How To

Travel Outside the U.S. With a Stanford-owned Laptop, Cell Phone, PDA or Flash Drive

Determine whether your travel will allow you to meet the terms and conditions set forth on the Annual TMP Certification for items 1 through 5 by completing the Temporary Export Property Checklist, since by signing the form you are becoming personally accountable for complying with those terms and conditions.

If your travel will not allow you to meet the Annual TMP Certification's terms and conditions, you should consult the Stanford Export Controls Decision Tree to determine if your travel qualifies for "No License Required" (NLR) status or contact the University Export Control Office for further guidance.

To qualify for the temporary export (TMP) licensing exception, the researcher assures that the laptops, PDAs, cell phones, digital storage devices and their software: 

  • meet the qualifications for a temporary export license exception (TMP) per the Property Export Control Checklist, and
  • do not contain ITAR-listed software or technical data including software or technical data directly related to satellites or spacecraft.

If all requirements are met, you must complete and submit the certification.

Safeguard Your Data

When traveling internationally, the safeguards provided by the Stanford University computing environment are not available. Protecting data, information, and the devices upon which they reside requires attention to detail due to the enormous financial and reputational impacts of simple mistakes or other disclosures.

Planning for safe digital travel involves analyzing the risk versus your business requirements, taking into account the value of the data you carry with you as well as the data and services your accounts have access to.

Examples of data that should be left on campus or afforded exceptional protection include information that might be construed as sensitive by the host government, and any non-public data listed in the table on the Stanford Data Classification Guidelines page.

The only truly secure option is to abstain from digital device use during your travels.