Or, to simply stop traveling to countries that refuse to play nice with the rights of foreigners. The whole idea that this sort of thing is even anywhere near acceptable behavior revolts me.
Not because I have something particular to hide, but as a gay person in a hostile world I have learned to care about my privacy.
Not a huge loss for me, not a huge loss for the US, but it accumulates.
Asia and Eastern Europe are off the list for me too. China is willing to kidnap people out of Thailand [1]; people being arrested over political tweets [2]; Russia can poison people [3], shoot them [4], or have them accused of fake crimes[5].
I really hope the U.S. never comes close to this and hope I see this trend reversed in my lifetime. But people should be aware that it can happen in a modern society and is already happening in large parts of the world.
[1] http://time.com/4371283/hong-kong-bookseller-china-detention...
[2] http://mashable.com/2016/11/26/zunar-arrested-malaysia/#AHwL...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/world/europe/russia-vladi...
[4] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-unaccountable-de...
[5] http://www.dw.com/en/russian-court-finds-alexei-navalny-guil...
Well, the US can drone-kill people (including bystanders irrelevant to the primary non-tried target), abduct them from all over the world and transport them with no trial to Guantanamo, allows cops to shoot innocent people (e.g. for walking while black) at a record rate (compared to even developing world dictatorship standards) without much repercussions, and let's not get started with people forced to go to jail with BS accusations and plea deals or stuff like "three strikes" that can put people on life for ...stealing a pizza thrice.
Just because these people are not all local citizens or white, doesn't mean they are not wronged.
And all that's under Obama, so not much hope for those getting better under Trump...
Starting with "Well," suggests it somehow negates my point though.
I think "Also" would be more appropriate, which kind of acknowledges the problems in other countries I cited while also pointing out very real weaknesses in America's justice system.
This might seem pedantic, but the common reply I see to "this country does bad stuff" reduces to "well this country does bad stuff too!" It's not a productive argument because it tries to deflect attention and normalize the actions in question. Instead, we should be focusing on how to address all of these issues, because they definitely exist.
Can you explain how exactly the U.S. has yet to "come close to" your list? Your post created the very "us vs them" separation you now claim to disagree with. The child post was fairly clearly just answering that statement
And while we're talking deflection, you are the one who took a thread about the US border and its impact on travellers and made it about civil rights abuses by the rest of the world. Yes, they are all important; no, it is usually not possible to solve them all at once.
Show me a similar incident to the Chinese booksellers thing in America. Or anyone being killed because they represented the political opposition. Miles away.
But that's not even my point. My point is: read the links listed; I'm not traveling to those countries; I hope the world becomes less crazy. That's all!
> And while we're talking deflection, you are the one who took a thread about the US border and its impact on travellers and made it about civil rights abuses by the rest of the world
Huh? I posted some links above. People should read them and make up their own mind, in addition to the OP. It's not a "one or the other" kind of thing, not sure why it would be.
I think it's valid to see things its perspective though, because people who say "we shouldn't turn it into 'yes, but X does this too'" are often using it as an excuse to continue to point fingers only towards one side, and not even the worst acting one...
It's not pedantic if you care about being rational. This act is a common logical fallacy called the "tu quoque fallacy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
Why is this a fallacy?
Suppose country A is accused of doing something bad. It's logically irrelevant to that question whether some other country B also has done something bad.
To see it more clearly, take the same fallacy on an individual level. Person A is accused of murdering someone. Is it a valid defense to say "Well, my neighbor Person B also murdered someone, therefore it's OK that I did"? No, of course not. It's totally irrelevant whether someone else -- even the accuser -- has also murdered someone.
Yet making this fallacious counter-accusation is often effective in terms of emotional (i.e. irrational) manipulation of the audience, particularly when they are predisposed against B in some way.
The US has kidnapped people from Italy, and assassinated its own child citizens. The US (and most western countries) are already close to this, it's just that most citizens felt they were immune up till now.
This kind of overreach should always be opposed, no matter who it is done to, or where, because once it is acceptable to assassinate people with missiles, kidnap opponents, or record everyone's digital life whenever information crosses the border, all it takes is the wrong sort of people to take power and all the mechanisms are in place to control and oppress entire populations.
Less humans kill other humans now than ever in the past. I wonder if the media is to blame for the fear mongering?
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...
The recent rise in nationalism after the 2008 crash is eerily similar to post 29. Globalisation has caused discontents, even if they are unjustified and the solutions proposed by demagogues are absurd and damaging, they appeal to some. Re the media, no I don't think so, humans are tribal and not very rational.
Really? Try talking to locals there not just about gays but also about refugees or even gypsies...
People aren't necessarily against refugees, per se, but more against the idea of accepting anyone who declares himself to be a refugee, without checking that he is, in fact, one. Things are made worse by a few "refugee" cases where the "refugees" preferred to move away and live as illegal immigrants in Germany than as legal refugees in Hungary or Romania (a status which includes state aid, as meager as it may be in these countries).
The third point is really complicated and it does include discrimination but also a lack of trust and respect for the others from both sides. A lot of it has to do with the difficulties of integrating a very tight-knit nomadic culture into a modern, sedentary society where property rights are clear and respected.
Even if I've never posted anything on FB that they'd find objectionable, it's possible someone I know from the US posted privately ('close friends only', for example) "Man I wish someone would put a bullet in Trump's head", feeling as though it was a safe place to vent. Suddenly they're getting investigated by the secret service, and possibly deported, because I gave up my Facebook login because "I have nothing to hide".
This is ridiculously insidious. For every one person whose Facebook info they get, they get to collect previously inaccessible data on potentially hundreds of people, none of whom agreed to share their data with the government, or even knew that it was happening. With one Facebook login the government can start building profiles on hundreds of people, and with each successive login that net expands.
I do believe that immigration services look at your account exclusively for their goals of evaluating immigration. They ask you to unlock your account because for them it's objectively simpler to ask that information from you than to get it from the other government agencies that have that information but won't disclose it because formally they shouldn't have it. There's no "the government", it is an amalgamation of many organizations that have conflicting goals and don't coordinate, so it's reasonable to expect that "the government" has some information and at the same time "the government" (i.e. other parts of it) don't have it and need to request it from you or do without.
s/foreigners/citizens/
i.e. everyone.
I'm a Canadian Citizen. When I enter Canada from abroad, they claim the same rights as the US CBP.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/alain-philippon-cb...
Why are you here? A wedding. Where are you staying? 2400 Motel out on Kingsway. Oh, a site of known criminal activity.
I rolled my eyes. The bride chose it because it was an X-Files filming location.
If you enter on a tourist visa (or visa waiver, whose conditions are usually the same as tourist visa) they want to be sure you aren't committing visa fraud and planning to work. That's what causes the grilling.
See linked page for advice from actual lawyers.
https://bccla.org/2016/08/what-happens-if-you-dont-provide-y...
After a bit of A/B testing, it seems to have been "older woman traveling alone with a fancy watch" that was flagging her. Without the watch, the problems went away.
Going back to the US (even as a non-citizen!) I usually just got a "Welcome home!".
The USA has a long history of being nasty to Canadians on the suspicion of them going there to work. Similar things happening to US visitors to Brazil and several other places.
Having a Dutch passport this never was a problem for me when returning to Canada, even though I was actually working there.
So yeah, a while ago the US started requiring electronic fingerprints from Brazilian visitors (and everyone else I think?) so that's why Brazil started requiring that from US visitors.
It's fun (in a semi-vengeful way) to submit, say, Americans to the same level of scrutiny they apply to Brazilians. But it also means you're creating artificial barriers against making the country a more popular tourism destination. People in some countries are just not used to having to go throw all these hops to get to visit a country, just because they don't have to; when they learn that they have to go to a consulate in person, in select cities, stand in line for hours, go through an interview, and pay about $150 or so for the right to visit the country, they're quick to change their mind and just pick some other destination that is either easier or that allows you to do all of that online.
The country is basically making it difficult for people to bring you money.
This policy hurts Brazil more than it hurts anyone else.
To me it's more about an ineffective, vain attempt to show power than anything else.
If you enter on a tourist visa (or visa waiver, whose conditions are usually the same as tourist visa) they want to be sure you aren't committing visa fraud and planning to work. That's what causes the grilling.
Which countries would those be? As far as I know, every country (or quasi-country, such as the EU) asserts the right to carry out a full inspection of anything crossing its border.
They can ask you to unlock the phone and show the IMEI number when suspicious of theft, but that's about it.
Source: friend of mine worked there.
Always know where the manufacturer printed the IMEI, so you don't have to unlock the phone in front of police.
The only vendor that actively prevents the usage of stolen phones is Apple, because the owner can remote-lock it even if the phone gets wiped via iCloud.
The ideal way would be if network operators cooperated by maintaining a list of "supposedly stolen" IMEI codes and alerted police if a matching phone tries to log in into the network.
In fact it sounds more like they generally target specific individuals based on their politics or whatever red flag gets thrown on them from the system. That's certainly dangerous in a way, but in essence harmless to the vast majority of us.
The same could be said about the proportion of innocent people who would be jailed without the presumption of innocence. Yet I still support the presumption of innocence, even though I personally have never needed it. It makes me feel safer and allows me to trust and cooperate with the authorities.
Do you know how that one ended?
Not to make light of this issue, it's a serious matter, but don't be ridiculous.
The post I was replying to was basically a vague reference to creeping fascism/nazism, and then implying that the same is happening in the US and that we're on the brink of descending into nazism. It's stupid sophomoric comparison to make.
Yea we should fight back against this type of legal harassment. Sure it's similar to how nazis once operated. But what does that comparison really provide in this situation other than throwing FUD onto it. Do you really think the US is about to rise into the Fourth Reich? I mean seriously... even if you feel like Trump is the antichrist, this policy undoubtedly came into effect during the Bush/Obama years when laptops and cell phones became ubiquitous.
In the 1960s you could decide that you'd done enough and move to a new city across the country and get a fairly fresh start. Now any trivial interaction with "the system" would get you red flagged at every subsequent interaction.
The cops "randomly" stop an acquaintance of mine fairly regularly and give him much more crap ever since one of his kids got a misdemeanor speeding ticket (threshold is 20-over which is typical traffic speed in some places) in that vehicle with those plates.
>think the US is about to rise into the Fourth Reich?
Not literally but people have diverse sets of political beliefs. It's not a stretch to imagine individual groups that are for/against something being persecuted. Imagine how civil rights activists or the pro-socialist hippies would be treated today.
Obama prosecuted more journalists and whistle blowers than any president in history.
And we're not talking about turning into Nazi Germany. We're talking about why government crimes against their own people, especially for political speech, should never be allowed to happen because they can result in worse outcomes than you would expect.
And Germany didn't turn up Nazi overnight. It's always a slippery slope to prosecute people for political purposes. What happens in Canada with it misuse of human rights tribunal and what happens in many other western countries where the social climate currently is that everyone considers to be okay to suppress free speech because someones feelings are hurt. It is not a human right to be able to silence uncomfortable opinions, yet it is exactly what we see in these phenomenon of social justice warriors only there is no justice there to be made. This entitlement and the need to control of others is actually what scares me the most. You see it everywhere, people in uniforms and people in academia specially social sciences.
Read history outside of school, might learn a thing or two.
Iran's reputation for evil is well-deserved.
This is going to hurt America quite a bit by the time it has run its course.
This is also very rare at the US border, as it says in the article. Most countries in the world are far more aggressive about searching you, and even actively demanding bribes to let you in.
The free flow of immigrants has its risks and unless these activists stop poisoning the well then things will continue to be unpleasant.
Don't say, "I don't have x,y,z..." accounts... have them, have accounts you never use and hand them over. Have your real identity online not be publically linked to your real identity for the purposes of something as trivial as social media.
A feature I really would want to see from social media is read-only, time limited passwords. You provide this to a 3rd party and they can see everything you do, but change nothing. Upon first activation, you grant 72hrs access and don't have to remember to change the password again. If this activation does not happen within 15 days of first activation, the password is invalidated.
Acknowledging that this is a valid use case has many benefits. Social media provider can check if the password is used from government or corporate IP addresses and block non legitimate access (like, a rouge CBP employee stealing credentials and stalking individuals from his home computer). It would also be possible to keep logs of which information was accessed/consulted by each one time password, which can be used during investigations if some form or another of abuse is reported, etc.
They don't have to decrypt. They just have to decide you're suspicious enough to confiscate equipment and bar you from entry.
That's fine with me. I don't take anything to a foreign country which I'm not willing to lose, and I have no problem turning around & heading back home if the country I wish to visit turns out to have unacceptable rules.
If someday I visit someplace that has an implicit rule, 'all visitors must have Facebook accounts,' then I'll just go back home.
I'm certainly not going to claim that 'all your password are belong to us!' is a good or desirable policy, but I am going to claim that anyone who travels between countries must be prepared to deal with the local regime, no matter how ill-conceived its rules may be.
All kinds of advertising companies and spammers have such information obtained from people who share their contact list with some free app, providing a permanent link between your real name (which they entered in their contact list), your real phone number, and various online accounts. Would you be so sure that the gov't agents don't have it? IIRC there were some cases where some agencies simply bought such data from advertising info aggregators.
By contrast, the CBP doesn't have the profit motive or apparatus to keep a "file" on each of us and match that file on the fly with our testimony at the border. You don't need to fool them in some grand way, just the digital equivalent of a false bottom with a safe hidden underneath. Beyond that, share some basic crap and explain you're not that into social media, but share what you have.
They're not going to be shocked that some people have little presence, what's going to get them interested is refusing to unlock something or conveniently forgetting passwords.
How do password managers play into this? I'm likely going to be traveling to the US on business. I'll be bringing a travel phone rather than a normal phone (This is my standard travel practice for any country). I could do the same with a computer.
I don't mind unlocking that. But passwords are a thornier issue. All of my passwords are stored in a password manager. On my computer, these are actually stored in a physical file, so if CBP cloned my hard drive they'd potentially have all my passwords. That would amount to ~400 passwords I'd need to change.
I could make a travel profile for my password manager and only bring in a limited, strictly necessary set of passwords.
But then this raises a further issue: do I keep social media passwords on that list, or leave them off? If I kept them off, I could honestly say "I can't login. I didn't want distracting social media on a business trip". But it might be safer just to have them? I could change the passwords after. I'm not sure of the risks of having CBP log into Facebook.
This is probably not a likely case I have to worry about, but I'd still like to figure out the best practice.
The only point I really want to make:
It is a very bad plan to attempt to outsmart CBP with clever encryption strategies. If you want to protect something, don't bring it to a border crossing. CBP's budget is tens of billions of dollars, and they don't have to break your encryption; they just have to fuck up your entry into the country. The math doesn't work out here for nerds.
I don't care if they login to my Facebook (well, I think I don't). I just don't want to have them have everything, because then I'd have to change it all.
To be very clear, not planning to use any encryption strategies. And as you mentioned, being unable to access Facebook is not a sensible option. My question is about what to bring, not how to secure it.
US citizens have it better in at least that one regard. They can't keep me from entering the country. They can confiscate my laptop, but if I don't want to give them facebook access, there's not much they can do to stop me. They can of course add me to some list that makes my life miserable every time I fly, but there's no constitutional provision that allows preventing a citizen from entering the country.
I wonder, though, if you don't have FB etc. accounts, do they believe you?
I'm certainly not suggesting that Trump isn't stupid enough to think having CBP attempting to guess whether 800,000 grandmothers every hour are lying about not knowing what Facebook is would be a plan he could seamlessly roll out, but I think any such plan would crater pretty spectacularly.
A large majority of people do have FB accounts, and even care about their FB accounts as illustrated by their worries about providing access to them.
For most people they wouldn't bother to look, only a tiny fraction of travelers get their devices checked. And if you really don't have FB etc. accounts, they may believe you - I have little reason to doubt that; I feel that if that was their policy then we'd hear about many such cases.
However, if you claim that you don't have a FB account and their automated system (seeded by the information submitted by the airline before your arrival) shows a FB account with your face, then that seems a sure way to get turned back at a border.
Which, amusingly, is a Facebook spammer strategy — clone someone's account, including profile picture. So even if you delete your account, there may be a spammer clone that shows up in CBP's database.
We here know that we should change our password and logout of existing sessions ASAP after being made to do it, but our non-technical family members may not.
"Add TSA as a friend" is borderline reasonable, (pun intended) "give us your password" is not even close.
It also damages public awareness of importance of maintaining secure and private passwords more generally.
That it's unreasonable and unacceptable doesn't mean that it's illegal. Despite your and my hopes, not all unreasonable and unacceptable things are illegal.
> What about 'login with Facebook' sites?
Don't do that then.
> We here know that we should change our password and logout of existing sessions ASAP after being made to do it, but our non-technical family members may not.
If you've given access to your account to someone else, you've already lost, whether you log out quickly afterwards or not.
Don't put yourself in a position in which you must log into an account you care about.
People do 'login with Facebook'; people will (perhaps grudgingly) log in for them/hand over their password.
You won't, I won't, but people will because they're asked to by the uniformed officer, despite how mad it is.
I'm just amazed at the lack of significant opposition to this, there doesn't even really seem to be any opposition. Here on HN where one might expect it to be most opposed, we're merely discussing how to mitigate the effects (you can't, don't go - or be prepared to be turned around).
I wouldn't pay for my own travel to the USA (while I've been before, and enjoyed my trips, etc.) because I'm not an idiot - and handing over a password is idiotic - and I can't really afford a wasted trip. Sure, sunk cost, whatever - the cost/risk isn't worth it, at least for now until it's shown that they rarely do it, and really it's only x,y,z countries from where I do not hail.
I'm amazed at all the many ways people will give up their rights, and yet folks continue to advocate for their rights to be taken away.
> Here on HN where one might expect it to be most opposed, we're merely discussing how to mitigate the effects (you can't, don't go - or be prepared to be turned around).
I can't change the law, but I can change my behaviour.
> I wouldn't pay for my own travel to the USA (while I've been before, and enjoyed my trips, etc.) because I'm not an idiot - and handing over a password is idiotic - and I can't really afford a wasted trip. Sure, sunk cost, whatever - the cost/risk isn't worth it, at least for now until it's shown that they rarely do it, and really it's only x,y,z countries from where I do not hail.
a) they rarely do it (roughly 4,500 times last year, IIRC)
b) any country might do it, and many do; this is not a U.S.-only thing
My mistake, I hadn't heard of this until recently (and clearly didn't read the article properly) and assumed it was a new policy under Trump.
At a rate of around 0.0012%, and assuming it's more targeted than random, my actual chance of being asked is much lower, yes sure, that probably is worth the risk of being turned around.
The really great thing about having a Republican (even if only technically) president is that the news media suddenly rediscover the virtues of small government, and the dangers of an unbalanced power structure (a similar phenomenon holds with Democratic presidents & conservatives). It'd be awesome if people would just be principled, but apparently that is too much to ask.
> At a rate of around 0.0012%, and assuming it's more targeted than random, my actual chance of being asked is much lower, yes sure, that probably is worth the risk of being turned around.
Yes, but I just carry a clean device with no access to my accounts. I can honestly and without deception say that I cannot do what is asked.
The general consensus seems to be that you'll be turned around.
I think this applies whether or not you are a citizen, whether or not you entering the U.S. or another state, and frankly whether we're talking about electronic data or not. If you don't want it searched, examined or confiscated, don't enter a nation state with it!
> It is a very bad plan to attempt to outsmart CBP with clever encryption strategies. If you want to protect something, don't bring it to a border crossing.
Excellent advice. You can't outsmart customs with clever encryption strategies.
But you're much more vulnerable if you bring data with you. The first level of protection is making a backup, formatting your devices as new, and restoring once you're on US soil. Better yet is not bringing devices at all. But certainly don't bring secrets with you: bank records, medical records, and military secrets should never be carried with you through customs.
Say you're talking to your friendly neighborhood CBP officer and they say this:
"I think you're an immigration risk and, accordingly, I'm issuing an Order for Expedited Removal. You get on the next plane back home." Your passport gets tagged with a 5 year timeout.
However, they could say something like:
"I think you're not eligible for the Visa Waiver Program, because some factors suggest you're an immigration risk. I recommend you withdraw your application for entry into the United States and voluntarily get on the next plane back home." You will not get timed out for 5 years.
Note that the second one is neither a recommendation nor a request.
Disclaimer: IANAL but IA someone who has to have an anomalously-good-for-most-Americans understanding of immigration procedure.
And potentially any other country that has the "have you been denied access to any country for any reason" rider on its immigration questionaires.
To go a step further, what if you don't even have a Facebook account? How do you even prove that, if there are other accounts with the same name as you that show up when searching (and the profile picture is not sufficient to rule it out)?
> I'm not sure of the risks of having CBP log into Facebook.
There's a non-zero chance you're going to be detained and grilled if any of your friends have talked about terrorism, drugs, have criminal records, or are on or share a name with someone on a terrorist watch list (and that may extend to their friends or further).
They could also potentially take a copy of your friends list, posts or any other content and do who knows what with it at some point in the future.
Mostly for syncing all my music and pictures between phone / laptop and home server.
For your use case, there is a solution with the caveat that your password manager is unavailable on the flight. Simply have a dumb phone on entry with Syncthing and your Password manager installed but no password file. Once you have been allowed entry into the despotic regime's lands, connect to a starbucks wifi, initiate syncthing and it will pull your password file from your home server / computer etc.
If you update your password file, it will be synced back to your home server. When you travel again, disable syncthing, delete your password manager.
Or use an ssh script to pull it from your home server.
"But non-citizens, possibly including LPRs, cannot: if an alien attempts to cross the border with a device they can't unlock "because they don't have the corresponding 2FA token with them" (as one friend suggested they do), they'll be detained, their devices confiscated, and then put on a flight out of the country."
I'm not a US citizen. I don't have anything in particular I care about the CBP seeing. But, I'd rather they not have all of my 400 passwords. I'd then have to change everything, and also be breaking a bunch of bank terms of service.
I don't think CBP actually wants my bank info. But with all passwords in a manager, they would get it if they had access. However, with no passwords, they may bar entry.
"if an alien attempts to cross the border with a device they can't unlock "because they don't have the corresponding 2FA token with them" (as one friend suggested they do), they'll be detained, their devices confiscated, and then put on a flight out of the country."
I guess they haven't yet started asking for social media passwords, so maybe I'm overthinking this. I'm certainly going to be prepared to unlock any devices. It's the web passwords I'm not sure what to do with.
Understand that you may be denied entry to any country but your own. It's a fact of life which you cannot do anything about, so you might as well accept it.
What I do is:
- travel with a machine which is not logged into any of my accounts
- if asked, I can honestly say that I do not know any of my social-media passwords (because they are all of the form mZOH05WaxeAWqI79myMxcx or SWwDmDOkyHCVdX8eOiTLXC1U1psffeXfFgNx6PaZZhp); if that's unacceptable to customs in any country, they can send me back home
- if they press, I can honestly say that my computer back home (not the computer I have with me) has my master password file, and that there is no other copy
https://www.passwordstore.org/
They can copy your drive all you want, and you have until 2030 to change your passwords.
Alternatively, just store them in a git repo on a server somewhere and access them remotely.
I don't understand how this doesn't run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Surely one's social media qualifies as "papers" or "effects" even though they're digital artifacts and not physical. This just seems _incredibly_ invasive.
Your phone is undoubtedly your "effects" (in 1789, touching your phone without your consent would have been a trespass to chattel). But searches incident to a border crossing have always been considered not "unreasonable," because inspecting the flow of things across the border has always been seen as a legitimate government function. Indeed, one of the very first things Congress did in 1789 was to create a customs department in order to perform precisely such inspections.
That said, there is an originalist legal argument to the contrary. The framers understood the border-search exception to exist for purposes of customs enforcement. Customs enforcement has always been about physical, rather than intangible goods: https://www.eff.org/files/2015/11/10/clearcorrect_v_itc_-_op.... So searches of digital content are at least outside one of the key purposes of the border search exception. (Of course, that doesn't help with the other purpose of the exception, which is national security.)
...
> So searches of digital content are at least outside one of the key purposes of the border search exception.
Yes. And also, who in their right mind would use a phone and an airline ticket to smuggle at most 32GB (or 64, or whatever) of contraband data into a country? Absolutely no one.
1. my phone has a 200GB microSD card in it right now 2. 256GB microSD cards are readily available 3. phones with two microSD cards are available 4. I can easily purchase a 4TB hard drive that is roughly the same size as a pack of cards
It's not terribly relevant, but you're dramatically underestimating the volume of data that can be reasonably stored by media carried on one's person.
4) Encrypt that drive and ship it. Why would anyone up to no good go to the bother of passing through border security with it on their person?
link ? Genuinely curious ...
Why are the broder patrol not simply asking for login credentials straight out? Why carrying or not a phone has anything to do with asking for credentials? It's absurd.
Or have Congress pass a law making it illegal or legal. Good luck with that one.
Not that there's nothing worth challenging here, but the skeleton of legal principle these searches hang on is pretty strong.
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights-governments-100-mile-b...
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-factsheet-customs-and-border...
So the argument to be made is that the application of the law or the law itself is not in keeping with the Constitution, not that law doesn't even apply.
You could leave out the 'seems' and it would improve the comment.
This policy is incredibly ignorant of how online communities work and where communication is going. The only thing I can see happening is terrorism-minded individuals actually creating and maintaining clean Facebook profiles as a smokescreen. That's an easy win and great distraction as communication moves to non-centralized, encrypted, expiring messages.
It'll be very effective at this. Most people aren't going to establish a plausible social media profile after they figure out they're going to the US to live/work/whatever.
"Real" spies and terrorists and whatever can obviously afford to setup enough cover. (Though there is the case of a spy getting discovered because she used her real frequent flier number while traveling under aliases.)
At best, this might put a chilling effect on Facebook and other things like that, which is probably a net win for humanity.
> It's bizarre how people don't think ahead to their border crossing and are willing to admit they are going to live with their SO, or work as a nanny -- while under a tourism visa.
So we're not catching "real" spies and terrorists; we're catching nannies trying to get paid under the table; do you think maybe we've got bigger fish to fry? This is a bad precedent, and what are we gaining? Nothing.
And yes, it's possible that this isn't worth the gains to CBP. But the US is pretty powerful and can force quite a bit of crap on people without getting too hurt. If it stops, it'll most likely be from efforts from e.g. Facebook lobbying against it.
Business travelers have little choice. A lot of migrants have no choice (the benefits of US residency far outweigh the inconvenience for most people) -- we can test this out by looking at how many Mexicans or other Latam folks stay in the US vs, say, Canada over the next few years (confounding that is Canada removing visa requirements for Mexicans). Tourism might be hit a bit, but I'm unconvinced this is a big enough deal for people to rethink their entire vacation plans.
A country which controls its borders gains … control of its borders. If it's illegal to enter a country as a tourist in order to live with one's girlfriend, well it's illegal to enter that country as a tourist in order to live with one's girlfriend. That doesn't mean the law is right, or good, or desirable, just that if one enters that country as a tourist in order to live with one's girlfriend, one will be breaking that country's law and is liable to be deported.
Although I tend to favour open borders, myself, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the customs police of any country to turn away people trying to enter that country illegally.
It would certainly be feasible to require every vehicle to be fitted with a data/position logger so that a vast number of hitherto undetected breaches of the laws governing the road can be immediately detected and punished - but it's pretty clear that the invasiveness of this is not worth the gains in compliance.
No, it doesn't, because I addressed the statement, 'What are we gaining? Nothing.'
I don't support the policy at all; I think it's a fundamental human right to encrypt data and not have to give the password to anyone.
And if they cannot or will not take the nanny jobs for themselves, at least they get to mock the uppity mothers that voted for Hillary and now are forced to dump their careers to take care of their own children.
And is it the role of CPB to prevent under the table employment? Surely there are better ways to address that issue if it's a concern. Building walls and inspecting social media seems like a political smoke screen for avoiding more effective enforcement measures - requiring farmers/factories/roofing companies to prove their labour is legally allowed to work in the US etc. Or we could acknowledge the reality of immigration (we need workers if we can't afford to pay Americans an adequate wage to pick fields etc).
Yes, it is the role of CBP to make sure you're coming under the right visa. It's no different than making sure you're not coming to stay while on a temporary visa.
No whether or not this is important or just silly politics is a different question. Same to the question of is this ethical/right/whatever. But there's zero doubt that this will enable CBP to be more effective. So arguments against it should focus on "yeah, this makes their job easier, but at what cost?" instead of pretending there's zero upside.
There's still random bad luck - as a Canadian I've been theatened deportation for not cancelling my green card despite not using it or living in the US. I've been detained because a CBP agent decided a trade show was work and I wasn't eligible for a B1. (His first words were "you're going miss your flight, I'll make sure of it".) But most of the time they wave me right by.
No, but it is left entirely up to the agent interviewing you for entry to decide whether he thinks you're likely to leave later when your visa is expiring.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had an internal profiling tool that they run similar to https://applymagicsauce.com/.
Kind of similar to what Cambridge Analytica (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-hel...) uses to target political campaigns.
You know, the Cambridge Analytica whose board of trustees includes Steve Bannon.
So the question to be asking is why does the US government want a psychological profile of every traveller passing through the border?
fb.post.synth.byDate(
{ { 2, 18, 2017 }, "Today I watered the flowers!", { "flowers" , "me" } },
{ { 2, 19, 2017 }, "Watched my favorite show!", { "television" } },
{ { 2, 20, 2017 }, "My kids are so hilarious!", { "children", "bicycles", "outdoors" },
{ { 2, 21, 2017 }, "Frustrated with lawn mower!", { "lawn mower" }
)At the time they were mostly concerned with posts where it may have insinuated she was accepting photography or graphic design clients while in the US on a tourist visa which is a big no no, but I could see that switching to political allegiances, etc quite quickly.
She is now an LPR on her way to naturalization and I am a USC. We are going to Turkey in a few weeks and seriously considering leaving phones at home, getting burner phones for our month abroad, and wiping laptops and restoring them from the cloud on either side.
Seems like there could be a market for device upload/wiping/restoration as a service.
My plan, if this ever comes up, is to refuse to unlock the device, ask for a lawyer if they hold me, and wait it out. I already make sure to power down my device before I hit customs just to be sure they can't compel my fingerprint.
I couldn't advise my wife to do this, though. It's likely that they'd revoke her green card, deport her, and basically wreck our lives. At least she (probably) has nothing to hide....
Well they can also be detained, for an indeterminate length of time.
That could put their job at risk ( didn't show up for work for a couple of days with no explanation ), their mortgage, their house...
The policy also states that CBP or Immigration and Customs Enforcement "may demand technical assistance, including translation or decryption," citing a federal law, 19 US Code Section 507. A related document says that "officers may seek such assistance with or without individualized suspicion." Refusing to comply with this statute is "guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a fine of not more than $1,000."
Are you confident that it's legal for a US citizen to refuse to provide a password when re-entering the country? I'm not familiar with the statute beyond what is mentioned in the article.
I've taken to sighing and accepting y and just being grateful it's not a felony if I do it. Felonies are bad, you'll lose your rights, you can't vote, they're harder on you in court, and they follow you everywhere.
I'll take misdemeanors for $1000, Alex.
If you're a foreigner, there is no way to win this if they are determined to make you lose. US visas as well as the documents for the Visa Waiver program make it clear that even if you do have all that is required, you are not guaranteed entry to the United States. The officer on the border can turn you back on a whim, and you have no legal recourse. Presumably they have some internal controls, but that won't help you in particular.
There is also a fairly good chance that someone else with your name does have a Facebook account, and I'm not sure how you'd prove that one of them isn't you.
Even worse, someone could create a fake Facebook account with your name and picture, and put some pretty damaging stuff on it. How would you prove to customs that no that really isn't your account, none of the public posts are yours and you really, truly have no way of logging in? It's like Doxing or SWATing taken to the next level, but you could potentially end up in jail.
If you think this is just the US, you are mistaken.
Interesting. Do they ever find anything that's actually incriminating?
Had one trip to the US where they asked how much money I was carrying. I said none, just a credit card. They asked if I were planning to work there. I said no, I'll pull money from the debit card as I go. They (presumably) acted puzzled about this.
The general rule is "if you make money while in a country, you need a work visa while in that country", but obviously that may be a bit outdated and not take into account remote positions. Many countries can/will fine, blacklist, and deport you if they find out you worked while within the country without a work visa; and it's _those_ people that you need to be able to convince "I'm not taking your jobs away!" to.
I'm a US citizen so I haven't looked into it from your POV, but I do know that a trip to Canada, for example, allows working remotely as long as:
* you work for an American company with no Canadian offices or branches[1],
* you are paid in American dollars, and
* that payment is deposited into an American bank account.
Again, depends on the country you're visiting (and possibly the country you're a resident of), so I'd double check before working on a trip just to be safe.
[1] If your company has branches where you're going, the safest bet is to get them to help arrange the trip. A have a family member that travels a lot on business and has been denied entry to countries while on business trips specifically to train the local branch, because even then it's a delicate situation.
(Not sure why I get downvotes but no clear answers to simple yes/no questions.)
However, what is workable is keeping your social media clean. Compartmentalize anything questionable, anything potentially embarrassing etc, using pseudonyms. And compartmentalize those pseudonyms on separate hardware, and avoid linkage through IP address, activities, interests, friends, etc.
Edit: It's cool to hear from itshoptx and gravypod that it's possible to go without mainstream social media.
- I've been in IT 20 years and have no social media
- I meet my friends in person, since they're all local, save 2, and we prefer to talk or text
- I've never had a potential employer bat and eye or even care that I have zero internet presence. In fact, many have said they prefer it because I'm not distracted whilst at work. Besides, I enjoy being something of an anachronism where this is concerned. Granted, my stance is my own and I encourage others to do what works for them. I have considered that when I travel I may be harassed because the powers that be will assume I am lying since everyone else seems to have social media accounts.
[1] from our homes, obviously, since that's where the phone is, unless you were one of the rare high school students carrying a cellphone that had a usable amount of minutes on it, and even then cell call quality was (is...) so crap that you'd prefer your home phone.
I haven't even had the sound/vibrate on my phone turned on for about a year now (which, honestly, is probably the most liberating decision I've made since then), as there's nothing in my life that can't wait however long it is until I check my phone next.
My social circle is decidedly non-techy, too.
I don't think there is a generalizable rule.
Nothing is needed from social media.
Or perhaps a government shouldn't be party to my social life?
I never modified my behavior. I just don't like the layout/UX of facebook/twitter.
> out of fear of consequences
This isn't being done for any specific reason, it's just a side effect of my dislike of their UI, management, and moderation.
> Or perhaps a government shouldn't be party to my social life?
If I'm texting, the government has it. I don't know what you are on about.
During the Chinese cultural revolution in the 1960s, anyone could anonymously post the names of "people they hated" as suspected counter-revolutionaries on public bulletin boards. A "fun prank," maybe, except that many of those reported were executed. [1]
This was contemporary with humans traveling into space. We're not out of the woods today—if anything, technology has raised the stakes.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=AfIydrsE6aMC&pg=PA163&lpg=...
We're in a temporary blind spot with CBP et al not asking for iCloud, Gmail, et cetera passwords.
Also, does having saved passwords in a computer (for servers, email, GitHub, etc.) mean that CBP could use those passwords to search computers inside the United States? Or is their search power limited to information actually stored on the machine's hard drive.
When exiting, you might wipe the disk if you want to be sure they won't search it when you leave.
Wouldn't an OK mitigation be to give the device to a US citizen for the border crossing? The US citizen could legitimately say it's not mine, it's my friend's and I don't know their password. The alien would have no item to be unlocked.
It's not a logic game, you're just adding hurdles to the search which make it less likely, and leaning on the legal privileges of the citizen. To do what you propose, CBP would have to flag the citizen for search and connect them to the foreign national before they pass immigration and customs. If they manage to do that, the foreign national needs to comply. If compliance is not an option for them, this idea won't work.
If they asked me I would answer, honestly, "I've no idea what my password is, it's always logged in on my computer".
Say I have sensitive or proprietary information on my laptop that is in an encrypted drive. Do I have to unlock my laptop, or do I have to unlock each encrypted file itself?
The one possible exception might be if you're carrying information that requires a US security clearance to view. I'd normally expect that to come with an ID card that causes CBP to ignore you, but these are not normal times and you could end up in a fight between conflicting "security" services.
(The worst case of that I'm aware of was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms-to-Iraq )
Also, whats an LPR?
An LPR is a green-card holder, a lawful permanent resident.
Yes it is inconvenient, but far less so than a total compromise of your credentials.
This seems like a perfect use case for TrueCrypt hidden volumes or similar: https://www.howtogeek.com/109210/the-htg-guide-to-hiding-you...
So then you don't say those things. This covers the much more common (I'd imagine) case where a traveler is asked to turn on his device and enter the password, but possibly not the case where the traveler is being grilled/interrogated on the contents of his device.
But plausible deniability is one of the purported features of TrueCrypt hidden volumes. How would you prove someone had an encrypted hidden volume on his device?
You can make an encrypted backup of your machine and store it in some innocuous place in the cloud, or have it Fedexed to wherever you're staying. There's just no good reason to play games with TrueCrypt at the border.
What I think all US citizens should do is use whole disk encryption (but everyone should do that), and refuse to comply with requests to provide their passwords, even at the risk of missing flights / losing equipment / spending a day in a room talking to unfriendly people. Frankly, this is just an egregious and pointless violation of our 4th amendment rights.
The current best practice for border crossings --- really anywhere in the world --- is simply not to carry anything you're unwilling to unlock for Customs.
This is going to get harder still. CBP will begin asking everyone for Facebook logins. You'll think of 10 different ways to conceal your Facebook doings from CBP, but CBP has advance traveler's manifests from flights and will know that people have profiles --- and, sometimes, what was on those profiles.