Border Crossings, Burner Phones, and Surviving Interrogation in China with Josh Summers from All Things Secured

Josh Summers spent a decade living in western China before 14 police officers showed up at his door, accused him of espionage, and confiscated every device his family owned. This Techlore Talks interview covers what 17 days of interrogation taught him about digital privacy while traveling, and the practical steps that could make the difference for you.

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🔗 SOURCES & LINKS
• All Things Secured (website): https://www.allthingssecured.com/
• All Things Secured (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/@AllThingsSecured
• All Things Secured (Odysee): https://odysee.com/@AllThingsSecured

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

• (00:00) - INTRO
• (02:03) - LIVING ABROAD
• (04:12) - WHY ASIA?
• (05:29) - GETTING KICKED OUT OF CHINA
• (12:16) - LIFE AFTER DEPORTATION
• (17:25) - PARALLELS BETWEEN THEN & NOW
• (20:41) - AMERICAN VS. CHINESE CITIZENS
• (24:07) - HOW CULTURE IMPACTS SURVEILLANCE
• (27:22) - SPONSOR SEGMENT
• (28:53) - TAKEAWAYS FROM JOSH'S EXPERIENCE
• (34:02) - OBSCURITY
• (36:21) - TRAVEL ADVICE
• (37:51) - SECONDARY DEVICES
• (38:57) - NEVER TAKE YOUR PHONE HERE
• (40:23) - SILENT TRAVEL RISK
• (44:06) - EASTERN VS. WESTERN SURVEILLANCE
• (46:46) - THE EFFECTS OF INVISIBILITY
• (51:16) - ALL THINGS SECURED ORIGINS
• (54:10) - WHERE TO START
• (56:28) - VIEWING PRIVACY DIFFERENTLY
• (01:02:29) - FINDING BALANCE
• (01:06:43) - FINAL THOUGHTS
• (01:07:35) - HOW TO FOLLOW

🎥 VIDEO
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Creators and Guests

Host

Henry Fisher

Runner, artist, musician and digital rights activist. Owner of Techlore

Guest

Josh Summers

All Things Secured

Editor

Tori

Techlore

What is Techlore Talks?

Techlore Talks brings you in-depth conversations with the experts at the forefront of privacy, security, and digital rights. Hosted by Henry Fisher, founder of Techlore and long-time digital rights educator, each episode features meaningful discussions with the people building, researching, and advocating for digital freedom.

From cybersecurity researchers and privacy tool developers to open-source advocates and digital rights activists—if they're shaping how we protect ourselves online, they're on this show.

Topics include: privacy tools and technologies, cybersecurity threats and defenses, open-source software, surveillance and digital rights, encryption, tech policy, and digital sovereignty.

New episodes released regularly. Subscribe and join the community at techlore.tech.

You know, you've watched enough crime TV shows,

oh, I could just sit in that room.

But when it's actually happening to you,

you don't really know what to do with yourself.

Today, I'm absolutely honored to bring all of you, Josh

from All Things Secured.

And we have a very information-dense discussion to have today

about especially privacy when you travel,

what your rights are,

his story about how his devices were confiscated

and how he was deported from China,

and what that entire experience looked like,

which was absolutely crazy to learn about,

but it had some incredible lessons

that I think nobody can be too careful about.

From best practices when you're just at home

to when you're traveling abroad and the different countries

and what to look for when you go across the border

and what you do at an airport

and what Josh's advice is

from his unfortunate firsthand experience,

I think there's a lot of really good stuff here

for everybody to learn.

And of course, it's wonderful

to always bring on another creator

and check in on their content.

And he does talk a little bit about how his content is influenced by his experiences.

Without further ado, let's get to the interview with Josh.

Josh, it is great to have you on our podcast, finally.

I know you've had me on a couple live streams, and so now it's time to get you on here.

How are you doing?

I'm doing good.

Hey, I feel really honored.

It's not like there was an expected back and forth.

So thank you even for inviting me, Henry.

Yeah.

I mean, last time I was like, hey, just give us a little time because we had so many to

get through.

And so we were actually, we're getting to turn around down a lot better on these interviews.

So it's exciting because now we can do more timely things,

which is not this one because this is about travel.

It's a little bit more timeless

and a little bit more evergreen, I think.

So hopefully we're going to talk a lot about today

about your travel journeys,

maybe a little bit more of the horror stories

and the things that people don't want to happen to them,

what it looks like to navigate that situation.

And I really want to get practical today

and kind of see what you have to say about travel.

See, I've traveled a lot for especially Techlore,

but I've never had to deal with any issues.

And so I don't have any of these stories to share with people and things to learn from myself.

So I guess I'd love to just open it up to ask you what your living situation that you're comfortable sharing looks like.

Because it seems like you travel a lot and it could be helpful context.

You can switch around countries if it's not relevant, whatever you're comfortable sharing, of course.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

So me and my wife have been out in Asia just in general for over 20 years now.

So it feels like it's been an eternity, basically most of our married life.

And we started off in China, not because I necessarily wanted to move to China.

And this was before, like this was back in early 2000s when the China-US relations really

weren't that bad.

And, you know, going out there didn't feel super, I don't know, like I would feel differently

if I was trying to move out to China now versus when we were back in the early 2000s.

But we stayed in China for about 10 years and not in the eastern side of China.

So if you know anything about the geography of China, like the eastern side is all the big cities, all the like the wealth and all that stuff.

And we were out on the western side.

So we were closer to Kazakhstan than we were to Japan.

And it was incredible.

Like I loved it.

I don't regret my time out there.

But it was certainly some of the hardest living that I've ever had to do.

Like it was not an easy place to live.

We just loved it.

We felt like we should be there.

And so we were there for 10 years.

And now I'm in Thailand through a series of events that I'll probably explain later on

in this talk.

Like, you know, we were kicked out of China.

And so we eventually, not immediately, but we eventually found ourselves in Thailand.

And so from here, you know, it's a great place for me.

And I now have two boys to travel around, you know, to go to Europe, to go to different

places in Asia, some places that we want to go, you know, like going down to Malaysia

or going to the Philippines.

And then some places that we don't want to go.

You know, I had to make a visa trip to Laos and that wasn't my favorite country, you know.

So like there are just, there's a lot of different border crossings that happen when there are just so many countries squashed together in Asia.

And so that's kind of a, I got in a nutshell where we've been.

Yeah.

If I could ask, like why, like what about Asia?

Like has you all kind of living there?

Is it the culture?

Like what do you enjoy about the area?

Yeah, I think when my wife and I, her name's Tiffany, so when Tiffany and I first moved

out to Asia, it was more just the adventure of it all.

I had wanted to go to some Spanish-speaking country in South America, but we tried to go

through the Peace Corps.

Connecting for a couple was super hard, and so we ended up going out into Western China.

And I had never spoken Chinese before.

It wasn't like I had this innate desire to go out to Asia.

It was just the right opportunity at the right time, the right connection for a person that

needed, you know, we went out there as English teachers in the very beginning. So I don't think

that there's like this great answer for why we were in Asia. But once we got here, I really fell in

love with it. And I do think it is an acquired taste. It's also not for everybody. I love the

food out here. I love the pace of life. I love the culture. And, you know, frankly, I love the cost

of living. Like it is considerably cheaper to be out here and still comfortable. Like where we're

in Thailand, like you can still have a good life, but without having to pay out the nose for it.

Nice. Okay. So, you know, you said you got kicked out of China. So for those who haven't,

I guess, heard the story, I think it could be good to just tell that

for whatever happened. And then we can kind of dive into maybe some more specifics there.

Yeah. I like to, I don't know, it feels like a frog in a boiling pot. If you've heard that

analogy before, where it's, and I don't even know if it's true, but they say that if you don't throw

a frog into a pot of boiling water, it'll immediately jump out because it recognizes,

wow, that's super hot and it'll jump. But if you put a frog in water and then boil that water,

it'll just sit there until it boils to death. And I feel like that's kind of my experience in China

where if you had placed me in China in 2013, or actually, excuse me, 2018, when we were eventually

kicked out, just that being my first experience, it would have been jarring. It would have been,

I don't know if I could have handled it, the amount of surveillance, the amount of police,

the amount of just not feeling welcome. But when we arrived in 2006 and then slowly kind of got used

to all of that survey, like these changes that happened. And if you look back into China's

history, you know, they had the Olympics in 2008 and there were some events that happened

prior to that where there's just a little bit of unrest and then in 2009 there were some massive

riots out in the region where we were living and that prompted a big clamp down a lot of police and

there was just this tension between the Chinese people like Han Chinese is what we would call it

like what you and I think of as Chinese and then the Chinese people that were actually more Central

Asian think of like Tibet you know that that conflict over who actually is the original owner

of Tibet. Well, that same thing happened in our region in Xinjiang where it was more just this

ethnic conflict. And we as foreigners got a little bit in the middle of it. But one of the things that

I got to do while I was out there was I went and did a lot of like travel vlogging, travel writing.

I wrote for Lonely Planet back when that was a thing. And if anybody who's watching or listening

to this is like younger than the age of 30, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But

like back before the internet, we used to travel with these big fat blue books, you know, that

travel writers would, uh, would, you know, go and figure out what restaurants and hotels to go to.

And, uh, and that was part of what I got to do. You're laughing. Like, do you know Lonely Planet?

Oh, I, I invented Lonely Planet. No, no, I, I have no idea. So, um, I know a lot of,

I've seen the YouTube demographics that those are like the only stats we have access to. So I know

some people will know. Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. So yeah, I mean like that kind of stuff,

I got into travel writing.

But what that meant was I was walking around a very politically sensitive region with a

camera and with a figurative notepad, like talking to people, taking notes and doing

all this stuff.

And over time, that just put a huge target on my back.

So not only was the political tension rising, China ended up setting up kind of these concentration

camps for the local people that is still to some degree going on today.

and then you had me over here just running around the province i wouldn't say naively but maybe a

little bit naively with a camera and it wasn't i mean it came to a head in 2018 when the police

just took me in i remember that it happened twice but the the big time the one that where we were

eventually kicked out they came to my house with 18 no sorry it was 14 police officers and they read

me my rights. My wife and my boys are sitting on the couch. They said they were getting me for

espionage, which for the record, I am not, have not ever been, you know, I mean, everybody would

say that, but like, I'm not a spy. I have no connection with my government, right? Like I

don't, but just like, I can't convince you of that. I can't convince, you know, a foreign government

of that for sure. And they took everything. They took my computer. They took all of my, like these

little, you know, hard drives that you, or like flash drives that you use for your camera. They

took my laptop, my phone, they took all of that stuff and they spent the next week interrogating me

and combing through all of my devices and just trying to find any and everything that they could

against me. Thankfully, they weren't able to prove that I was a spy because I'm not, but they didn't

like me enough that they just, after the end of, it was a 17 day, it felt like forever, like long

period, they just gave me my passport. They had taken my passport and my whole family's passport

so we couldn't leave. And they returned our passports without charging us officially with

anything. We had to sign some documents and then we were deported and told we could never return,

at least for the next 10 years. That was our experience. And as I say it, I'm sure that a lot

of people can listen to this and hear a lot of different things. It was without a doubt the

scariest moment of my life. And I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I thought I was going to be taken

away from my kids and my wife. They threatened me with 10 years in jail for something that I didn't

do. And there was very little that could be done about it except for just hope and pray that they

would change their minds. Yeah. No, it sounds super scary. And especially like, did you, like on day

three, did you know at all it was going to be 17 days? Were you like, oh, I'm a sixth of the way

through this or was it just kind of endless? Like I'm just kind of in this until whenever it's over.

There's two questions that people usually ask. One is, did they physically abuse me in any way?

And then two is, did you know, like you said, did you know? And the answer is no, we didn't know.

As a matter of fact, when we started the process, they told me this is going to be multi-year,

right? We're taking your passport. And so when you think that, it definitely changes your view of

how things are moving forward and what life is going to look like. And then they did not physically

abuse me, but there was a lot of like, in some ways I almost wish they had because

that people can relate to a lot more than psychological abuse, which is what I think

people that are trained interrogators, that are trained in that kind of stuff, that's what they're

good at. I mean, like they're experts at this like psychological warfare. And I was completely

unprepared. Like you think, you think you could stand up against, you know, you've watched enough

crime TV shows. Oh, I could just sit in that room. But when it's actually happening to you,

it's completely freaky and you're, you don't really know what to do with yourself.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know what I would do. I mean, it's, it's not like a skill that I think

is taught or something people normally think about. So yeah, what happened after that? And

happened, I guess, prevention going forward? How possible is that to replicate in other countries?

And are you concerned about this kind of thing happening in westernized countries? I know that's

a big concern nowadays. So I have a lot of questions that I want to get into. But before

then, just kind of what was next for you and what were the next steps just to round out that story?

Yeah. So like I said, they gave me my passports back and then they dumped like most of our devices

in our laps, save maybe one or two that they held onto. So I mean, that's everything from hard

drives to my devices. And we got home and I contacted a security friend of mine and I didn't

turn on any of these devices at all. And essentially we just ended up dumping every single one of them.

There was just no way. I didn't know what they'd done with it. A little bit of context here too.

And this was one of the things I was going to say, like security and privacy, like your best strategy.

It's like that Mike Tyson quote, your best strategy and security and privacy is great until someone puts a gun to your head.

Where when somebody comes to you and this happened to me and they were like, hey, listen, give us the password to all of these things on your computer or else we will take and put you in jail right now.

Okay.

You know, I'm in a foreign country.

A lot of my rights are stripped.

And that's another thing you'll probably hear me say a lot, Henry, is when you travel, one

of the things that we give up is our right to have a right to a lot of these things.

It's things that we fight for in our own country.

And I believe that that is a good and a noble fight.

But when we travel, we have to recognize that we don't inherently get that right as we move.

Even though we represent whatever country that might have that right, I don't get those

rights whenever I am in somebody else's country. And so they can demand those passwords from me.

And they did. And they went through all of my stuff. I remember the moment they caught me,

they caught me, they went through our house, right? They just sat us on the couch and they

went through everything and they found this device. I don't know if you can kind of see it for those

who might be listening. I know what that device, yeah. Yeah. For those listening, it's a USB flash

drive with some pins on it to unlock it encrypted. Yeah. Like I keep my death file on here. This is

like, if I die, my wife knows like this has all my stuff. They saw this and they like, it confirmed

all of their suspicions that I was a spy. What normal person would have one of these things,

at least in their mind. Right. And I, and I think that was the other thing I kind of learned is,

is like, you know, not that our security and privacy practices put a big target on us or

anything, but there are certain ways in which we can actually stand out in the way that we do things.

Some of that can be good, but in some cases, especially when we're traveling internationally,

that can come back to bite us. And this was one example of where that came back to bite me,

where I think I'm doing a great job here. I'm keeping things that are super secure,

that I don't want anyone else to have. And it just confirmed for them who they thought I was.

Yeah. What I think about with this, I mean, this is the layer of anonymity slash,

I guess even if you want to add a fourth one, obscurity,

it's a really hard thing to kind of teach people about.

But I think a more obvious one that was starting to get more tangible

for people is in the cryptocurrency space.

In the cryptocurrency space, we see a lot of individualized attacks.

You know, like people get kidnapped.

They literally get threatened to have to hand over their stuff.

And so the big advice is like,

you're not supposed to tell people you own crypto.

Like that's like the whole thing.

And the people who are on Twitter going,

oh, look at all my Bitcoin that I have

are probably not doing it very intelligently.

but that's what you get when you buy a ledger device or a treasure device like when you get a

hardware wallet you are signaling to the site that you purchase it from which ledgers site has been

caught in a data breach now so everyone who ever bought a ledger back from like 2017 through whatever

date until the breach happened that's public information which is a scary thought but even

if someone just visits your house or law enforcement comes in if they see that that's

that is an indication that you have some access to that.

And so back when I was working at CakeWallet,

they released something called Cupcake.

And the whole concept of Cupcake is you take a second device,

like an old device that's laying in your drawer,

and you keep it offline,

and that becomes your secondary hardware-assigned device.

And the whole concept here is it's obscurity.

No one would ever see a second phone and go,

oh, that's used to hold cryptocurrency in a very secure fashion

for someone who's holding millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, right?

So it's true. People don't think about this. Sorry to go back to what you're saying.

People don't think about the fact that some security tools actually are an indication and could raise suspicion.

Not that it's right. I don't think either of us are saying that's right.

But I think it should be something that's considered in some people's threat model, depending on their situation.

So I'm sorry you had to deal with that firsthand.

I mean, yeah, no, like it's part of my story. I don't mind like sharing those things.

It was a definitely unique experience.

One of the things I remember, this is where I see certain ways in which our life in China

was a precursor to what we're seeing in the West.

So an example of that is, you know, I'm walking around with my phone.

I've got a prepaid plan on my phone.

And mind you, this is 10 years ago.

But still, I'm walking around and suddenly my phone stops working.

Like, what?

What's going on?

You know, I can't make phone calls.

I got no data.

And like, you got to understand it.

Like in places like China, it's amazing how good their cellular networks are because they

never, like in the US, we first did everything over wire. And so all of our carriers were just

slow to adopt the desire to really invest in that kind of infrastructure. Whereas places like China,

just like, I remember being in the middle of the stinking desert and I still was sitting there

watching YouTube videos. I had that good of cellular connection. So when connection goes out,

it's not like, oh, am I in a dead spot? It's no, like, oh, something's wrong. So I top it up. I add

more money, still nothing. So I go into my internet service providers, China Mobile, and I'm like,

hey, what is going on here? And they look up my account. I'm like, oh, just so you know,

the police have put a hold on your account. You've got to go over to the police station to get that

hold released before we can do this. Was this before or after the incident?

This is before the incident. So yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. I didn't clarify that. So this is just

life beforehand. So I had to go over to the police station and they literally said, okay,

we recognize that you've been getting on a VPN and we need you to delete all of your VPN. So they

watched me sit there and delete all of my VPN apps. And then I had to go back, you know, get a sign

off from them, go back so I could get my account reinstated and use my cell phone again. Now,

I don't know what's to stop me from re-downloading VPNs again.

Like I think I eventually did after a little while,

but just this collaboration between the police

and all the other entities that I dealt with.

I mean, especially with, you know, like ISPs

or with my mobile provider.

Like I just, it was disconcerting for me at the time.

And even as we talk about or look at news

of what's happening around the world

in regards to the legality of VPNs,

can VPNs be used in order to evade any of these things that we're coming up against nowadays.

I can see a time where we've got law enforcement working with mobile providers to make sure that

if you are using a VPN, I'm not saying this is happening. I'm just saying this was my experience

in China and it was kind of eye-opening. Oh my gosh, this is what happens whenever there is that

connection between law enforcement and mobile providers or law enforcement and ISP. And it was,

Yeah, it was weird, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, so I have a few broader talking points.

And I think this could be a good segue into the overall legality of things.

And so I don't expect you to be a legal expert here.

But you mentioned this concept of when you travel somewhere,

you're giving up a lot of your rights.

And I think that's a pretty universal concept.

If you are not an American and you go to the U.S.,

you have a lot less rights than Americans might.

And if I'm an American and I fly to Germany for a conference, I have a lot less rights there as well.

But what about citizens?

So are you also American?

Yes, I am.

Okay.

So when you go to the U.S. and you are an American citizen, how does that compare to the rights that a Chinese citizen would have in China?

Do you see a discrepancy between what those two things look like?

What would you say is overall a good starting point for a lot of people to understand the nuances of what their rights really are in these different contexts?

Yeah.

I wonder, because I think that we start with two different perceptions.

So I think that with an American, we start with at least the perception.

I'm not saying this is the reality, but at least the perception that we have a right to privacy and that we actually have privacy to some degree by default.

And I would argue that that doesn't exist by default as much as we think it does.

But still, there's kind of that perception that, hey, you know, we have, you know, that's

why Apple promotes the privacy of their products.

That's why, you know, privacy, you know, even Samsung, this privacy screen, like they've

recognized that consumers care about the idea of privacy.

Around the world, it's not quite the same.

And I don't know if I would chalk that completely up to just politics.

I think there's a lot of culture involved in that.

We're a very individualistic society in the U.S., whereas you go most places in Asia,

and I can only really speak from experience in China and Thailand, it is a very collective

culture.

There's this expectation that the good of the group is more important than the good of the

individual.

And this kind of bowing to that idea of that, that is what's expected.

And so this right of privacy is not necessarily as default in the mindset of the people that I'm aware of in China and now in Thailand.

And so dealing with that was a little bit different.

So I would get frustrated by things that my friends in China were just like, what's the big deal?

you know, after the 2009 riots in our region. So this was, if you look it up, just go 2009 riots,

you know, China, and you'll see all this stuff happened out in that region where we were living.

They did a couple of things. First of all, they shut off all international calling. You couldn't

make an international phone call from our region. So just imagine like a state, like a province.

And they shut off the internet. It was just an intranet within our region for 10 months.

And I want you to think back, anybody like for yourself or anybody who's watching this

right now, did you ever see anything about that on the news?

Like there were snippets of it on the news, but like if the internet was cut in the state

of California for 10 months, can you imagine the backlash and like how much like people

would just be going nuts?

But for the people of that region of Xinjiang, the idea that the internet was cut for the

safety of everybody in the region was kind of just this given. So I, you know, going back to what

you're saying, I don't know if I can speak much to the legality of any of that. All I know is that

from a cultural perspective, I think there's a lot more acceptance of that kind of invasion of privacy

for the good of the group that at least in the U.S., I don't think that is considered acceptable

for a lot of us. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, do you think that reflects

that culture difference also kind of impacts downstream

how surveillance technology is implemented.

And you kind of hinted at this as well.

This is something I wanted to ask about.

I feel like China has no issue just calling people in saying,

hey, we noticed you were using a VPN, delete it right now.

Hey, we have these cameras everywhere.

It's very well known that there's a lot of surveillance technology in China.

But I feel like in the US, people are quite disillusioned

with all the surveillance.

Like people don't think about Flock

until it's put in front of their face in a Super Bowl ad.

And then they go, oh, I hate this.

But they otherwise would have never known about it.

And so I think people in the US,

it's happening a lot more passively.

Governments secretly tap on private companies

like Google and collect it

without ever notifying the user.

So do you think that that reflects the cultures?

How do you feel about this overall relationship?

Yeah, I do.

I mean, you're right.

The surveillance is not hidden in any way

in a place like China. It is very much in your face. The cameras, when I was living there back

in 2018, before I left, the camera system they had out there put flock to shame, right? They had

every inch covered by government-controlled cameras, right? So at least flock for better or

worse. It's not top-down government-controlled. Now, it is regulated, all that stuff, and I'm not a

big fan of it at all, but there is a little bit of a difference there. Where I was living,

there were literally, we called them police substations. I don't know what the local term

was, but it was like in the same way that there's a Starbucks in the US pretty much on every corner

that you're driving. That's the way it felt like with these little police substations that would

handle the ingestion of all these cameras. When I was being interrogated, the amount of information

that they knew on me about me and my goings and my communication was very eye-opening and shocking

for me personally. But I think that the average Chinese citizen, again, kind of like,

the chicken and the egg problem for me is more about, do they accept it because it's cultural

or do they accept it because they know they have no recourse? Like them raising their voice about

is going to do no good. It will only do harm to them and their potential prospects for a career,

for anything like that. And so raising any sort of concern is not going to be of any value.

So you just kind of have to go along with it. Whereas at least us in the US, we've got a

mechanism through which we can say, this flock stuff sucks. What are we doing? And there can be

at least a debate, hopefully a good debate, but there can be a debate in the public forum about

whether this is a truly helpful thing or whether it's not. And I don't think those debates happen

in other parts of the world. And frankly, I think they look at our debates as foolish.

Like they look in on the American debate over something like the flock privacy stuff as just

us being fools just because there is so much infighting about it.

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Now back to the video.

So after this all happened to you, I want to get more into more like the practical side of things.

What have you changed in your life since then?

I think, you know, people hear this story.

I don't think it's hopefully something many of our listeners have had to deal with.

If they're like, oh, well, that's scary.

I don't want that to happen to me.

if it does happen to me, I want to be prepared for it. What are kind of your main takeaway lessons

from everything that happened to you that you would share with somebody else?

Yeah. Well, like I said, the best privacy and security in the world breaks down when someone

puts a gun to your head. There are obviously extreme measures that you can take on certain

things, but when somebody has a gun to your head, there's very little you can do. So I kind of want

to separate out my particular event and circumstance was very unique in that it did feel like I had a

gun to my head, but that experience did change the way that I cross borders. And I think that

that intentionality for how you cross borders is important. I like to tell people that the way that

you cross a border starts in the preparation before you board the plane, not once you land.

And I think a lot of people have that mixed up.

They're like, okay, once I land, that's when I'll just make sure that I've, you know, turned

off my phone or whatnot.

When it comes to, let's say, entering into China, if I'm advising somebody who's going

in on business, like one of the things that I'm going to say is, you know, hey, if, unless

you absolutely have to, for some reason, I'm not going to bring my regular phone.

I'm going to bring a secondary phone, a burner phone, if you will, into the country and only

use, you know, I'm not, that phone's not going to have all of my personal stuff on it. I want to

know because for people that are just general travelers, the most risky moment of your travel,

of, of, of any, like the, the most, how would I say this? The, the most likely you are to have

something happen wrong with your data or with anything that you are, that you have personally

with you is when you're crossing that border. So when you're going through customs, when you are

in that airport or when you're crossing that land border, that's the time that you have to be most

concerned about. When I'm thinking about that, I'm thinking, okay, there's certain apps that I really

don't need to have. Like if I were to hand over this phone and somebody had my pin code and said,

give, let me look through everything in here. Would I be comfortable doing that? I personally use

ProtonPass, but 1Password has this feature where they have travel mode, where you can actually turn

on travel mode and it will remove whichever vaults you have on it that are listed as not safe for

travel. So if I've got a business vault, I can keep my personal vault on there, but if I have a

business vault or a super sensitive vault, I can make sure that those are removed before I travel.

And then I can log out of any accounts that I might have,

or like I said, just have a travel specific device.

But those are just a couple of the things

that I'm thinking through.

Got it.

And so pretty much your suggestion there is,

hey, I got a phone.

It's either my regular phone or a secondary device

if I have that luxury.

And I only load onto it the bare minimum

of what I need for the trip.

So probably boarding passes, not all of my passwords,

not all of my messages, not all of my browsing history,

just the bare minimum on that device.

What about like computers and any other like privacy and security tools?

Like, do you recommend having a VPN on there?

What's kind of your stack or what do you typically travel with?

Yeah, so I am going to have a VPN on all the devices.

I essentially, what I think through is one, obviously I just said, what is on my device

that if I had to hand this device over, is there anything that I would absolutely not

want somebody to have access to?

And then the second thing I actually think about is what would I feel like if this

got plugged into. And this is something that I've actually had happen to me multiple times,

where I will be asked and compelled to take my phone and plug something into it and unlock it

so that they can run some kind of scan. I don't know what that scan is exactly. I don't know what

they're scanning for. They won't tell me. And I don't know what they're uploading. And I've asked

Apple, I've literally emailed them and this is years ago. So maybe things have changed,

But I emailed them and said, if somebody plugs into my phone and I am compelled to put in

my PIN number, what can they up?

They're restricted on what they can upload.

And the answer was, we assume that if you are giving your PIN code and making this a

trusted device that you can do basically anything, which kind of scares me.

But again, when you're crossing a border or when you are going into an international territory,

you may not have the right to say no to something like that.

So I want to make sure that if I have a device, am I willing to have this thing plugged into?

And that, you know, again, it's everybody's different.

Everybody's threat model as they do this is going to be entirely different.

It's more just how are you intentionally thinking about this travel and preparing instead of just getting caught once you're on the other side with, you know, not being prepared.

Yeah.

And then kind of going back to something we said earlier, do you ever think about obscurity for this as well?

Like, are you concerned if you have Tor browser on the device or you're using Veracrypt on something?

Do you think, do you try to avoid tools that would set off too many flags if someone was to unlock a device?

Or is that not part of your concern anymore when you travel?

It is.

I mean, I distinctly remember they came back.

So this is going back into when I was being interrogated over those 17 days.

And we were in house arrest at the time.

And I remember they'd taken all my devices.

So like we would go home, you know, thankfully go home every night.

And we didn't have anything to do.

Like you can't stream anything.

We don't have any devices, right?

So we would like, it was a very offline week for us, but they would come back to me and

I had a folder on my computer that was entirely encrypted that I kept stuff in and they brought

the computer to my door and said, type in the password.

We need to look in here.

And it was, it was things that, you know, I wanted to stay safe, but it didn't really

matter that they saw.

But I think the point being, they recognized this is a particularly sensitive folder.

You've obviously secured it.

So we want you to open this.

And there were probably plenty of other things on the computer, but they found that one folder

that had been encrypted.

And that is what they honed in on.

Just the same like they honed in on this little USB stick.

And they were convinced that this had everything that I wanted to hide on it.

Those are the type of things where if it's easy to stand out, like if it really stands out, you're probably going to grab the attention of somebody who's searching for something.

Do you think there's a strategy there for people to have, let's say, a honeypot where they have something that they know looks the most interesting that has nothing interesting in it to kind of just be like, no, it's not a big deal?

Yeah, I mean, that's certainly a strategy you could use.

I haven't thought about using that, though.

That's funny.

Okay, yeah, I was just curious.

I guess another question I think people might be thinking about, you're sharing this advice, and I've traveled to Europe at this point probably like 10 different times for different trips, mostly work.

I've never dealt with any of this.

I've never taken this too seriously.

I do basic hygiene, but I've never brought strictly a secondary device when I'm going to Europe.

So I guess the question here is, do you think that this should be universal travel advice?

Would you tell me, Henry, it could always happen, you don't know, and you should probably always be ready for it?

or do you think that this should be done selectively per country,

depending on the likelihood in which this could happen?

Yeah, I think it's a hybrid answer

because obviously your experience of traveling to Europe

is a lot different than my experience of traveling to Malaysia

or to Laos or to some of these countries

where their law enforcement and their privacy,

they don't take it as seriously as you would in a place like Europe.

So I think there is something to this idea that where you're going,

obviously matters in how you prepare an approach for international travel. So going to a place like

Germany, I'm going to probably not be as on high alert as I would going to Vietnam or Laos or,

you know, one of these other countries that I'm closer, or even down into some places in Africa

or the Middle East, right? Like it's going to make a difference in how I plan. That being said,

I do believe that as with anything privacy and security related, you never have to worry

about the worst case scenario until the worst case scenario happens.

It's not that it could never happen in Europe, you know, crossing a border in Switzerland

or anything like that.

I would still be intentional about it.

It's just you don't necessarily have to be as on high alert in certain places.

So I think it's probably a mixture of the two.

Got it.

I guess another question that came up, you know, when they did the whole phone scan thing,

if I just whip out the secondary device I don't care about and I just say, yeah, sure, go for it,

is that good enough? Or do they typically collect all devices and it's quite a thorough process and

they want you to scan each one? Or I know you can't ever count on something because I know

there's different degrees in which they're going to, you know, want to investigate,

but in that specific scenario for you. Yeah. I mean, I did have friends that would carry around

two phones. And, you know, as long as you gave them a phone, they were happy, you know, that

because you got to keep in mind, these guys, it's not like they're the top dog. The ones that are

actually implementing this are just the low man on the totem pole who've been told, all you got to do

is plug this in. If something beeps or if something, you know, like if there's some, you know,

notification that there's something on here, then we have protocol, but they just wanted to do their

plug-in and they know that everybody has a phone. So if you pretend like you don't have a phone,

then they'll be a little concerned.

But yeah, I don't think that it would be a problem

if you had two phones and then you just hand it over

the dummy phone or the one that doesn't have anything on it.

Nice.

Is there a destination today

that you would never bring your primary phone to?

Oh, I mean, yeah, China,

I would never bring my primary phone to.

I mean, there are definitely places in India

I would potentially be a little wary.

It's not that I don't like people in China or I don't like India.

It's more just what is the posture of the government towards foreigners and towards digital privacy.

And I would say that that doesn't necessarily always reflect in the kindness of the people that you meet.

So the Chinese people are wonderful.

The Indian people are wonderful.

But I wouldn't necessarily take my primary device into China, into India, a number of places, you know, even in Southeast Asia.

It's just really hard because even places like Vietnam are just becoming like this hot spot for digital nomads to go and do work.

And they're trying to promote that view of who they are.

And yet it's still a communist country.

And they're still like their view towards privacy is not what we would be, what we would consider acceptable, at least from our point of view, but definitely even from a Western point of view.

I'm trying to think of any other countries off the top of my head.

I think I would be very careful in a lot of places in the Middle East and even in parts of Africa as well.

I think I would be very careful.

Got it.

Is there kind of a silent risk that a lot of people listening probably don't realize?

Is there something that you see people do all the time when they travel that you're like,

that's probably something they should think about?

Yeah. So check-ins are actually a really important part of travel that I think a lot of people don't think about. And I'll give you an example. I was once out, I was filming something out in Western China and like it was morning, it was this festival and the police took me and they took me to a police station. This was the first time that they had really taken me in.

Sounds like you recorded a Borat movie.

You know, they got arrested when they recorded the original Borat something like 70 times.

How many times were you arrested in China?

Just these two main times.

Okay.

Because I don't know which stories are different, but it's like, whoa, you got arrested a lot.

Or not arrested, but like taken in.

Yeah, taken in.

Again, it's that frog in the boiling pot.

Like after a little while, you just get used to the police constantly like coming up to you and asking you.

And this was just one time where they took me in and it was early in the morning and

they kind of freaked me out because I knew my wife wouldn't worry about me or think about

me until maybe 6 p.m. when I was supposed to come home from work.

So I kind of freaked out a little bit because I was like, what if, you know, and I started

going through all of these things because I didn't know what was going to happen.

What I mean by this check-in idea is that there's a lot of times that we find ourselves

when we're traveling, like going from point A to point B.

And there's things that could happen.

You could get in a wreck.

There could be something that happens to you.

And when we're in our home country,

there are a lot of things that we might know

how to handle or what to do.

But when we are traveling internationally,

we might not think about that as much.

And so one of the things that I recommend,

and really this is more of a physical safety thing

as opposed to a digital safety type of thing.

But it's like, okay, if I know that I'm going to be going from here, I'm taking a bus, you

know, to go into the mountains, I'm going to text somebody, you know, outside of the

country or a friend in the country and just say, hey, just so you know, I'm jumping on

a bus.

I should arrive at 8 p.m.

I'll text you when I get there.

If I don't text you, can you just like do something like reach out, find out what might

have happened?

Because I think there's a lot of times where, you know, a day will go by if something has

happened. And because there was no check-in process in place, there's just a higher risk of

physical harm or losing that sense of safety. Does that make sense?

It does, yeah. So what you're suggesting is anytime you travel or doing anything that's

sensitive, have at least a trusted buddy or person in your life where you have an established

system for. I mean, it's no different. You go to Disney World, you go to an amusement park,

Disneyland, the mall, wherever.

And if you all get lost,

you have a place to be at 1 p.m.

Exactly.

Is that kind of what you're suggesting?

Yeah, 100%.

Cool.

As you were talking, I also looked it up.

So it's run-ins with the law

that Sacha Baron Cohen had in the original Borat.

And it's cited as dozens of times.

Like 50 to 100 is kind of the numbers I'm seeing.

Oh my gosh, that's hilarious.

But I just wanted to make sure I got that somewhat right.

So maybe that's what they thought you were doing

for China with your camera

and then Lonely Explorer?

Lonely Planet, yeah.

Lonely Planet, thank you, yeah.

You're making me feel old, Henry.

Am I that much older than you?

I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to.

I'm sorry.

The last thing I kind of want to get into

before a little bit more about you

is kind of the global view of this.

I feel like Americans have this view

that China is this surveillance state.

It is this evil place.

They have these weird ideas.

We don't like that, right?

I'm generalizing here.

I don't feel this way about it.

But I feel like this is not an uncommon thing I hear on the news

and the way that Chinese culture is portrayed in Western culture.

How do you personally view Western surveillance and Western privacy?

And do you see similar concerns happen in the U.S. as you've seen in China?

Or do you think they are still quite different?

Like you've lived in both places.

You have a lot of firsthand experience.

You've dealt with firsthand kind of the Chinese arm of this.

And so I think you're an interesting person to ask this question and add some perspective

because I actually have seen quite polarizing takes about this.

Yeah.

I would say that one, whatever you think of the Chinese government and the way that it

approaches personal privacy, individual rights, any of this that we see when we are even as

Westerns when we think of China, they're not hiding anything.

they don't they well i'm sure they're hiding plenty of things but when it comes to surveillance when

it comes to personal privacy and all that stuff they're they've got their cards out on the table

and and and to us like some weird degree i actually admire that like they're not hiding the fact that

we are monitoring everything that's going on with cameras we're not trying to hide it from you

we're not going to hide the fact that we have a back door into tiktok and every other major company

in this country, that's where the government, that's what we do. Like it is a, it is in plain

sight so that everybody knows that this is what's happening. What I see as a difference in the U.S.

is I see so many similarities in what is actually happening. The difference is that in one country,

it's just out in the plain and out in the open. Everybody knows, everybody talks about it, it's

fine. They don't talk about it, but it's just there. Whereas in the U S like we're shocked

when we find out that, Oh, they were monitoring us. Oh, they did have some deal with a big tech

company where they were getting it from like, this is blowing our minds. We, we were under the

impression that this wasn't the case. And so I, I don't think that there is a huge difference

in what's actually happening.

It's just this perception

and this we're putting our cards on the table

versus we're kind of just going to sneak around

and not talk about it.

I think to me, that seems like the biggest difference.

Which one do you,

I guess one doesn't have to be more of a problem

than the other,

but do you find that kind of that U.S. approach

thinks to be a bit dangerous?

I mean, my thought goes to just the unaware,

Like, you know, something we talk about is people don't realize just how invasive it is.

The educational piece is really big.

Trying to actually get people to realize how massive this problem is is very difficult to do.

And I feel like that is partly because it's just people don't see it.

So do you think that, what do you think are just kind of the downstream effects of this approach to it?

Yeah, I mean, I think part of the downstream effects is a lack of accountability.

When there's not transparency on what's actually happening, there can't be accountability on the other end of it.

And that in itself is extremely dangerous.

And I think we're dealing with obviously,

or also two different mindsets where I think in China,

the pervasive feeling of the common person

that I'm aware of is more of,

there's nothing I can do about it.

And this is just the way it is.

What I see and run into more often than not

on the US or on the Western side is,

I've got nothing to hide,

or privacy is already broken anyway.

What does it even matter?

Like, you know, you've run into that plenty yourself.

They both share this bit of, I don't know, just kind of giving up a little bit.

But I sense both of that on both sides of the, you know, both China and on the Western side.

Yeah.

Yeah, I made a video about this recently.

My over analysis of it is I think it's a cognitive dissonance because I think it's too uncomfortable for people to admit it's something they value.

But they feel hopeless and they can't do anything about it.

I think that's really what it's, because it's easier to say,

eh, it's gone, throw your hands up, I can't do anything about it.

It's easier to say that and kind of pretend you don't care about something

or that you're hopeless or it's no longer in your control

than it is to realize you actually still have control.

You can fight, but it's going to be a hard uphill battle

and you need to do a lot to do something about it.

I think that's a harder reality for people.

So I understand where it comes from.

I don't think people are lazy or stupid for this, but it makes me sad.

especially when, because I think it's the most damaging thing you can do.

Because there are people who do want to take the fight.

They watch our content, right?

They are active.

This is something they take seriously.

And then they see these comments or people pushing back saying,

well, why do you care?

You're stupid.

And it's like, well, if you're not going to care,

just let other people care.

It's okay.

Just let them do that.

Them existing doesn't have to impact your ability to not care.

It's hard for me.

But I think we're seeing the worst of it because we get all the comments and we get all the feedback from people.

Yeah, definitely.

And I agree.

I saw that video and I thought you did a really good job with that.

Like it's a tough road to navigate, I think, for a lot of people.

And I think you're right.

That cognitive dissonance of just I think I care, but if there's no hope anyway, then what do I do with this?

I don't know.

Yeah, it's hard.

I hope that people can see the content we put out and realize,

oh, you can literally do three things in five minutes

that will give you a huge amount of ownership

over your digital relationship.

Just installing an ad blocker opts you out of 80%

of the surveillance economy, which is the backbone of so much

of at least the American and the westernized privacy concerns.

If you're no longer getting Google trackers, Facebook trackers,

TikTok trackers, Snapchat trackers on any of the websites out there,

you're blocking ads, that alone solves a huge amount of your problem. And then from there,

it's easy. So I don't want to say it's easy. I don't want to like over, I don't want to oversell

it, but it's just frustrating. You know what's funny, Henry, is it's like, you could probably

talk about that until you're blue in the face. But if I were to just express to people the fact that,

you know what, when my wife and I sit down to watch Amazon Prime at night, I don't have to go

through ads. And people go, wait, what? How do you do that? That is what we're, you know, like,

that's how it works. Yep. It works. I mean, I never tell anyone about Signal being private in

my real life. I'm just like, hey, this is like a really cool experience. This is where I chat with

people. I can send like Snapchat, like photos to you, like disappearing messages. And it works

between iOS and Android. And they're like, cool. All right. I'll see you there. It works. So it's

sad, but it works. I wanted to ask you about your channel. So you obviously talk about security and

privacy. I mean, the channel is called All Things Secured, but I think it expands a little bit

beyond that. When did that happen? Was starting that channel, was that at all inspired from your

experiences? I guess I'm not as familiar with the origins of your channel. And so I kind of wanted

to learn a little bit about that before we start. Yeah, it was 100% based on my experience in China.

twofold. First of all, it started off as just like a VPN thing, which is almost embarrassing to say,

you know, just because I like, not that I was a VPN chill. It's the fact that I literally used a

VPN every day while I was in China because of censorship and I couldn't even check email

without a VPN. So I got to know VPNs really well. And I, you know, would review them and do all that

stuff. And then I was like, you know, there's more to this that I care about than just VPNs.

And so that's when I rebranded it.

And, and, but I think the real shift happened when I was in the midst of those interrogations

and just realizing like the questions they were asking, it's like, man, they were really

watching me.

Like I didn't understand to the degree to which I was being surveilled, um, and how

they were going about.

And, and, and also some of the things they didn't know, which was surprising to me, you

know, like I, I thought that they knew all of these things about me.

We tend to think that the government just has, you know, reams and reams of data on us.

I don't think that it's as deep as we think it is, but I do think it is wider than we

realize in terms of our privacy being invaded.

And so that is where it initially started.

And, you know, Henry, I'll be, I try to be as open and honest with you as I can.

Like I look up at the people like you or Naomi, or like, there's a lot of people that I look

up to that I consider 10, 20 times smarter than I am.

Like my core, the people that I want to talk to when I'm talking from the all things secured

side of stuff, I want to talk to the people that are like my parents or that are, that

are just that generation that that's recognizing something's off.

I don't like something, but I'm not exactly sure what it is, or I'm writing my passwords

down. And I really don't think this is secure, but I don't like the idea of a password manager is

still kind of relatively new to me. So I'm not necessarily speaking to the same audience that I

think that I, that you might be speaking to and that I, you know, that there are, that are just

diehard privacy and security enthusiasts. I'm trying my best to speak and to explain things

to a group of people that I think are extremely vulnerable,

that hopefully recognize that there are things that they can do differently,

and then try to give them practical ways to change that.

Yeah, thanks for the kind words.

And a lot of those go back your way too.

For those vulnerable people, what are kind of your starting points?

Like if people are listening and they are that vulnerable group,

or they know people in their life that are that vulnerable group,

what are like the three things that you typically start with?

Well, the first thing that I start with, and the kind of comments that I get on my stuff

is like, I've got stuff on securing your iPhone.

Or this week, I'm going to be putting out a video on how to secure your open AI account

for ChatGPT.

And the privacy purist is going to comment on that.

Why use open AI?

You're dumb.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

Yeah.

Sorry.

And I get it.

Like, right?

I get that feeling.

I don't necessarily disagree with it.

But I also don't agree that, you know, everybody has to just abandon everything that they've

ever used.

But I think that's the point.

It's like, I think that there's a progression that people can take and that progression

does not have to be as drastic as it feels, right?

So just secure your open AI account and turn off model, you know, make sure that the model

training is not part of that, right?

And like add it to FAQ, like just these progression, this progression of steps instead of just

thinking, okay, this is it. I'm moving to Graphene and I'm deleting Facebook and that's what I have

to do. I think there doesn't have to be that all or nothing mentality. Yeah, I agree. I think

the reality is most people aren't going to be installing different operating systems and

migrating away from the tools that they use day to day. And so there needs to be a discussion.

You need to meet them where they're at and go, well, if you're going to be using these tools

anyway, here are at least some things that will make it better. And down the road, if you want

other options, then that's the whole world for you that exists. But I definitely think that

it's hard. It's hard to reach both audiences, as I'm sure you know. And it's hard to do resources

for all the above. So I think it's great to have different points to target depending on where

people are in their journey. Or for some people, it's not a journey, I suppose. But I think it

should be a journey. People might not know they're on the journey, but I think everyone is technically

on this journey of digital safety, whether they know it or not. If they have a password on any of

their accounts, they're on the journey. So it's just a matter of helping them out on that journey

and trying to make it better. So I think it's a great approach. For you, how do you see privacy

differently? And this is maybe a good segue because a lot of people, and I guess the more

intense privacy community, more absolute about things, they're going to go, oh, you're using open

AI, yeah, you're like, what are you, single IQ?

They're going to say a lot of mean things.

It's ridiculous.

It's quite frustrating, actually, for me to see.

I laugh about it because when I see it, I just think it's so ridiculous.

But it is actually really unfortunate.

And I hope people stop that because it really pisses me off.

But now I'm forgetting my question.

For you personally, I think to a lot of privacy absolutists,

they see the privacy issues with OpenAI,

which are very real, right?

Like we know that OpenAI is not,

by many different measurements, an ethical company,

especially when it comes to user data.

A lot of these AI companies are not very ethical with user data.

And so that is a real thing.

But you might go and look at this and go,

well, if I'm getting weather nearby

and I'm looking up recipes

and I'm putting that through OpenAI or Cloud or Gemini,

I don't care when the Chinese government takes my devices

and they see that.

That's just not my concern anymore.

So I'm not saying that's your stance on things specifically,

but I guess that's what I'm getting to is like,

do you see privacy differently now?

You're like, oh, now that I've actually had my devices taken from me

from a government that didn't like me,

these are the things that now I actually value from here.

These are things that maybe I thought I would value,

and these are things that I now value,

and that might reflect your threat model

and the way that you see privacy and what you prioritize personally.

I don't know the exact question I'm getting to here, but yeah.

I mean, I think I follow a little bit of where you're coming from.

I am much more interested in a distribution of security and privacy over a lot of different

mediums in order, like strategically.

So what I mean by that is like, I'm not necessarily going to run away from Google Drive.

I kind of have to use it for certain applications.

And I recognize that it's, you know, there are privacy implications for using something

that where the, you know, the encryption key is held by the company itself as well.

I'm still going to be able to use that, but I want to distribute in a strategic way how

I'm controlling my own data.

And so I want to use something like ProtonDrive in order to store that data that I think is

most secure.

And so again, it's not that I'm going to throw away my phone altogether anytime that I go

into China.

That's not my, like, it's not that, okay, now because I believe in privacy, I'm just

going to forego any and all benefits of a mobile device, which is pretty much essential in travel

nowadays, right? You got to have maps, you got to have, you know, some kind of way to call any

translations, do all that stuff. So I'm not going to get rid of that, but I am going to compartmentalize

and make sure that what I am using in that situation, it's only the data that's necessary

for that particular use for going into that particular country. And the same thing for,

you know, when I'm using, I do use OpenAI and I've tested a lot of different models. And part of it

is not just this, oh, I just use OpenAI because it's the first one. It's that I want to kind of

keep ahead and understand what is actually happening in this world because everything

is changing so fast. But I'm not going to upload my bank statement. I'm not going to upload any kind

of document that is going to be, and I probably even still have given it a lot of context about me,

But I'm very, very careful about what I say.

It hopefully does not know where I live.

It doesn't know a number of different things that are personal to me.

And so I'm not trying to go off grid.

I am trying to compartmentalize as best I can.

And there's always going to be flaws in that.

There's always going to be ways that I'm improving or changing the tools that I use to compartmentalize.

But I want to be intentional about where I am putting my data.

what kind of data I'm giving and to whom.

And the more that I can be intentional about that,

I think the better off I'll be.

Yeah, I think what you're saying is quite practical

and a lot of people will relate to it.

I mean, the two key words,

I think there are control and intention.

I think that's really what privacy is about

when you get to it.

It's like, are you being intentional

with what data you're giving someone

and are you aware of what they're getting from it

and what you're getting from it?

I just recorded the second version of Go Incognito

a couple months ago now.

and the way that I pose this

is looking at things as relationships

so when you open a Google account

when you upload something to Google Drive

you're forming a relationship with Google

and it's important to just understand

what is Google getting from this transaction

and what are you getting from this transaction

in this case you're probably getting convenience

you might get really good collaboration

with other people who are using Google

and in exchange Google is going to get information

about your browser

they're going to get information about who you're collaborating with

and maybe that network, tie it to your central Google account, etc.

And so as long as you're aware of those concerns

and you're aware of what you're uploading

and you're okay with that,

that is a consensual relationship, right?

You are consenting to that, you're in control of the situation.

But I think the problem that a lot of people have nowadays

is they just use everything, they upload everything to everything

and they have no control over this.

They're just being exploited.

They're in abusive relationships, kind of, in a way,

because they're not aware of what's going on.

I think the analogy I use is it's the equivalent of their partner cheating on them this whole time.

Because the partner's not being honest, the partner is sharing their data with other people.

And it's an analogy.

I just felt the need to share it, I suppose.

But I really liked what you shared.

I think it's very practical.

And I think for most people, 80 plus percent of people,

it would make an astronomical difference for the privacy and security issues that we see nowadays.

If they just were better aware of things, compartmentalized when needed, and just had privacy in some layer of their life, I think that would be all we need.

Henry, I'm curious for you, like how do you balance that desire for, you know, privacy and kind of just your stack?

And then, like, I don't know about you, but I'm constantly getting emails of new tools or new this or like other things that could make it more private.

You use this. How do you find that balance?

Yeah, it's hard. I'm sure you deal with this too.

The job makes things quite hard.

I could probably have a much better, easy-to-operate tech stack behind the scenes

if I didn't have such publicity with my work.

It comes with drawbacks.

But overall, I'm quite happy with where it's at.

It requires some sacrifices.

It requires leaning into some Apple devices for work,

which I don't know if I would ever buy if I just had just me and my personal life.

And I think that's something I hear a lot in our audience.

It's like, yeah, a lot of people have jobs,

and those jobs require certain devices for them.

But that is compartmentalization, right?

You're allowed to have work devices as long as you're aware

and you built that relationship for work.

So I think it's kind of like what you alluded to,

is I have these relationships in different parts of my life.

Some of them are a lot more private and a lot more robust

that I don't talk about much on the channel

because I don't want people to know about them.

But also, for other things, it's a lot more careless because it needs to be careless because that's how stuff gets done.

And that's those services I need to lean into to make sure that we get our message out there for people.

And so it's a tough thing to balance.

I'm sure you deal with that as well, if I had to guess.

I'm sure every YouTube creator does.

Yeah.

Well, and even like for me, even just having a wife and kids, like I try to be very careful about not posting or publishing even the region.

Like I don't mind saying where I'm at, you know, that I'm in Thailand.

But like beyond that, I really don't go too much further than that.

I don't try not to show my kids.

You know, I want to protect.

And I've heard this a lot from, you know, other people.

Not that I'm a big celebrity or anything, but even at this level, I think that it's important for me to take and protect my kids and their own privacy.

Yeah, it's a thing.

I mean, I've been recognized on the street now a few times.

Definitely at conferences is where, which makes sense.

You know, when you go to a security privacy-focused conference, people recognize you.

But I've been at Starbucks and like someone just goes, I know you from somewhere.

And then I go, never seen you before.

And then they kind of walk away and they're confused.

So I don't know if that's happened to you yet.

Have you been recognized?

I've had it once or twice.

Yeah, it's not, living out in Asia,

it doesn't happen quite nearly as often though.

Yeah, it's weird.

It's always like, I don't know what to say.

And obviously I'm not comfortable with it really

because I don't want to be,

but I want to get my message out to more people.

So then that means more of that.

And it's a hard relationship.

I don't like it.

Exactly.

No, it's like I have Instagram on my phone and I've got, you know, and I use YouTube and it's not because I love Instagram.

I really don't enjoy using Instagram and I've still got a long way to go growing that.

But still, it's like, it's like, okay, that's where the audience, that's where the people that I want to reach are at.

And so I'm going to try to find them on that place and see if I can share a message there.

Yeah.

I just watched the internship again yesterday.

The comedy, I think it was 2013.

Robert De Niro, I think.

first off in the way that they portray Google

as this like, because I mean, back then Google was cool.

Even when I watched that movie, I was quite young,

but Google is like this force for good.

Their motto is still don't do evil.

They're like, we need to give people the information

and like decentralized knowledge, powerful messages.

And it didn't age well.

I think there's no way in hell Google with a straight face

would ever say they're trying to be an ethical company,

even themselves, I don't think they would say it.

But in the movie, the whole thing is like,

we need to invent a photos app

where I take a photo

and it instantly shares it on the line.

And I'm going to call it exchange-a-gram,

exchange-gram or something.

And so when you said Instagram,

I just thought of that

because it was on the mind.

That's funny.

Well, Josh, thank you so much

for being on the podcast.

I know we got a little rambly

at the end there,

but I think there was a lot

of practical advice for people

that I hope can make

their travel experiences better.

And I think your story

is just really, really enlightening.

It can hopefully get people

just more aware of what's going on.

And I think it's true that things can be fine one day

and then out of nowhere they're not.

And so at least thinking about that

and being intentional for that day

is always a good thing to be proactive about.

Maybe next time, I think a good conversation

could be family stuff.

I think that's another topic

that people are quite curious about

is like, what does the tech world look like

when you have a family and you also value privacy?

And I'm sure that's another thing.

I don't know if you've talked about that on your channel yet,

but that could be a good talking point.

Yeah.

There was another lady I had on,

I did an interview with,

And she was very much into that.

Yeah.

I'll try to get you on for that again.

I think that'd be interesting.

If you guys want to see that, let me know.

But thank you so much for being here.

And definitely share how people can connect with you.

Because I'd love to send them your way.

Yeah, I mean, the best place is either on YouTube or Odyssey with all things secured.

I am on Instagram, but I'm still learning my way around that.

So more just on the YouTube and Odyssey side.

Yeah.

I mean, you're on Instagram to reach people on Instagram, not to send people to Instagram.

So we don't need to, you're not on Instagram for this podcast.

Good point.

Yeah.

And I guess, I think, I don't know if you ever figured this out.

I think you're still on PeerTube too.

So I think.

I might be.

I tried reaching out to him and he didn't reply back.

But anyway.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, maybe on PeerTube as well.

We'll try to get links for everything in the description.

So check out Josh if you guys want to see more of Josh's content.

And especially, I guess, for friends and family, it's probably really good stuff for them as well.

So thank you, Josh, for your time.

And I guess we'll have you on next time.

Appreciate it, Henry. Thanks so much.

Yeah.

This one was a lot of fun to do, not only because Josh is another creator,

and so we can always talk a little bit backstage about kind of our experiences and how that's going.

But also, this is a story that I haven't heard in a full-length interview from Josh about.

And so I really wanted to get his experience, get the lessons from it.

And so that way, all of us can act a bit more accordingly.

And hopefully, we don't have to go through what Josh did.

So I hope that all of us walked away with quite a bit of practical advice

when it comes to when we just travel to other countries,

even if it's just for vacation with our families or for work,

or especially if you're in a region

where you should be a little bit more aware of these issues,

even when you're at home.

Hopefully Josh's advice applies to you there as well.

I want to give a huge thank you to Josh.

I also want to thank you all for coming in and listening

and just valuing your own protection a little bit better out there.

It also keeps the people around you safe.

And if you want to support what we do and keep these podcasts going,

Check out how to become a Techlorian down in the description.

We have a private signal group that I'm active in.

I also have my own private RSS feed.

And you also get featured in the outro of our videos.

Thank you all for listening.

And I'll see you next time on Techlor.