Travel Security: Digital Prey

My brick phone in Caucasus Georgia, June 2012.

After leaving Ferguson at the end of October, I've got an international trip planned. Ooo, yeah.

Since my last sojourn out of the country (well, other than walking over to Juarez from El Paso), an ugly law enforcement practice that's spread across our national body like a case of poison ivy: Border officials demanding to see communications and other data in travelers' phones and laptops without good cause. Putting travelers in untenable positions if they protest the exposure of their devices' contents to border officials.

Am I likely to be singled out for such attention? Probably not. But I object to abuses of power on principle.

So on my trip, I'll take with me:

• An old phone that is stripped of everything personal except the barest essentials I might need for travel; and
• Little Red, my sweet, childlike laptop with a toddler's memory. 

There's another advantage to the above decision. Although my complexion, dress, and accent might not trip the typecasting alarms of border officials, my gender, age, and solo traveling status might juice up the salivary glands of tourist hunters on the other side.

Hopefully, a penetrating gaze that suggests I can kick your ass, despite appearances to the contrary, will ward off attempts to cull me from the herd. But in case that fails, well,  I might get my phone or Little Red ripped off, and that would suck.

But they are my expendable Star Trek extras, and my lead actors will be safe at home.

My brick phone in Caucasus Georgia, June 2012.

A useful article about digital security: The traveler's guide to keeping electronic devices secure during international travel, published in Travel and Transport, February 2017

Guatemala: Packing List

Packing for my one-month Guatemala trip was similar to my packing for Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico, back when I studied for my CELTA. I even took the same wheeled bag! The wheeled bag still squeaks by the carry-on police, but just barely. Back when I bought it, the bag was easily within the dimension limits, but the airlines have reduced their boundaries since then.

e-bag, wheeled, carry-on bag

For a month's trip, all of my stuff fit into the above bag and a lightweight backpack.

Clothing

Similarities in both trips included:

1. Warm weather throughout the stay, so no need to pack for wide variations in temperature; and
2. No moving around from place to place - I'd be in same accommodations for the full month, which meant I'd have a secure place to bring and store items (e.g. technology) that I might otherwise leave at home. 

A difference in this trip and the Playa trip is ... shoes. Shaking my head on this one. I've never been one to amass great quantities of shoes, but I packed kind of an embarrassing number of pairs on this trip. This is because my Guatemala plans include:

• Dancing! 
• Hiking
• Walking on uneven pavements (think Caucasus Georgia and Ethiopia)
• Hanging around the house 
• Maybe some evenings out that require a little bit of dressing up

So, five pairs of footwear. Sheesh. I plan to discard two pairs when I leave, as they've outlived their usefulness to me.

I'll also leave behind some of the clothing items when I go. They are in good repair, it's just that either I'm tired of them or they no longer fit well.

So in theory, my luggage on the return trip will accommodate a few gift items that I'll buy here.


Comfort items

• Aforementioned salt and instant coffee
• Generic Imodium for the inevitable bout of diarrhea
• Sunscreen
• A month-long supply of my current sugar-free, powdered drink mix favorite: peach mango green tea in single serve packets, which had added to my travel comforts in Ethiopia and Caucasus Georgia
• Gum

Technology

My online work requires that I use headsets for meetings, so I packed both a primary headset and a backup headset.

Also:

• AA batteries and AAA batteries because, again, better to have items on hand than to have to take time out to hunt them down in a local store, and because I've experienced store-supply fail.
• Power strip/surge protector
• Flash drives for photo storage (in addition to using a cloud backup)
• Mouse + pad
• Earbuds and the device I use to listen to podcasts every day
• Unlocked, international-friendly android phone + phone charger

Laptop

My beloved primary laptop, bought in 2010, is now an elderly lady. By today's standards, she's heavy. Her after-market battery is kaput, so I've got to tether her to an electrical outlet whenever she's on. All of my life is held in her mother-brain.

Take her to Guatemala? No. It was an unnecessary risk to her fragile body and to the electronic trail of my life.

What to do? I know I've got to buy a new primary laptop but I'm not ready for that research and decision yet.

Well, I needed a backup, anyway, to my online work practice, so I bought a toy laptop.

Oooh, sha, she is so airy-light! And so come-hithery in her sexy, red dress. And at the price (well under $200), if she gets stolen or something else dire, I will be sad, but will not have suffered a devastating loss.

I loaded into her brain only those documents that I believed essential for my needs in Guatemala. Two reasons: 

1. She doesn't have much storage space. 
2. She can't divulge intel that she doesn't have. 

Backpack

I have a handsome backpack that I use for my primary laptop, for weekend travels, for some flights. I took it to Playa del Carmen, to Ethiopia, to Caucasus Georgia, to Dubai, to Istanbul.

e-bag backpack that I left at home

It looks as youthful today as it did when I bought it years ago.

I didn't bring it to Guatemala, however. Nope, I decided to go lighter and cheaper. I'm guessing I'll do a lot of walking in and around Antigua, and I wanted to reduce the carry load. This decision is supported by my decision to bring my toy laptop, Little Red, which requires a bag with less space and durability than my primary laptop.

I also wanted an inexpensive bag, both in price and in looks, to reduce the number of envious looks from would-be thieves. Guatemala has a bit of an unsavory reputation, you understand.


Little bags and accessories

The possibility of dancing or evening-going-out required some thought about packing small bags. Being a solo traveler, I don't have a partner to watch my bag for me at a table while I step away for dancing or even going to the restroom. So I need to be creative in how I carry stuff with me to these kinds of venues.

Choosing clothing with pockets is a good first step.

I also have three utilitarian terry-cloth, zippered wrist bands in which I can stash a credit card, some bills, and a key. (I've got one each in navy, black, and red. I may buy a new one in light beige.)

Gogo terry-cloth wristband with zipper. Source: Amazon

And, yes, I did bring the ubiquitous, LBFP, that is a tourist staple. The Little Black Fanny Pack. Or, in my case, the belly pack. Got it at a second-hand store on the cheap about a year ago.

Result: For my EDC (everyday carry) to and from language school, I've got my LBFP in front of me, attached like an infant, with my camera + reading glasses inside. I've got my wristband with some cash for the day on my wrist.  In my nondescript, blue backpack, I've got a wallet and the keys to my lodging. Both of these are out of reach of easy pick-pocketing, but of course, if someone wants to get serious about things, they'll just take the whole thing from me.

I use the backpack to cart groceries back home after class.

I feel equipped.


The phone issue

I bought my android a couple of years ago, thinking I'd be moving to Oaxaca for a year, and wanting a work backup to my laptop. We got off to a rocky start, but the edges have been smoothed over.

Coming to Guatemala was going to let my android run free like the wind, performing magical tricks that one likes to see performed when one travels outside one's homeland.

Most specifically, I intended to buy a local sim card so I could make and receive local calls. Thus far, however, there seems to be no particular need for me to make or receive local calls. Relying on email for local communication suffices, and I have plenty of wifi access here, including at my lodgings.

As for calling folks back home, I've used my phone to call them via Viber (free), Skype (I bought a one-month subscription to call the USA from Guatemala), or in a pinch, Google Hangouts for real-time communication and email for non-live communication.

Flashback to September 2010: Untethering from Desktop

Golly gee, I still have this laptop that I bought a little more than five years ago.  As I re-read the 2010 post, I am amazed that I actually paid a THOUSAND dollars for the desktop PC I had before the laptop. The extravagance! Of course, it did serve me for eight years, so a good investment, I think.  I handed it off to a brother, who continued to use it until a year or so ago. 

So, back to this laptop that I bought in 2010 and still use. Forty percent of the keyboard keys are naked, the original white letter identifications worn away. I have to use the keyboard without thinking because if I look down to think, I'll not be sure which key is for which letter.

I'm still using Windows 7. ....  Hehehehe, for that matter, I'm still using MS Office 2003.

That cool fingerprint swipe function is defunct. The optical disk drive is persnickety, especially with DVDs. The factory-installed battery has been replaced once, and is due again. The folding hinges need to be tightened up.

But other than these things, she's lookin' pretty good. I use the laptop every day.  I still value her light weight and her sleek metallic style.
 

The original post is here, and reposted below: 

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Untethering from desktop

I've never owned a laptop. My desktop is a Compaq Presario 6000z that I bought in 2002 for mas o menos $1000. Windows XP Home plus Microsoft Office 2003 Professional. It has served me well.

Until 2009, I operated on dial-up internet connection because I just couldn't bring myself to give one penny to the spawn of Satan Sprint, and his demon seed, Embarq. I finally succumbed when I could no longer stand the speed disparity between home and work. Not to mention I couldn't watch youtube. 

Back to my big untethering --> To go rootless, I needed to get a laptop. My criteria: 

• A screen between 14-15"
• Portable (thus 5.5 pounds or lighter)
• Long battery life (4+ real hours)
• $800 or less (ruling out Macs)
• At least three ports, preferably four
• Power and speed - but not what's needed for gaming
• All-around good performance (working with Microsoft Office products, photo work, email, movies)   

Here's where I looked:

1. Reviews on places such as cnet and pcworld. 
2. Once I got a bead on their recommendations, I went looking for customer-rich sites such as Amazon and Best Buy to get the customer ratings. 
3. I also put out a query to my family members for their experience. 

At first, the professional reviews lured me to a flashy Gateway (talk about old school), which I threw out for comments by family members. No one deigned to discuss the Gateway. Several family members expressed fondness for Toshibas, but when I did due diligence to check them out, I felt underwhelmed. There were a couple of cheers for HP. (There is the one wayward Mac user in the bunch, but that's just out of my price range, so no point in looking.)   

What made up my mind were the customer reviews on Best Buy. The seductive Gateway was all flash and sass for the professionals, but too many customers hated a specific set of features, and I knew they'd probably drive me nuts, too. I did a search of best ratings at Best Buy, and an HP came up with consistently good reviews, which I found the professionals backed up. 

So what I bought: An HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx. 

I'm happy with it. And once I transfer my stuff from the Compaq Presario to the laptop, I'll be untethered from that desk.

Replacing a Laptop Battery

Rustavi, Georgia.

Buying a replacement battery for my laptop

You wouldn't think it'd be a pain in the ass to replace a laptop battery, would you? But it was, kind of.

My battery started losing its life essence last year, but I hobbled along in Georgia (Republic of) until it finally faded away entirely and I had to stay plugged in all the time. One of my colleagues gleefully shared that she was waiting to replace her battery when she returned to the States because she could get a replacement for only 20 bucks. Wow, 20 bucks, that sounded good.

While I was still in Georgia, I went online to order a replacement battery so that it'd be waiting prettily for me when I returned to Missouri.

I wanted a four-hour battery like my original. I went on to the HP site.

And that's when I hit the walls.

First of all, the HP site is not intuitive. For example, you'd think when you enter "replacement battery" in the site's search field, you'd get some prompts asking for details about your original. No, you don't. You get a list of lots of different products with no guidance about how to locate your particular part. Eventually, I think I did finally find a listing for a replacement battery, with a cost of more than $100! Were they serious?!

So that's when I went to Amazon for my after-market need. And this is where my ignorance came into play. I wanted a four-hour battery that would fit my laptop. To my consternation, I discovered that the only time anyone talks about the charge life of a battery is when you're looking at new laptops. So, yes, I knew I needed a 6 Li-ion battery, but are all 6s good for 4 hours? Just because an after-market battery fit my laptop, how can I know anything about its charge life or endurance in general?

I decided to wait til I returned to Missouri and physically visit a Best Buy (where I'd purchased my laptop) to get my replacement battery.  Where I discovered they don't stock replacement batteries. Instead, the clerk looked at my battery and then went to a magic page on HP where he could enter the original battery details, found a list of two replacement batteries, one at more than $100 and the other more than $80, neither of which was accessible. Website glitch? No longer being manufactured? No real answer to this on the HP website.

So the clerk went to Best Buy's go-to replacement battery provider, Lenmar, where it was easy to find the battery that would fit my HP.

But then came the discussion between me and the clerk:

Mzuri: How do I know if a battery is a four-hour battery?
Clerk: Well, you don't really because ..... [lots of words]
Mzuri: Then can you tell me if a 6 Li-ion battery might only be for one hour?  
Clerk:  Oh, more than one hour
Mzuri: More than four  hours?
Clerk: Probably not more than five hours.
Mzuri: Can you give me a range?
Clerk: Could be anywhere between 3 and 5 hours.
Mzuri (weakly): OK. So I'll take this one (~ $53 all told)

Ordered online at Best Buy and shipped to me. 

Here's an example of a website that is not particularly helpful: What Should I Consider When Buying a Laptop Battery.  Although the author writes well with a clear and pleasant style, it's not helpful because:  

1. No date on the information, not even on the comments. If tech info is before 2010, it's probably obsolete IMNSHO. 
2. The first paragraph is just filler; ditto for the first half of the 2nd paragraph. 
3. Then there's the cruel sentence:   "Choose the battery with the longest life available for your computer." As if such data were out there somewhere, sending readers on a merry wild goose chase. 

I will grant the author kudos for a very reader-friendly discussion about the "memory effect" on two types of batteries (if they're even being used still).

Anyway, I've now got my new battery and am in the process of testing its charge life.

[Later same day: 3 hours and 15 minutes.]
[September 17: 3 hours and 6 minutes.]

Getting rid of my old laptop battery

Lithium ion batteries contain:

• Lithium
• Cathode Active Materials (LFP, LCO, LMO, NMC, NCA, CSG etc)
• Anode Active Materials (Graphite, Graphene)
• Copper (Cu) Foils
• Aluminum (Al) Foils
• SBR & PVDF Binders
• Electrolytes, LiPF6
• Separators

There's a controversy out there about whether or not these batteries really are or can be recycled and why (guess --> $$$), but for now, I found out where to recycle my laptop battery by going here. In full disclosure, I found this website via the HP website, but I'm thinking a manufacturer has an obligation to be even more proactive in helping customers get the needed recycling information. The least they could do is to put a sticker on the battery that has an url or phone number to call for recycling guidance.  

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 2: Gators and Greenville

Alligator Lake, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Leroy Percy State Park

I awakened this morning to a beautiful lake and wood view from my cabin at Leroy Percy State Park. (Remember the Percy name for later.) The lake is Alligator Lake, and gators do live here, though this time of year, they're likely snuggled under mud for a long winter nap. Still, the park staff told me that on especially warm and sunny winter days, some gators emerge to enjoy the sunshine.

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

View of Alligator Lake from Cabin 2 screened porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 backyard, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Beautiful, yes?

Alas, the two park trails were too sodden for walking, so off to Greenville I went.

Greenville

Greenville is on the Mississippi Blue Trail ...and the Hot Tamale Trail.

Remember, a week or so ago, Carol and I made an abortive attempt to get us some Delta-style tamales. Today, mission accomplished at Greenville's Hot Tamale Heaven.

Yes, they tasted good. Pretty much like tamales in the Southwest, I think. But I'm not a tamale connoisseur.  

I ate them in the parking lot of the Winterville Mounds, a mildly interesting Indian site from the 1300s-ish.

I climbed atop one of the mounds. Reminded me of the ruins near Tlaxcala that I visited with Kate and Pam. What a walk that was from one set of ruins to the other! The Xochitécatl ruins looked so close!

View of Xochitécatl ruins from the Cacaxtl ruins, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The endless walk.

The long walk from the Cacaxtl ruins to the Xochitecatl pyramids, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

And finally. The view from one of the Xochitécatl pyramids:

View from Xochitecatl pyramid, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The view from the Winterville Mound isn't as dramatic as that from the Xochitécatl pyramid. But it was fun remembering that day in Mexico while I looked out over the green Mississippi flood plain.

Despite my recent epiphany about museums, the 1927 Greenville Flood Museum looked intriguing. The museum is in the carriage house of a former plantation. In fact, this carriage house is believed to be the oldest structure in Greenville (the oldest still surviving, that is). Mike Bostic, the museum docent, screened a PBS documentary about the 1927 Greenville flood, called Fatal Flood, which told a disturbing story about how economics, man's inhumanity against man, and family betrayal factored into the town's flood response. Remember Leroy Percy? He and his son, Will Percy, played a prominent role in the story of the flood. One of the people interviewed in the documentary was John Barry, who wrote Rising Tide: The Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927 and how it Changed America. Apparently, the surviving Percys were livid about Barry's portrayal of them in the book.

Mike and I had a short but interesting conversation about "Southern writers." I didn't know this, but there is evidently so much cachet attached to being a "Southern writer" that there are authors who perhaps exaggerate their Southern ties so they can self-identify as such.  (When will the stalwart Midwesterners get their deserved glory?)


Next I went to the Cypress Preserve, a pretty park with a trail through a virgin stand of cypress. As I walked, I breathed in the pungent fragrance of fallen cypress needles.


 















Getting rid of stuff. It was almost dark when I returned to my cabin. I spent an enjoyable evening decluttering the music list on my laptop and mp3 player, culling songs and musicians I no longer wanted to hear.
For example, I could not abide the no-nuance voice of blueswoman Susan Tedeschi one more day.

And though I love Carolina Chocolate Drops, I have come to despise Trampled Rose, one of the songs on their Genuine Negro Jig album. (I loathe the song so much that I had a story in my head that went like this: One of the Drops guys didn't feel as if he'd gotten his share in the group's limelight, so he complained and complained to the other two about how he'd written this song, and they owed it to him to record the awful thing, and they gave in. I didn't know til today that the damn song is actually an old standby and multiple artists have covered it. For God's sake, why?)

Now gone, all gone. Very satisfying.

Talking about Carolina Chocolate Drops gives me the excuse to play a favorite, Snowden's Jig:

 

Georgia: Untethered!

Like my previous host family, my new host family has a dsl connection. Yay!

The host family also has a sweet adolescent. So far there's been no conflict for online access, but to take that completely out of the equation ...

I bought a router. I installed it. I'm untethered but connected in my new, Old Rustavi home!

Securing Data on Flash Drives

This afternoon, I officially threw up my hands in surrender. I've tried different ways to password-protect the flash drives I bought months ago, to no avail.

I downloaded TrueCrypt and carefully followed the directions numerous times -- from at least three sources -- on how to set up a flash drive for password protection. It just didn't happen for me. It's likely something really stupid, but I'm not taking it further for now.

Yes, I could throw money at the problem by taking the loss on the flash drives I already bought and buying, after all, pre-locked flash drives. Or I could, after all, buy an external hard drive that'd be easier to password-protect (I guess).

I'm at the classic decision-making point when one is lost on the road:

Do I turn around now and retrace my steps (ugh, boring, demoralizing, maybe expensive in time) til I reach that turn-off that I was supposed to take? Or do I keep moving forward, but at the risk of getting more lost, thus making it even more expensive in time or money? 

For now, I'm just going to think about it. Think about what problem I'm really trying to solve, define my goals, make a realistic assessment of my risks, and go from there.

Security: Uh, Oh. Dropbox Dropped It.

Dropbox is a cloud-based data storage service. 

My extremely sloppy, kindergarten definition of "cloud-based" (or "cloud computing") is that you've got stuff that belongs to you out on "the web," thanks to a service provider with enormous servers that are allegedly safe from various disasters, both intentional and unintentional, manmade or natural. Some of this stuff is static stuff, like files. Other stuff include applications that you ... Ok, now I'm getting myself a little lost.  For a more learned definition of cloud computing, go here.

Back here, I posted about Amazon S3's cloud-storage snafu. ... and back here I talked about the difficulty in making informed decisions about the integrity (in all senses of the word) of particular service providers. 

Dropbox, another cloud-storage provider, really, really blew it yesterday. It left all of its customers' files vulnerable for four hours.

Dropbox' statement here seems very weak to me:

This should never have happened. We are scrutinizing our controls and we will be implementing additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again.

Here's what Dropbox should have said:

This should never have happened. Because of our inadequacy, we failed our core mission, which is to protect our customers' data. We betrayed our customers' trust. To make things right, we will refund any fees paid by our customers in the last 12 months. In addition, we will provide all of our customers with written guidance on how to transfer their stored data from our service to a competitor's. Finally, we will leave no stone unturned in finding out what happened here and doing whatever we need to do to be worthy of our customers' trust again.

I'll be looking for a different data-storage provider. And I want my money back from Dropbox.

Confession: I Was A System Repair Disc Non-Creator

When I bought my laptop last September, I meant to create a system repair disc, but I didn't.

I kept on not creating one til today.

I probably only did it today because of two events that intersected in the universe:

1. I came across a virginal DVD-RW disc a few days ago, and
2. Cat just sent out a call for anyone who had a Windows 7 or Vista recovery disc. 

So I pulled out my pristine DVD-RW, followed the directions for creating a system repair disc, and now it's done.

Credit: Icon Archive

I tried to google on how many people are like me - who don't create a system repair disc, but I couldn't find any data. But I'm guessing lots of people are like me.

Spring Cleaning for the Rootless: Tidying Up the Laptop

Re-organizing. Deleting. Archiving. Not much different from cleaning out a closet.

Am I ever going to need this again? No? Delete. Maybe some day? Archive.

Can I combine any folders? Yes.

I reconfigured the Windows 7 "libraries" system so it reflects what I need rather than the default arrangement. My libraries are now a tidy set of four: Documents, Downloads, Music, and Pictures. I removed default folders I never use, such as Webcams, Videos, and Fax. Ditto for folders called Public Music and Public Pictures.

And what's in Music and Pictures are actually just shortcuts from their "parent" folders nestled in the arms of my cloud-based, automatic back-up, data storage folder, itself ensconced within Documents.

[It should go without saying that I long ago deleted or uninstalled the pre-loaded, never-used and unwanted applications from my laptop, especially from my internet browser. But I know that so many PC users never take that stuff out, including all of the internet cafes in Ethiopia. As a result, they needlessly suffer visual and navigational clutter, not to mention, over time, slower work speeds.]


Sheesh! My photos were a mess ever since I migrated from the desktop to the laptop! Some were on my hard drive, some only on the Picasa website, and I realized I found Picasa difficult to manipulate, confounding my efforts to get my photos in order.

But now I've got it all straightened out and all is now orderly, easy to find, and visually serene.

Here's one person who has tips for tidying up one's computer files:  How to Organize Your Computer Files