I don't blame you for this at all, but I will say this is bi-directional; as a Canadian, when I travel to the US, I get the same bullshit questioning and phone snooping on occasion. The current controversy on border crossing is that, despite marijuana becoming legalized in Canada shortly, if you admit to smoking it when asked, you'll be barred from entering the US. So seems to me that both countries just love love love the opportunity to flex their power against people who have no recourse. If you want to see what cops do when they don't have to follow any rules on unreasonable searches, probable cause, reasonable suspicion, etc. then just look to our borders.

I wish our governments could get together and sort this junk out, but that would mean both agencies would have to lose some of their power to "secure the border" so it'll never go anywhere.

I'd be interested to know if they could!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...

That said I've travelled dozens of times in a multitude of ports of entries and the vast majority of people have no problem, they're not searched, they're not detained. I haven't seen anyone standing in front of me in line have a problem either. You can avoid 99% of the problem by being polite, answering questions truthfully, and treating the border guards with respect. Yeah, it sucks if they have a bad day and they're rude to you or they ask you invasive questions, just play along and be nice. You'll be fine. If you are suspicious or if you piss them off they will potentially make your day very very bad.

All that said, I think the land border between the US and Canada should just be open.

By the way, you can also go on vacation without a phone ;) disconnecting will make your vacation better!

The US side would nod their heads and says there was nothing to be done about it.

Which border crossing had those incidents? So those girls were on the bus with you, they came back crying, and you have no idea why? Is there more context here?

Just sort of to tie this in to current events, some guy just drove into Canada without stopping the other day: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/driver-who-skipped-...

Now by luck police spotted the vehicle in Vancouver and tried to pull it over.

If someone tried this sort of stunt going the other direction what do you think would happen?

So police in Canada can demand your unlocked phone at any point, not just at the border?

http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check...

"The context of the search, and the activity that brings a person into contact with the state, can have an impact on the person’s reasonable expectation of privacy."

...

"The degree of personal privacy expected at borders, where travellers expect to be searched, is lower than in other enforcement situations (R. v. Simmons, [1988] 2 S.C.R. 495 at page 528; Monney at paragraph 34; R. v. Jacques, [1996] 3 S.C.R. 312 at paragraph 18).

The expectation of privacy is reduced in the school setting in relation to the responsibility of teachers and other school authorities to provide a safe environment and maintain order and discipline in the school (M.(M.R.)).

Prisons carry a decreased expectation of privacy (Weatherall; R. v. Conway, [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1659). However, the lowered expectation of privacy within a prison does not allow the seizure without a warrant of bodily samples taken as part of a medical examination (R. v. Dorfer (1996), 104 C.C.C. (3d) 528 (B.C.C.A.))."

I really like going to other countries, their customs tend to be reasonable. coming back home is always a nerve racking experience.

I haven't been asked for my phone yet, but have been asked for my camera.

I'm being drawn more and more to paying for online storage/sync solutions and clearing my phone and laptop before traveling to the USA or Canada. actually more worried about Canada.

It's a hell of a lot better than dealing with the bullshit that is CBSA.

Is it not illegal - the "snatching" part?

I had to bite my tongue to not say “I’m a citizen, you have to let me in.”

The US is always a PITA, esp. after long international flights. One time they flagged me for "smuggling halogen headlights" or something and searched ALL of my stuff. Missed my LA-DC flight because of it. And I'm a white, clean-cut US citizen.

    Do you bring back any food ?

If I randomly got asked to do that, to be honest, I would rather turn around and go back instead of taking the risk that they maybe find something out of my past that can get me intro troubles.

:sigh:

"Travellers who refuse to hand over their phone or laptop passwords to Customs officials can now be slapped with a $5000 fine."

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/367642/travellers-re...

I'm gonna have to treat that as a "hostile border", and treat it the same as the Chinese border...

I really think these are dangerous times and for some reason I only ever expected this from the US but never from Canada or New Zealand.

It says so in the Constitution. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That is not how it is in practice, but the Constitution is quite clear on the subject.

The power to conduct border searches, even without probable cause, is considered well-settled under the law as not contravening the Constitution. See, e.g., U.S. v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606 (1977).

From the case's dissent: "If the Government is allowed to exercise he power it claims, the door will be open to the wholesale, secret examination of all incoming international letter mail. No notice would be necessary either before or after the search."

Viewed from a post-Snowden perspective, it sounds predictive.

Segregation, too, was once considered well-settled. That didn't make it right nor consistent with the Constitution, which has not changed its language on the subject since 1868.

   Back up to iCloud
   Wipe your phone
   Cross the border
   Restore from iCloud

- backup essentials to iCloud

- and backup pretty much everything (whatever I want) to iTunes so that I could do a full restore from a local backup.

When I put my 'megalomania cap' on, one of the first things I do is figure that people will use the cloud, which actually makes me happy. I won't have to worry about notifications, in-person confrontations and/or low-level employee error.

Same for people opting to ship their devices abroad via FedEx and the like to avoid the hassle of wiping and/or being searched.

As far as I can tell (from reading history and living), companies, no matter how beneficent they claim to be, acquiesce to "gov't" demands because the penalty of not doing so is death. Recent case in point, Google in the PRC.

But again, I fully admit that I may be wrong here. So, if I am, I hope someone will take the time to explain why. Thanks.

Unfortunately I think you'd have to have the phone activated with a different Apple account. But if they ask you questions (like "do you have any other icloud accounts") don't lie, it never makes it better. Just say that this is your travel account. This is now quite standard practice for execs when travelling to e.g. China.

The good news is that, at least in the U.S., a warrant (not a subpoena, that’s for civil matters) needs to be issued by a judge and can issue only if probable cause is provided. That’s a much higher standard than a border search, where no such limitations apply.

The law is a post-facto thing which you can use to sue if you want to lose some years of your life. It never actually helps prevent a bad situation. And to make it worse you’ll probably effectively be banned from traveling for being a troublemaker.

Do factory reset and cross the border. Then just sign in to your travel phone just like you did when you bought it and switched on for the first time, and it pulls all apps/messages/passwords from the cloud. You'll get at least 95% of your real phone synced to the travel phone.

Back at home, your real phone is untouched and you can just switch back to it without having to set up anything, or losing any local settings. Then stash the travel phone until the next trip.

Is that realistic? Would they actually be able to "crack" the encryption of a modern iPhone or Android phone?

There's a fairly high-profile Israeli company that specializes in finding or buying zero-day exploits and reselling them in script-kiddie form to law enforcement agencies at high prices.

Generally I wouldn't characterise the customs people as goons. Like most LE jobs they see some nasty stuff. I'm talking paedophilia and violent pornography. They also deal with some really sketchy characters and if you trigger that detection you are definitely getting extra scrutiny.

>It ruined the vacation for me...

So what was the lesson?

Are you looking for:

* Don't leave the country?

* Refuse and have the phone cracked anyway?

* Refuse letting go of the phone and get arrested?

The more you travel, the more common it is.

The phone thing is somewhat new, ever since certain companies started selling devices to governments that let them crack, examine, and archive your phone.

But being hassled at the border has always been a risk. Before it was terrorism, it was drugs, or just the change in culture.

I've had problems getting into Japan because of my heart medication.

I've read that if you have stamps in your passport from certain Middle Eastern countries, you can't get into some other Middle Eastern countries.

I've also read quite extensively recently that it's become very difficult for Indians to get into Georgia. Entire families, and even planeloads of people have been turned away, if you believe what you read on TripAdvisor.

Right, I'm aware of this, and borders in general suck. I've had a fair few bizarre experiences at borders, some of them funny (like the Lebanese border guard who insisted on speaking Spanish to me) and some quite shitty (lookin at you, Israel). But to me, the above story is quite the outlier in terms of sheer hostility, from a country that I didn't think of as being particularly draconian at the border.

Normally you can get two/three passports for that reason.

Previously the Israelis stapled a piece of paper with a stamp on it, you take it out before you go to the GCC. Now its not even stapled. (They photograph your passport & stamp pages though...) https://www.touristisrael.com/the-israeli-passport-stamp/974...

Two of them are British, as am I. I looked into the process, but then changed the focus of my work and didn't need to travel so intensely. Essentially, I would have sent in a normal passport renewal form, and attached a letter saying "I'm going to X countries in the last Y months, so need a second passport". "I'm going to X as well as Y" is an equally valid reason.

Germany and I think most other EU countries with heavy industries absolutely do this, because it is necessary to do business in the middle east.

https://pointstobemade.boardingarea.com/2018/02/22/getting-a... https://www.passports.gov.au/using-your-passport/concurrent-... https://photos.state.gov/libraries/france/45994/pdf/second.p... https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F21517 https://www.rapidevisa.fr/actualites/174-comment-obtenir-off...

Learn something new on HN every day :-)

Oh yea, I have no illusions about this, and I met more than a few people during my travels who deprioritize going to the US for tourism because of this, in the same way I'm discussing Canada here.

I didn't imagine that Canada was the _only_ country that did stuff like this, since I assumed we (and a couple other famous outliers like Israel) had similar stories. I was just wondering how common it was overall.

Or wipe your phone, restore backup from cloud on arrival.

I'd wager the agents could legitimately (for some deranged, modern usage of that word) require that you either surrender your phone anyway or restore it immediately so they can review what you're clearly planning on bringing into the country.

It's easy to come up with new stasi operation techniques if there are no civil liberties.

If it's at a border crossing, assume that they're using forensic tools to dump your entire phone, which will bypass any user-profile shenanigans you might try to do.

Isn't border patrol (US, Canadian, pick a country, I'll wait) wonderful?