Yes, and this is why I will happily pay airlines more to transfer in another country that is not America (e.g. Canada, Mexico). It sucks because it makes travel more expensive, but US airports are not traveler friendly (they could start by having international transfer zones so you don't have to do security again) and the TSA is a bloody nightmare.
I also avoid travel to the US. There are plenty of interesting travel destinations which are not America you can visit.
For Americans impacted by this, absolutely please write your representatives and ask they tone down this madness. For the rest of the world, if you can avoid traveling to the US, do so. Vote with your wallet and pick somewhere else.
That can't be true; at least, there must be a hell of a lot more to it.
Why would Canada want to pay provide prison space for a foreign national who's committed such mundane a crime as non-cooperation, and without ill-affect on any Canadian citizens?
But a Canadian citizen they will arrest and charge with obstruction of their job.
They already have laws that criminalise even possession of certain pornographics drawings or stories. Make no mistakes, Canada is not a free country and has no problem with imprisonment for victimless crime.
http://www.canada-usblog.com/2016/08/16/the-waiting-game-we-...
* Canadian' border can ask you for your local passwords.
* You can refuse - at which point, if you are Canadian/PR, you are allowed to enter the country but your device is confiscated and sent to Ottawa for further examination.
* They can NOT ask for online passwords (like your dropbox account for example). THAT SAID, if you give them your local password, and you are logged in to Dropbox, it's fair game.
Furthermore, this has not been through the Supreme Court to set precedence.
http://www.canada-usblog.com/2016/08/16/the-waiting-game-we-...
I am not saying what the CBSA did was legal (as the case was dropped), but not handing over local passwords is considered "obstruction of the officer's job" by the CBSA (for which he was charged).
So I'm assuming that if they did want to charge you, they could.
And his case wasn't dropped. He plead guilty.
And the Kiwi's might ask, but only to find out if you are violating quarantine regulations.
https://bccla.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CBSA-FOI-Docs.p...
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/guilty-plea-ends-ca...
There is no reason to believe that CBSA under Trudeau would have dumber policies than under Harper, I fact the opposite.
As for New Zealand:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...
From what I've read, I'd suggest that the law is unclear at this point. It will probably be decided by the Supreme Court within a decade. But I find the ambiguity frustrating...
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/guilty-plea-ends-ca...
Some airports are designed in a way to quickly facilitate this if the government ever changed its mind (IAH and LAX TBIT, I believe), but today none of our airports are set up for international sterile zones.
From the perspective of an American departing internationally, this is a bonus since you don't have to wait in line for exit formalities.
But there are many, many connecting flights through DFW, Houston, LAX, and SFO. The direct flight costs upwards of $500 more, often a 60% or higher premium. That's the value of avoiding transit through the USA and the visa and CIS procedures involved. (Actually, the first $100 could be the usual price for a direct flight over a connection, but the same $500+ price increment seems to apply to connecting flights.)
Aeromexico is not known for its excellent seats, service, or food (though they're fine as airlines go). It's all about avoiding US officials.
Are the countries on the continent of South America not generally considered a part of Latin America? Because there are other options from Santiago, Sao Paolo, Rio, etc. to Tokyo. Some of the options are on Air Canada, with a stop in Toronto which avoids U.S. airports but presumably not U.S. airspace so there may still be some additional scrutiny at departure.
You don't actually have to go all the way to a South American city, Panama City has Air Canada flights to Tokyo. It looks like the other carriers (Emirates, KLM, Turkish Airlines) have stops in a South American city first. The Air Canada flights aren't much more expensive but the European & Asian-based carriers are much more expensive than the flights with stops in the U.S.
Technically, every country in South America is considered a part of Latin America except British Guyana, Suriname, and France. Not including islands like the Malvinas or the ABC islands, of course.
---
I should have specified one single flight. Of course you can fly to Dubai from São Paulo and then to Seoul or to Sydney from Santiago and then on to Peking.
But direct flights are very limited.
French Guiana?
Well, sort of. Looking briefly at many maps of France (in French), the inclusion of the DOMs are relatively rare, in contrast to the inclusion of Alaska and Hawaii on most US maps. Corsica is about as prevalent as Alaska and Hawaii (probably more so), while Guyana and the other DOMs are about as prevalent as Puerto Rico.
I also don't know that excluding French Guiana from "Latin America" is actually correct anyway. French is a romance language.
If you mean direct flights to Tokyo, yes there are no Santiago to Tokyo flights.
*I've written before about my experiences having to go through border control after booking last minute trips. I've been living overseas for over 10 years now, and twice I've had to do this twice now - dealing with a glorified mall cop on a power trip when you're trying to get home to see your mother before she dies is a perfect way to make you despise everything about border control.
Also, clever technical solutions won't help when not having any data is seen as suspicious.
Like, you cannot tell them "I don't know my passowrds. They are in a password safe, and I do not have access right now". When the law says you have to hand over your passwords, "I don't know them right now" is probably not a valid excuse anyway.
"...Then, before you cross the border, make sure you don’t have the SIM card that allows you—or customs officials—to receive that text message, essentially denying yourself the ability to cooperate with agents even if you wanted to. Zdziarski suggests mailing yourself the SIM card, or destroying it and then recovering the accounts with backup codes"
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/guide-getting-past-customs-dig...
Kennywinker's comment is right that technological cleverness won't help much here. Carry no devices, and you are suspicious and/or non-cooperative (unless you are over the age of sixty). Carry devices with no data, and you are suspicious and/or non-cooperative. Carry devices with carefully prepared fake profiles and datasets and you might pass muster… or be regarded as suspicious, non-cooperative, and/or actively resisting (if the border agent judging you suspects he is seeing fake data).
I wonder how they are trained to react to people without social media accounts.
Not just because they can't. Because you specifically took steps to prevent them from doing it.
... or I'm travelling with my local SIM to avoid roaming charges?
Also — you left your home country SIM at home because you don't care about the roaming charges back home getting to/returning from the airport?
Because I don't want to lose it. This is exactly how I've travelled before hearing that this 'handover your passwords' existed.
No roaming charges because it's not being used - I can live without a very functional phone between the WiFi at the airport in my home country, and home.
(Actually, right now I don't even carry the dumbphone that has my SIM it. I'm content with WiFi.)
I legitimately don't know many of my passwords, there's no legal obligation to know them, and the law generally cant compel you to do impossible things (eg, tell them something you don't know).
They can subpoena my password safe, just like any other file on my computer, and possibly require I unlock it (this is disputed), but I don't see any reason they can demand I reproduce the contents of the safe that I don't know.
[1] (b) Every alien 10/ (other than a nonimmigrant described in subparagraph (L) or (V) of section 101(a)(15), and other than a nonimmigrant described in any provision of section 101(a)(15)(H)(i) except subclause (b1) of such section) shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for a visa, and the immigration officers, at the time of application for admission, that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant status under section 101(a)(15) .
When you're a foreigner attempting to enter the USA, they can simply deny you entry for failing to do what they want. US CBP has the authority to make arbitrary decisions not to admit foreigners, and CBP faces almost no scrutiny.
Most other countries give their border guards similar authority with respect to foreigners not entitled to enter by some treaty (e.g. EU).
But in the UK, you can go to jail for not disclosing your cryptographic keys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...
Here is a story of a person who went to jail for not disclosing his keys: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/?page=1 He said he kept silent "because of principle", but I guess he might also have gone to jail if he told them "I don't remember" - Officers would not believe him anyway.
If you can call a lawyer and don't mind waiting several hours, you can challenge it. However most people don't have a lawyer and don't know what to do and are afraid of the officers.
As a EU citizen that visited Iran last year I'm no longer eligible for ESTA (visaless entry) and that - combined with these horrific border control policies - honestly made the threshold for me to visit so high, I'll probably never visit again.
-My work takes me to most places where there are - or suspected to be - hydrocarbons to be found. When visiting Iran a couple of years ago, the immigration officer leafed through my passport and burst out laughing halfway through.
Obviously, I got somewhat concerned - but upon looking up and seeing my worried face, he handed me my passport back and with a chuckle suggested that if he could offer a bit of professional advice, it was that my passport read like an appplication to go to Guantanamo - and I had better get a new one before attempting to visit the US again... (Prior to Iran, I'd been to places like Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Indonesia and Uzbekistan.)
"Give me liberty or give me death" has been subverted into "Give me security and I'll give you my freedom".
The risk of being jailed is real: If you chuckle while they ask questions then lose your temper because he's not happy and you lack sleep; If you have a false name on Facebook (Are you lying about your identity to any US company?); If you know the wrong person; If you've watched underage porn (knowing that even with above-age porn, you don't have any of the actors' ID card to prove it); If a person claims you've harassed her at the conference... Many reasons for your life to become miserable.
The idea of risking jail and sponsoring these rules against aliens far outweighs the advantage of going to a conference, at least for me.
Surprise: This year, the main conference in my domain, is organized in Vienna (CH) instead of SF!
Er, are you referring to Vienna (AT)?
How am i suppose to prove i have no Facebook account? I really do not have a Facebook account. :)
If you google canada border password you find this:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/alain-philippon-phone-password-case-p...
Here's a story about New Zealand asking for passwords:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...
In this case you have a gay Canadian man lawfully entering the United States. I think you could find vocal American constituents who care about such people not being profiled, harassed and threatened with violence on the whims of a single person.
Fortunately and unfortunately this is not how rallying works. You'd have to convince the right club, event and advocacy group organizers that this would produce turnout, coverage and possibly even results. Note the size of the protests against Donald Trump's recent immigration ban.
At some point these experiences may affect tourism, business, and desirable immigration.
But it's probably too distant of an effect to have that much political capital.
If not long in the past; I for one decided around 2003 that visiting the US is too spooky a prospect for me. By boat maybe, so that if I get turned back I at least have a bit of a fun time traveling. But then again why not simply go to like a thousand other places where I pretty much know it'll be great and that I'll be treated with respect, with the added bonus of pumping money into an economy that does worthwhile things with it?
I have a trip to the USA coming up soon, I'm now worried that they'll seek passwords to my work devices.
When it comes to stuff like this the US is graded on a curve. The same incidents under Obama feel like friendly diplomacy might make it better. Now, maybe Europe and places like Canada should just return the favor. A bit like how travel visa's are often a reverse FU. Ever notice how many destinations dont charge tourists visum costs except when you are from the US or another country that would charge them as well?
I understand your point, but it's rather impractical and more importantly not very politically amenable for countries that benefit from US tourists/visitors and are less paranoid about security to reciprocate for the sake of reciprocating. This is how we end up in a downward diplomatic spiral. I'd much rather prefer (as someone who visits countries that reciprocate and those that don't) to have places like the Schengen Area hold what they see as a moral high ground.
(Our family was seriously considering a touring camper holiday to the US in a year or two. Now: no way in hell.)
Overseas arrivals to the US is tracked in [1].
Domestic tourism represented 96.7% of the annual market in 2013. [2]
In the context of this thread's discussion of overseas visitors avoiding the US and its knock-on effects upon the US tourism industry, if overseas visitors 100% disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't be a rounding error, but according to these statistics it's definitely not the political-economic club it's made out to be in these discussions. For better or worse, it is up to US citizens to vote in any changes in border control service delivery standards.
For what it's worth, many of the procedures I've heard people complain about have some basis in reasoning lurking in the background. International transits (where you land in a US airport but go onwards to a different country, never once stepping foot onto non-airport soil) requiring a security re-screening is explained in some places [3]. The cost to Americans getting People's Republic of China (PRC) visas traces back to diplomatic tit-for-tat, as PRC citizens visiting the US pay similar fees. Many security industry observers admire Israel's airport security, yet discussions like this thread neglect to mention Israeli border control also demands social network and email credentials, and the US is singled out for adopting an Israeli practice, when just scant few years ago the US agencies were excoriated for being too unenlightened to adopt Israeli practices [4].
Where I see room for improvement is service delivery, and education of citizens might help, while increased focus upon anchoring the mobility of capital to mobility of labor will definitely help. I've had my share of visa issues traveling into Canada as a US citizen, but the staff were unfailingly polite while still being hard-nosed, while I hear of other US citizens getting hassled at the Canadian border. I've had minor snafus in border crossings into Mexico and the PRC as well, and I was treated politely there, too. My attitude in all of these interactions was, "Ah, sorry I made your day harder just now, what can I learn about what I missed with regards to the policy so I don't make the same mistake again, what is the rough, overall process and timeline to fix it this time around, and what is the detailed next action item (who/where/what/how)?" This has never failed to elicit the officer politely, sometimes gladly, assisting me, so maybe this helps others. YMMV, of course.
[1] http://travel.trade.gov/research/monthly/arrivals/index.asp
[2] http://www.eturbonews.com/53328/research-domestic-tourism-si...
[3] https://www.quora.com/Airports-Why-do-you-have-to-go-through...
[4] https://www.quora.com/Is-it-justifiable-for-the-Ben-Gurion-a...
On a slightly different note. Can this be used to send people home even if they are not bringing a device? I mean, wouldn't it be suspicious to not bring a computer or phone? And if border police are as arbitrary as people say, why not send people away for not having devices that could be unlocked. It would be suspicious couldn't it?
This year's schedule is probably set already, but 2018 may be different.
The biggest ML conferences are ICML and NIPS. ICLR is a new one focused on deep learning that is also very good, but smaller. AAAI seems to be the big general AI conference, but I haven't really seen much talk about it. KDD seems semi-popular, but not a top-tier conference.
There are also application-specific conferences like ACL & EMNLP for language & CVPR for computer vision.
I'm not an academic, but I went to ICML last year since it was in NYC, and it was definitely worth it.
This wikipedia page has a list of some others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_science_confe...
I have no realistic chance of convincing enough of my fellow Americans that the privacy of foreign nationals who wish to enter this country is more important than maintaining the false sense of security we get by violating it to put any pressure on lawmakers or enforcers of policy and get things changed.
What you can do, today, is employ technical measures to prevent the agents at the border from snooping into your private business.
Please, by all means use whatever technical measures you want at the border. My criticism was of hn commenters armchair quarterbacking, as thought the ability to bypass these checks (at great effort) makes it ok that you have no expectation of privacy.
I have mixed feelings on the matter. At an international border, non-citizens shouldn't have an expectation of privacy.
At the same time, this man's private sexual preferences shouldn't be used to evaluate his fitness to enter the country.
Makes you wonder why the people keep having bad politicians. Maybe it's time they taught themselves that system a little bit better.
[1] http://act.commoncause.org/site/PageServer?pagename=sunlight...
in-person > phone > lettermail > e-mail
Technical self-defense measures are imperfect partial workarounds but the best we have to offer for people in these situations.
Even if you manage to stop customs agents from demanding access, some other branch of government will do it, even if it's outright illegal for them to do so. Technical solutions are the only ones that will make a dent.
Realistically speaking the US was never a democracy but over the year it's turned more and more into a corporatocracy where the only way to get heard is if you are rich or a corporation.
If the US government was code I would have scrapped it a long time a go and re-written it but then again don't expect anything to change for the better where it matters since all the interest groups are really good a protecting themselves and as log as they have the money anybody else has no say on the matter.
the social and political aspects of it are not. there's no political traction against this stuff. the border patrol types are too stupid to understand simple and innocent explanations, and treating them as equals is a surefire way to incur their wrath.
the way to make privacy at the border work for everyone is for everyone to conspire to keep the border patrol in the dark. throw them a (fake) bone or a (true at first evidence check) lie, and keep moving on.
No, they're at least somewhat solveable. It's true that in the long term, those with power will use it to seek more power. But that would seem to imply that the government cannot be peacefully replaced every few years through voting, or that checks and balances cannot keep authoritarianism in check, and that's at least worked for a while. We just need to re-strengthen those limits and develop new rules to account for the new technology.
Temporary cultural issues and a lack of understanding are surmountable problems. But you're correct that this social and political change is a lot more difficult than encryption software.
Thinking you can change a rigged, corrupt system? You've already lost. This is 100% a case where the state needs to be thwarted through technical means.
For example, women's suffrage was a constitutional amendment.
Or the Civil Rights Act. It didn't by any means fix all the problems in the US, but it represented real progress.
And then there are the thousands and thousands of lawsuits filed by groups like the ACLU.