in my case, that would mean deportation due to not being american. i either get deported and lose all the traveling plans or i get searched.
US citizens, however, can choose to deny them and go through any hassle that CBP may want to put them through, but they cannot deny them entry.
Deportation is the expulsion of someone who's actually in the country, past the border, and resident or visiting.
Really, for non-Americans the best advice is just don't go in the first place. Second best advice is just comply with border security personnel.
Any tricks like leaving the battery empty, bringing a burner, not bringing a laptop and getting a loaner when you get there etc, they do nothing but raise suspicions.
as i said on another comment, even not having social media is suspicious. which is insane, because it means you cannot have privacy if you want to go to another country.
i know at least another 5 people that are not going to the us because of that.
> Good luck getting a visa next time if you've ever been
> "denied entry".
Oh god, no. Technical measures - of course - do work. So does erasing data from phones, laptops, hard drives, etc.
Do not let the security theater scare you into obedience.
If you're not a citizen? You can be denied for literally anything the agent feels like. They feel you're suspicious because you claim (falsely or not) you don't have a facebook account? You're not coming in. Visa denied.
> Visa denied.
you know what's shitty? i have a b1/b2 visa. cost me 100 usd and two working days. i also visited the us ~6 times, never overstayed by an hour. but even then, i'm suspicious because i'm brazilian (that's a theory, of course. i have no proof other than brazilian friends also having problems with cbp).
Not appearing suspicious is an important part of protecting your privacy. While it's true that acting stupid or careless can bring you in trouble this is not sufficient to deny the utility of privacy enhancing behavior.
Just one of the new risks of travel. (Well, not new that they can send you back, but a new reason for the little tinpot dictators who revel in their power)
Good luck with that when faced with a border nazi & zero rights.
I just leave my personal laptop behind when travelling to countries with dubious personal freedom policies...like the US.
So which is a better option? Losing a job (or) refused entry/detention/harassment after 24+ hours on the plane/getting treated like a criminal....? (not that criminals need to be treated badly)
The right solution to this problem is saner laws and educating the public about privacy and related topics
It's one thing to decide not to go to the US, it is quite another to be force to it in order to defend my employer shareholders interest on a trip mandated by them. If you send me to the US, you implicitly agree the company is fine with US borders to do whatever they want with the company data.
It is 2016, I can rebuild a whole laptop from scratch with my whole data anywhere in the world. There are affordable ways to work around the problem: provisioning a VDI and even buying a laptop on site is a fraction of the cost of flight and accommodation.
Considering the history of the civil rights movement in the US, we're not going to get saner laws without a little civil disobedience. It sucks to bear the brunt of this harassment, but saying "yes" only enables the system to harass everyone more efficiently.
But now I don't even opt out.
Instead I tell them that I can't raise my arms above my head. They direct me around the scanner (sometimes the metal detector too), swab my hands, and call it done. I often skip 10-15 people in the process. If they ask why, I tell them I have a medical condition and they're not allowed to ask further so I don't explain.
Hopefully the bad guys never figure it out!
The real solution is that people from the country protest when such an abusive policy is introduced.
The plan was to go to NYC, now the plan is either Paris or Tokyo instead for the 70+ employees.
If you enter the United States as a non-citizen and don't submit you will be denied entry for 5 years or life, still have your devices seized, and any visas or permanent residency can be cancelled. Possibly be jailed.
The USG has shown that it is perfectly happy to kneecap entire domestic industries (aerospace, semiconductor) for the sake of "national security" via ITAR. You really think they give a shit about one person's job?
Companies cannot tell their employees to not comply with lawful request of a federal officer, and some companies specifically underline that in a company policy.
A better solution is to not allow people to travel with anything that would be catastrophic if lost. My former employer would give employees loaner devices for travel to certain countries.
If not, it is probably way to easy to make such a statement.
Your job matters exactly fuck-all to a CPB agent.
You (the notional you) aren't even from here. If you say no, you've identified yourself as a potential threat, and can just sit in a room by yourself for as long as it takes to put you on the next flight back to wherever you came from, at your expense. And you probably won't be allowed to return.
If you're a citizen and say no, they might confiscate the device, and might make you wait around long enough to miss your connecting flight (and maybe even the next couple, if they're feeling particularly peevish), but that's about all they can do.
They may get that drilled into their skulls, but I think it's more that they just don't want their boss to yell at them.
No police officer arrests a DUI and says "but I'm just doing my job." It's only when the other person (the traveler in this case) has an entirely legitimate reason to resist them that "I'm just doing my job" comes out, with an implied threat that the authority they're appealing to (that they themselves don't have) will come down on everyone involved, and they don't want that.
Also, they don't have any personal liability for anything that goes wrong in this process, except perhaps that the company they work for will lose the contract (unlikely here). Again, "boss will yell at me."
These people are better thought of as clerks than cops. And yes, they can inconvenience you, but that's not the same thing as compliance.
The policy might change to include cells at the borders where people are detained until they hand over login details or voluntarily decide not to enter.
HN needs to stop living in a bubble. Only 1/3 of the US even bothered voting in the Trump v Clinton presidential election. I'll let you think about that for a moment. Now think about border searches. Has your phone been searched? Neither has mine. I'll go back to my company catered lunch now.
My phone has not been searched, either, but the issue here is to stand up for your rights. If you have never been wronged by a person or organization in position of authority in US government then consider yourself lucky. I and most people I know living in the US have.
Source: https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/11/11/polit...
1. No one once reaching the age of majority should have their voting rights taken, for any reason including criminality
2. The figures also do not include people of age who are ineligible to vote or have not registered. The "Have not registered" is a key part because many stated in the last 2 election cycles have been passing a number of laws to disenfranchises segments of the populations making it harder and harder to register
3. The concept of our nation is "Consent of the people", that is all people, not just those voting. the majority of PEOPLE reject the 2 candidates put forth buy the corrupted and unethical political parties then the government can not claim to have the consent of THE PEOPLE...
Many many many Americans feel complete disenfranchised by the political systems that gives them 2 Choices that are equally terrible and corrupt. Forcing a defensive vote that is mainly against the person you do not want to win instead of voting for a qualified person you actually want to be in office.
As a life long Libertarian, I have no interest in voting for either a Republican or Democrat
Seriously? You need to register to have the privelige of voting in your country? That is beyond fucked up.
Obviously, if you don't plan on voting, you won't bother to register.
Why would anyone want to go through that on their vacation? Unless you enjoy that sort of thing, go somewhere pleasant instead. (And if you enjoy that sort of thing, there are far easier ways...)
I say this as a US citizen who will be sad if it comes to pass, but this bullshit won't stop unless the rest of the world refuses to put up with it. Your average US citizen doesn't travel internationally (only about 10% of the population has a passport), so they don't notice unless it hits their wallets.
Please force us to stop.
honestly? the us is a beautiful country, with amazing people. i love visiting and love going to weird towns to meet different people. (also, my sister is married to an american citizen, and i want to meet her every once in a while).
but at the same time, it's really fucking awful to be treated as a criminal every time you try to go to the country.
I would never go there now that a dangerous buffoon like Trump is in office, also for a long time now it's been known that outsiders will be treated like a criminal at the border for no reason. And I mean literally no reason because I could easily not have all my masses of terrorist information on the laptop and just download it from the terrorist servers when I get there. So there is literally zero reason to be searching my digital property, and I'm not about to take the gamble that I could be prevented entry or delayed enough to possibly cause thousands of dollars personal cost for no good reason. The security theatre is ridiculous.
Outsiders are obviously not welcome so I'm not coming.
There are plenty of sane countries around the world to go to, why would I go to the US?
I hope the American people can find the motivation to vote and pressure their representatives to actually do something about their own freedoms. Not only border patrol but your militarised and outrageously unaccountable police force.
Sorry but that's just, like, my opinion, man.
I'm glad your frequent travels are eased through customs to the point where you don't see what happens. But allow me to suggest that a frequent traveler through one port once a month is an insufficient data set from which to draw conclusions?
If nothing else, you have available the fact that a software vendor sees sufficient demand to invest in this feature, to go along with your google skills to find counterexamples to your experience. I don't know if that's sufficient to get you past your blithe dismissal of others' concerns and lived experience and on to a skeptical but open view or not.
[1] Which would be typical; one of the easiest tactics to steer public discussion is to pick and choose what data to collect and release. The US has a long history of this tactic, especially with issues that touch on law enforcement. The lack of decent data on killings committed by police is well-known; categorical refusal to allow studies on various drugs is too. But this is a frequent problem; hammering on killer cops with video is provoking grudging, slow change on the first and incremental legalization of pot is changing the second. But there are lots of issues over which this happens.
https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/general/border-bio...
I'm not a criminal, and I will not be fingerprinted.
This is a form of "citizen duty".
Oh also I'm white.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
All: upvoting such blatant violations of the site guidelines also causes accounts to lose voting privileges on HN.
What? I'm not sure I believe the grandparent's post, and it would be nice if it were sourced or clarified as opinion rather than stated as fact (as briandear (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14406689) and Banthum (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14407293) urged), but your reaction seems grossly hostile and unconstructive.
Is there any actual data source on this, or is it just a narrative you prefer?
The story with stealing citizens' personal information is entirely different; there is almost certainly no legitimate legal basis to fuck over US citizens for excercizing the basic rights explicitly protected by the 4th and 5th amendments, just because they happen to be at a border area.
The Supreme Court has actually weighed in on this and granted it a legitimate legal basis.
It sucks, and it many mean a lot of hassle ranging from confiscated equipment to being held at the border to being refused entry, but this is just one of the new risks of travel. Border security only gets away with this because people say yes.
Companies need to make clear to their employees (and the public) that sharing passwords is a terminable policy violation. You should be able to say, honestly and credibly, "I won't unlock my laptop because I don't want to get fired."