As though the US didnt used to spy on its citizens lol

The spying aspect definitely did happen, but you used to be able to have a meme making fun of the US president and have no issues entering, but now they have new orders from their tyrant in chief to arrest people for making a harmless joke. (Search: "Bald JD Vance Meme Denied Entry")

Thats a very strange place to draw a line in the sand when they were literally exposed wire tapping essentially the entire population of the country and mass harvesting private data.

I said "Don't go to authoritarian countries" not "Don't go to any country that conducts mass surveillance". Since every country does mass surveillance these days, the only practical thing to do is avoid those that punish you for you speech, hence China, Russia, USA (a lot more places on the list, but these are the big 3 No-Go Zones)

wire tapping is one thing, seizing and/or searching phones is another. while both are bad obviously, you can usually protect yourself against wiretapping by using secure communication systems, which phone calls is not a part of

and how do you keep the vpn credentials secure?

And you said it on a post about China spying on its citizens. I didn't bring up an unrelated fact or something.

I struggle to think how any nation that conducts mass surveillance on that level is not authoritarian, nor how like. A country could conduct mass surveillance and just do nothing with that information? Like its not like the UK, for example, is just spying on its citizens just for fun. Mass surveillance has an intention of manipulation behind it. If it was of no consequence they wouldn't do it.

That's why the example of the JD Vance meme, while absolutely horrifying, just seems like a strange place to draw the line and not like. Drawing it at mass surveillance in the first place. America should already have been included in "Don't go to authoritarian countries" once it came out they were conducting surveillance in this way, which was long before we both were born (most likely, idk how old you are).

I think we live in a time period where seizing/searching phones doesn't need the physical device to be present. They just have to ask Google and Meta to do it for them. Different than literally combing through the memory on the device, but not much. It's why FOSS and selfhosting matters so much. What Google and Meta don't have, they can't just take.

That being said I would bring a burner if I went to the US. Lord knows I have said more than my fair share of critical things about the US government lol

They just have to ask Google and Meta to do it for them.

I would say you can protect yourself against that too. no need to store sensitive info on those silos. google is more complicated with how deep access those fuckers have to virtually all phones, but if you are slightly determined that can be solved too.

I agree on all other points

Of course they will try to get everything from your phone. They are neither better nor worse than their American counterparts.

I would never take a personal PC or phone into either country, and whatever I'd bring back I would consider compromized.