One of the Libre phone providers needs a decent story surrounding blanking and restoring the phone with minimal fuss.

What you should be able to do is wipe it, then pull down the backup image and get it back exactly the way it was.

Which you just...can't do AFAIK.

You can "easily" do that if you don't mind the hassle of flashing.

To do it without flashing you need to be comfortable modifying system software. Which for Android means authoring your own ROM. It's a hassle.

A Libre Phone could include an SD slot and a mode which lets you flash from SD.

You'd download your image to the card, then reboot and it'd flash it.

Basically we could eliminate the hassle.

If you want very well hidden, get a writable NFC chip implanted.

You write the data to it, delete the phone app which did that write, and once you are through, re-install the phone app and read your data.

Last time I went through the TSA scatter scanners and wand waving theatre the 3 implants I had were not detected.

That's somehow feels even more dystopian than what the current US administration is doing.

My day to day for that chip is for PINs.

I know my bank account PIN, and it's linked through Apple Pay. My other cards - credit x2, building society I have no clue. Those PINs are stored and given I'm never out without my phone I always have access to the numbers.

I was constantly stopped and quizzed by the TSA to the point I would wipe my macbook and phone before travelling. Using the NFC chips that had all the details I needed made sense.

I remember watching this Keanu Reeves movie.

What about the cloud? I imagine ICE has a user-friendly way to search the socials for anyone.

Socials for me are mostly reddit/lobster/hn, I use aliases there and use VPNs/Tors to login to different ones. I have insta/fb with lovely shot that cannot possibly get me screwed over. Although... I have glasses... If a mao/pol pot returns and I fake not having glasses, I'm done even that way :( It is not a great time to be paranoid, I agree.

Maybe SMSes, emails too

My impression was that an agent would ask you to unlock your phone and then just randomly scroll through your messages etc until they get bored.

You never really know what to expect.

I've heard Russia uses Cellebrite devices at borders, which means cloud-storing an image of your entire device for foreign intelligence agencies to carve up later is possible.

I wish; I think AI made that all a pleasant memory.