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.
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.