Do they have backdoors into my encrypted drives?  I will carry back up drives and sometimes more than one computer and more than one phone, and I see others engaged in similar practices.. and yeah if there is a whole family, then it can seem normal to have even more devices with chips and drives. I have had trips in which I have had more than 5 back up drives, and yeah, it is likely that I would know that they were scanning my drives since those tend to be in my carryons, but historically, i had left some encrypted drives in my checked luggage too.  that might not be a good practice, even if the drives were encrypted.

And this is something where my technical knowledge is significantly limited. The whole topic about backdoors. I only know that most of what big corporations like Apple, Google, Facebook and so on and so forth have long been claiming about their privacy policies and that they would not cooperate with intelligence agencies, has all been refuted. Telegram claimed that their service is fully encrypted and no cooperation is ongoing with intelligence agencies, but there was proof not too long ago that it is a lie.

As long as centralized services or products like hard drives are used, what is the chance that all these things are coming with backdoors? Yet, assuming they have a backdoor and can read your hard drive and find private keys while you think they can't because it is encrypted, it would not be smart to let you know that they know as backdoors only work when nobody knows that they do. That is why earlier I said they would probably go after you in other ways via the tax law and not because you didn't declare digital value at the border. It will mostly be about target identification, subsequent surveillance and then whatever the law allows them to do.

The one issue I still see is how are they going to design the law in the future that a guy at the border who carries in excess of $10,000 in cash is treated the same as the guy who carries in excess of $10,000 in bitcoin? Bitcoin is beyond supranational, and this is a bloody important feature of the network. No global legal framework will ever be able to dissolve the problems that nation states have with a currency they can't control. But there are still many, many, many people who haven't understood or don't want to understand that this is what strongly contributes to bitcoin's network value.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

In the US at least, when crossing the borders there is NO requirement to declare any digital assets and CBP has no broad authority to even ask about them -- only physical currency in excess of $10,000 be it cash, checks, money orders, bearer bonds, etc is required to be declared.

At the US borders crypto assets are treated the same as your credit cards or ATM/Debit cards - no reporting required, period. The only time asking about credit/ATM/Debit cards is allowed is if you are stopped and questioned about how long you are staying and what you will be doing - then they might ask how you are paying for things and if you have too little cash only then will they ask if you have cards to pay for your expenses but they cannot and will not ask what their limits are.

[LoyceV]

As soon as you access larger amounts of value outside your own country, it is possible that doesn't go unnoticed for very long

How many people are spending more than $10k abroad, without wanting a paper trail? If it's legal, like buying a car, I'd want a paper trail. If it's illegal what you're doing, it's no surprise they'll come after you.

I only know that most of what big corporations like Apple, Google, Facebook and so on and so forth have long been claiming about their privacy policies and that they would not cooperate with intelligence agencies, has all been refuted.

Now compare Protonmail or Mullvad: they can't share what they don't have or can't decrypt. Any good privacy service shouldn't keep records they can access.