https://www.eff.org/document/eff-border-search-pocket-guide
----
Seems the better strategy (for iOS) is come in with a plan to say yes to agents without pissing them off (like handing them an empty phone).
better to local back up, encrypt, upload to your home server etc.
Then login to a fresh iCloud account, selectively install apps, photos, and mail accounts. So it doesn't look like you're walking in suspicious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_an...
> According to a report by The Globe and Mail in November 2023, Spavor sought a multimillion-dollar settlement against the federal government for involving him in espionage activities without his knowledge. Spavor alleged that he provided Michael Kovrig with intelligence on North Korea, which Kovrig then secretly gave to the Canadian government and its Five Eyes allies without Spavor's permission, leading to their arrest and detention
I'm surprised that we don't hear more about this from the American government and media.
The next 2 years will be interesting for democracy as a whole.
And although I don't agree with the CCP ideology the Shanghai subway is ridiculously impressive.
*Unless you are (well) known dissident/journalisy/politician.
US is much more totalitarian than China. Lived in China for years, had multiple times various visa/residence permit issues with police and guess what, nobody cared about my electronics or was sending me to any detention, all I've got were quie helpful officers trying to find workarounds for me to deal with the situation.
Same thing on my last trin in summer 2025, we didn't stay in hotel, didn't go to register to police as you are supposed to and when crossing province border checkpoint guess what happened - they let us go to our tourist sight and told us to just register after weekend and as usual officers in police station couldn't care less, they just registered us without any issues.
You can complain about plenty things in China, there sure is a lot of bureaucracy but when you actually have to deal with them, they are pretty laidback and trying to be helpful usually.
By these standards and my experiences with registration in police stations in other two EU countries I can tell you China was the friendliest most laidback and convenient experience.
People who claim China is totalitarian dictatorship clearly never been to China and should get off their high horse, China nowadays make less trouble for their own citizens than EU hating them trying to make lives of EU citizens as inconvenient and expensive as possible.
I would disagree with different treatment compared to locals vs whites. It's not like whites/foreigners have only benefits, good luck booking ANY hotel (I guess this improved since visa free policy) or renting an apartment as foreigner, which was a shit show or even good price in some markets in past (this was solved by online shopping). But you will get definitely different treatment as white foreigner vs "darker the skin worse the treatment" foreigner.
China in general for anyone would be safer than US regarding street crime, not so sure about food/air safety, which was one of the main reasons why we left after kid was born
For example, you'll see farmers on the Shanghai streets come in from the countryside to sell their produce - and doing so with impunity. In, say, NYC there are vendors still, but they've got their wares on a blanket that they can quickly scoop up and get away when the police come by.
There seemed to be a tacit agreement between the people and the Chinese oligarchy: if you let those in power just keep doing what they want, they'll just ignore you.
However, China is a pendulum. It was very much the opposite at the time of Tienanmen Square; from the late 90s into the 10s there was quite a lot of freedom; but now with Xi's power having been consolidated, it's swinging back toward authoritarianism again. I've seen people describing more recent conditions there as the start of Cultural Revolution 2.0.
in general I would agree (also pretty low taxes for small businesses and employees), but:
> For example, you'll see farmers on the Shanghai streets come in from the countryside to sell their produce - and doing so with impunity. In, say, NYC there are vendors still, but they've got their wares on a blanket that they can quickly scoop up and get away when the police come by.
this is bad example, chengguans are infamous for scaring away street sellers, which is one of the reasons why people operate their business from (electric) tricycles, so they can get away, when you see chengguans are coming they will disappear quickly same as those blanket sellers in the West, alternatively in evening you will see car trunks open with people selling their stuff from there, but it also depends where you are, I'd assume Beijing is the strictest since in BJ suburbs where I was staying last summer this didn't seem to change much over last 10-15 years
I used to work (among others) in Xi'erqi subway station neighborhood (Xiaomi HQ) and what happened around the station is happening all across China - cleaning streets/gentrification, there used to be huge market next to subway station where you could buy all kinds of food and things from street sellers, but when I was leaving they effectively shut it down. Same thing happened at my parents in law town, though it's not so strict in BJ suburbs, people still operate from sidewalk, but there used to be for instance nice bakery market which was shut down, same with small local police station, now everyone needs to go to big central one and many other (small) places shut down, while city keeps growing. So they are clearly cleaning the streets and regulating street sale especially in Beijing. Though when I walked last summer around my other workplace across CCTV in CBD (downtown) there was guy operating from relatively big folding trailer, but I guess he has permit, didn't see any jianbing/jidanguanbing small sellers on sidewalk as I used to frequent on the way to work.
I agree China around 2010 was peak China when it comes development balanced with freedom, I remember how we thought upcoming Xi will open China even more, we couldn't be more wrong... On the bright side at least now you can go 30 days visa free to China, which is a bug positive compared to past, 30 days should be already quite enough even for regular tourist to cover China, those previous 15 visa free days was pretty much useless.
It's common to mix up developing/developed and third/first world because they were largely aligned during the cold war. But there is one first-world developing country.
There’s a definition independent from 1st/2nd/3rd world [0] and the US’ income seems to clearly make it developed.
Your description of it as a "developing country" is completely inaccurate.
[1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/great-convergence-equal...
As much as the current situation in the US upsets me, anyone who has spent considerable time within the US and outside of the US cannot believe what you've stated as anything other than a trite delusion. The US isn't just the richest country in the world, it has the second highest purchasing power parity per capita in 2026 and historically the highest. The average person in Mississippi is economically better off than the average person in England.
Seems to substantially disagree that the average person in the U.K. is worse off than the average person in the U.S.
(I'm not the person you replied to, I have no idea)
Which also means they wouldn't be able to do anything about you saying "Hitler was a poopy head".
That said, I think protecting your privacy is a good idea in general.
... which by now is a banana republic of the worst kind. Can you interact sanely with an insane counterpart? Avoiding to visit would be my recommendation too.
The US is quite transparent about these rules, and certainly other countries are not necessarily searching peoples phones as publicly
But anytime I transit a country USA or any thing I fully expect to have zero rights
They've deliberately made it very easy to request arrests across borders, so it isn't all rosy. One of the reasons it really sucks for everyone when an EU country starts slipping towards fascism.
That is so sad, man. How is this normal for you?
Trump’s America: when confronted with negative traits of your country, always assume your country is the lesser of all evils.
don't bring anything organic to Australia unless it's been commercially processed, and even then show it to the border officers so they can make the call. You don't get penalized for showing them something not allowed, you just can't bring it into the country, and they throw it in the bin for incineration. Penalties start when you try to sneak something in anyway.
I have an Australian acquaintance who got into trouble recently since he was born in Scotland but moved to Australia as a child. He is about as Aussie sounding as they come and went to school there, but after working in the UK for a year or two, Australian immigration gave him grief when he decided to return.
Australians actually comprise one of the biggest groups of illegal migrants in the UK, but they are more rarely commented on as they are much less visible than certain other groups. Australians with a parent or grandparent from the UK qualify, whereas those who don't, don't. But the ones who don't are rarely deported, and can't be easily distinguished in many cases.
He's not a member of ACDC is he? ;)
I think many in the UK don't really regard Aussies or Kiwis as "immigrants" at all. I have various red faced in-laws with political views that are, shall we say, to the right of centre and they see Aussies as just Brits with funny accents.
But yes, if you had someone whose UK ancestor back in the 19th century, or descended from Italians, Greeks or Lebanese, with an Aussie accent, then you're unlikely to be a suspect.
Canada searches electronics [1].
Japan Article 105 (Inspection, Search, and Seizure) of the Japan Customs Act (Kanzeihō) allows electronic searches.
It’s strange how much criticism America gets, yet when people are confronted with problems in their own countries, the response is often, “Donald Trump bad. American stupid for voting for him.” The U.S. was surveilling phones long before Trump became president, and the practice certainly continued under Biden.
[0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/13xzqyw/can_german...
[1] - https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/edd-ean-eng.html
Me; I just change all my tabs and recent history to slightly kinky porn and truth social. They do look hard, but they don't look hard.
(Laughs expected here)
As long as that's legal, what they believe doesn't matter.
You are not legally obliged to keep your data on your devices all the time.
For citizens, no one needs to believe it. You give them your empty phone and they can't download your phone contents and contacts.
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
When a government is paranoid, everything is suspicious.
Maybe just don't do anything on your phone but normal capitalist business sht.
One of the names in the byline matches his HN username so it's likely this.
> and about not angering the agents more than you plan to
When I was a teenager (long ago at this point), I got into an argument with a police officer over surfing in a certain area. It was pouring down rain, so he was annoyed he had to sit outside and wait for my friends and me to come to shore. Once we got in, he was telling me that he could take my surfboard and my car, and all other craziness. Being the dumb smart-ass I was at the time, I laughed and told him he was full of shit, among other things. He went to take a swing at me but his partner grabbed him.
We all go to court and the judge immediately dismisses the case against all my friends. I had a lawyer with me that I knew and he went to talk to the cop and when he came back over he goes "I don't know what you did, but that cop hates you." I get up in front the judge and he praises me for understanding the law (and I could still see the cop was visibly pissed), but then says he can't have me disrespecting and being a smart-ass to his cops and gave me community service that once completed whatever the ticket was would go away.
Maybe it's just me, but I am of the exact opposite opinion. Cops have enormous power, and any misuse of it should be pushed back on hard. Cops that misuse their power should not be respected. An informed citizenry is a wonderful asset in making that power imbalance less of a problem.
Unless you want to fight that all the way up the judicial food chain
Police officers who think their pride needs to be put first in the name of authority may be common around the world but that doesn't mean reactive cops are a good thing.
The parent described a story from a different reality - one where people are people, where communities have basic expectations of conduct, and authority is respected on all sides. The cop was angered and snapped (bad), but was stopped by their partner (good, and it's one of the reasons cops have partners!). The parent was a kid who behaved like an asshole in a moment, by their own admission. Plenty of teenagers act like that, it's an age-old more. The judge did not act as a proxy for the angry cop to retaliate, but instead reacted correctly by both praising the civic attitude (to the chagrin and I imagine further embarrassment of that cop), and addressing the behavior that is not welcome in a civilized community.
You can't have it both ways. You can either have civilization of people, or violent hellhole of laywers and robots. Pick one.
(And if you pick wrong, then don't complain, and by $deity, don't export these attitudes overseas, please.)
So why did he not give the cop community service then?
yeah that would be pretty petty, given that most people in their lives are able to perfectly deal with such behaviour, whether it's their job or in personal life, without a judge to slap annoying people on the wrist
what is this prima donna behaviour?
it is them that need to work to deserve their uniform, they need to understand it is an honour they have to keep up, be the better person. if you can't do that, you have no job wearing that uniform.
but I guess their narcissism must feel strengthened by people like you arguing this is perfectly reasonable behaviour for officers of the law
you can have it both ways, you just need to want it
It's no surprise that there's so much hostility towards police in the US when they routinely abuse their authority.
A judge solving their own problems in this way is clearly abuse of power as well
Malignant authority needs to be treated with maximal hostility. The 'lesson' you want here is completely backwards.
America is a free country. Everyone can ask you for everything. I can ask you for money. A cop can ask you for an id. No need to rush and provide what you were asked for. But that 18 wheeler thing is extremely counterproductive.
Many cops arrest people for not providing identification when they're under no obligation to do so. Those cops should be insulted, and deserve consequences.
Your second text creates the impression that if the cop arrested you for non-compliance - then what was before was the demand. If yes, my point still stands: insulting the cop who had arrested you will not make him let you go. Probably it can only make your situation worse. Counterproductive, as was said.
Best thing to do is shut the fuck up.
When trust breaks down, it’s up to those who hold power to restore it, not those subject to power. Too often authority demands submission as a substitute for trust, and the results are predictable.
That's a distinction without a difference. Cops see any form of noncompliance as disrespectful ("contempt of cop"). You not only legally can, but absolutely should be able to tell a cop "Get fucked" to their face and walk away if they have no legal basis to detain you. The fact that in reality you will have your life ruined is a problem far worse than any "disrespect".
To paraphrase a useful distinction I saw once...
Some people talk about mutual respect, but it's not mutual at all because they use a different definition on each side. They demand you "respect" the power of their position or uniform, or else they won't "respect" you as being human.
I'm sure there are scenarios where the cop can confiscate the surfboard and the car. The distinction is probably somewhat vague even for highly educated lawyers, and cops cannot expected to be that.
He should have stood up for his rights, sure, but laughing in the cop's face and telling them they're full of shit is disrespectful, and at least where I live is a misdemeanor even if the original case is wrong.
I'm not sure how this suddenly flips for cops
... or otherwise, that people in your community could not apply any counter-pressure to such judicial behavior, in the media and public fora.
Most people don’t have boundless time or energy and just want things to go away.
… ironically this fact is used a lot in gaining confessions by police.
The ordinance was removed a few years later. This cop was also known to hate surfers. All the small beach town BS you hear about.
If it's your own, that's harder to do – time to fight and change the system before it gets worse and will swallow you whole.
I love the geography of the US, and it has some truly stunning places to visit.
But they're not so stunning that I need to risk my freedom - risk my freedom - to visit them in person.
I don't agree with the premise that the US makes entry for normal tourists particularly onerous though.
According to the ACLU I think this person would have been better off saying little and not wiping their phone.
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encounter...
Plus, unless GrapheneOS gets encryption wrong (which I doubt), cloning the memory to get the data isn't really a thing.
They also would not allow me access to a lawyer during questioning or imprisonment.
Another woman was at the same port of entry, was raped to "check for drugs", sued, and lost. Apparently raping is a legal way to search for drugs (that were not there).
People have been doing this since way back in the TrueCrypt days - IIRC you could configure it to run a whole fake version of Windows if you wanted without easily revealing your actual main volume.
Most hardware crypto wallets also have a "duress wallet" feature where you keep a low balance for the same reason.
Wiping is obviously extremely suspicious and asking for trouble
It's sad this is the default view. It's his device, his data, his life on that phone. If he had wiped the phone before the interrogation it wouldn't be a problem. How long before? A second before? A week before? But wiping the data a minute later is suddenly asking for trouble.
If you're going to be in a situation where you're in a room with some goons backed by the full power of the state, it is what it is.
Maybe because I'm not American I don't have any hangups about seeing the US government this way, but my own government is no different - you can (and people have) get stopped at Heathrow, taken to a dimly lit backroom and given a going over for hours
Edit: a bigger picture question is the difference between things that may be legally punishable and things that may cause suspicion from CBP agents, which aren't the same thing at all.
A non-citizen who arrives with a blank phone might be denied entry because it seems suspicious.
Note that if you're not a citizen of the USA, refusing to comply with a request like this is very likely to have you sent back to your country and denied access to the USA forever. While they can't legally force you to comply, they can absolutely deny you entry for any reason like this, regardless of having a valid visa and everything else in order. This even applies to legal residents.
If they can't compel you to enter a password (courts have ruled passwords are 'speech' and the government can't compel or constrain speech, absent some well-defined grounds for doing so. There IS law around spoliation of evidence but AFAIK this requires a judge issuing an order. Of course, suddenly taking actions you wouldn't otherwise have on learning you're under suspicion could be claimed by a prosecutor in court as circumstantial evidence of guilt but it's not a cause of action in the first place until you're notified by a court to preserve evidence. Can a prosecutor try to construct a theory that the alleged actions do amount to obstruction? They can try but it's a serious long shot. I think this is a case of this administration directing the justice department to bring yet another dubious, likely-to-lose case as an extremely aggressive way to make a point by trying to assert and establish rights they don't actually have. So far, their track record in such cases hasn't been good.
> Note that if you're not a citizen of the USA
Yes, everything is different in this context if you're not a U.S. citizen. The U.S. govt can deny entry to non-citizens essentially without justification. I think this sucks as it goes against long-held American ideals around presumption of innocence, consistent treatment under the law, standards of evidence and having cause, but it's not currently prohibited.
Note that I'm not talking about a situation where they have you in custody or are about to, but haven't (yet) removed your phone for whatever reason, and you quickly take some action to clear it. I'm talking about a situation where they are questioning you, and in the course of questioning, request that you unlock your phone for them to inspect, you agree to do so, and proceed to wipe the phone or enter a dummy password for a fake account while pretending that you are complying with the request.
It is this second situation that happened in the article - the man being charged was held in custody and repeatedly asked to unlock the phone or risk having it seized; the man finally agreed to unlock it and provided a passcode to the officers, but the passcode instead wiped the phone.
Selection on border control might be arbitrary, they can hold you or send you back over a photo or something you wouldn’t think should be a problem.
and
you can’t be sure which things can get you in trouble.
By default, new material will be deleted. So you don't have to prepare again and again.
> you can’t be sure which things can get you in trouble.
When in doubt, don't mark it as keep.
The good thing about a total wipe is that it's very easy to implement, and it's hard for it to go wrong. You just encrypt the whole drive and, when you want to wipe it, erase the key.
Of course the problem there is, many people have an app store installed, and app stores have histories. And logs. And "what you used to have installed" is so easily found under Google Play, for example.
As someone else said in this thread, the law isn't code. It's not if-then statement based. It's also predicated upon intent in many cases. What actions did a person take, and why, when told to (for example) unlock their phone.
The problem here is that if you are asked to unlock your phone, any action you take to thwart that request by "trickery" to get data deleted, could be construed as 'deleting evidence'. So while some methods might make it more difficult for the border agent to realise "something happened", if they're suspicious still, then you're still in hot water.
In the eyes of the law, the court, and likely the jury, you've done a sneaky thing to thwart evidence collection.
The only safe method is a full wipe prior to travel. In this manner, you're not deleting evidence when told to hand it over. It's an entirely different bar. They can be cruel about it, and take your phone for a few months, but you're not going to be in legal hot water.
In as no one will see the phone is wiped until you are compelled to unlock it, there's no greater change of the phone being seized. You're already being investigated. Just be blunt, say "Whenever I travel, I just wipe it", and that's that.
This is why it's a shame that GrapheneOS has no viable backup solution. Its build in method is unreliable, and doesn't work very well, and is gitchy, it's a very well known problem.
And Android and ADB sometimes have issues with large backups of directories, and so you have to manage that with tar + stream and other business, but at least working around that is easy.
But if you could backup individual apps and all their data, you could uninstall all your privacy laden stuff, cross the border, and reinstall in minutes.
That's the true, legal way to travel safely. Especially if the app removal resulted in a 'shred' of the data files instead of delete.
If anyone has ever struggled with large data backup/restore, here's the only real method I've found for copying large swaths of files from/to via adb:
adb exec-out 'tar --dereference --create /storage/emulated/0/dir/ 2>/sdcard/backup-errors.txt' |dd of=/tmp/backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar && adb shell cat /sdcard/backup-errors.txt
dd if=backup-20250309.tar | \
adb exec-in 'cd /storage/emulated/0/tempdir; tar xpvf - 2>/sdcard/restore-errors.txt' && \
adb shell cat /sdcard/restore-errors.txt
... where I seemed to recall it was a social media post, but it is unclear whether it's private messaging, public social media, or private messaging under a public social media account.
[EDIT] according to [1] it was on WhatsApp with a U.S national.
My understanding is that refusal to provide social media accounts, or passwords to devices, or passwords to social media accounts, can be considered suspicious in its own right and ground to be held in custody for further exam, and/or denied entry; foreigners do not get to have the same "give password" == "right to not incriminate yourself" that U.S of A. citizen have. In doubt I would assume I don't.
[0]: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/03/20/f...
[1]: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/03/22/le-r...
And using encryption will only make you more suspicious, and may be a reason to get jail time until the situation is "cleared up" one way or another (e.g. by getting even more jail time).
Only a second phone works, if you can make it seem like a device you're actually using (though also not a silver bullet as e.g. a lot of messenger metadata is available to governments and border control can physically coerce you to log in to your real accounts)
Also they can plant evidence if you unlock the phone.
That's the reason I never traveled to the US and never will, just having IT security in your CV is enough to make the border gamble not worth it
I do know two people who have experienced them as a result of the government taking a personal interest in them, so it's certainly not impossible. However, it's not a common experience.
I've personally experienced searches of my suitcases about four times in about 100 U.S. border crossings (as a U.S. citizen, but the people performing or directing those searches generally didn't know my citizenship status), and zero electronic device searches.
Case law on this seemingly requires some nexus to a border. In Almeida-Sanchez v US[0], a Mexican citizen was stopped while driving on an east-west road that was near the border but that didn't connect to the border. The marijuana that was found in his car was excluded because there was no proof he was actually crossing a border, just near it.
So I'd expect, under a functioning legal system, a warrant would be required to search your phone if you landed in JFK on a flight from Altoona.
no need to imagine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
This jogged my memory, though I couldn't find the example I was thinking of. But here's an item that is pretty similar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenaha,_Texas_asset_forfeiture...
Edit: Not on the border, btw. Just people travelling inside US. I guess it was their mistake to carry cash instead of getting a bank check or something.
Maybe my anecdotal experience is influenced by me being in IT, but still.
There's no chances I can remember them all, especially as I've been contracting and get a new email every 3-4 months or so.
Eg your socials might show you are a professional paid speaker at conferences. If you applied for a tourist visa that would be reasonable to flag you and ask you if you have paid gigs on the wrong visa.
Europe will also ask the same questions for foreigners. If you're a young woman travelling on your own you can expect questions to challenge if you might be earning money as a nanny on a visitor visa. Checking their phone messages to see if they've been making arrangements to this effect is a very straightforward way to determine intent.
Not everything is an evil conspiracy.
For the conference case much more reasonable would be to make the organizer and anyone profiting from the even liable for having speakers without a proper work permit.
You can solve these things sufficiently without reaching for the panopticon. As more of our lives are moved to the digital world its very important that we don't give up rights that we previously had in interactions that weren't assisted by technology.
I wonder if border agents could coerce you into giving access to your internet file storage, though.
Of course, they won't be amused.
Even if Mega users host illegal or copyright infringing contents he can't be convicted for it. In fact, he won't even know about it.
I'm just amazed that not everyone is using it. People don't seem to know about it and they're not advertising it. They probably made a deal with LEA or politicians not to spread the word in exchange for not being extradited.
Another question is if going with a burner phone that has just sim card and bank card, sufficient. But then you need appleid/google account on the device, and this again links back to your phone number, and it's not easy in practice to have proper clean device.
I don't think this is accurate.
While most of my Italian/Polish friends had 0 issues, on a handful of occasions people were stopped and questioned for hours with agents pretending full access to every single device and just overall treating you as criminals.
In one occasion a friend of mine stated that he was quite sure they just enjoyed that kind of sweeping power and it had nothing to do with border security, it was just fun to them.
In another one, the suspicion was on the fact that this person did not have socials, he just disliked them and had nothing except a Google account for Youtube. This fact made them super suspicious and the person was stuck at La Guardia for 3 hours, even his body was inspected. Disgusting.
That's the same problem with technical solutions to crime.
I come from a very dangerous city and I used to have a car that needed a PIN to work. You could turn then engine on and drive but after a minute if you didn't input the PIN it would turn off without warning and start blasting the alarm. The idea being that if the car was stolen the thief would be stranded not far from home unsure about what's happening. Great technical solution but it ignores that a lot of the time the car is stolen with you in it (in a kidnapping, for example). Having the car shutoff in the middle of a highway next to a panicking guy with a gun and trying to remember a PIN is not a situation you want to be in, so I just had the PIN number written down on the dashboard, which worked very well when I was eventually kidnapped and just pointed at the piece of paper with the number.
Again in phone terms, maybe bring a blank phone through that border.
"A motion filed by his defense argues the interrogation focused on child sexual abuse material as a pretext for investigating his connections to the protest movement."
So the message was simple: don't protest and you will be not harassed.
And from personal experience, once a border guard is suspicious of you and you're a non-citizen, you're fighting a losing battle to get into that country, regardless of whether you're doing anything shady / illegal.
The most straightforward answer I think is to use common apps for more commonplace social media activities and separate apps that can be removed from your phone when you're crossing a border for things you want to keep private. It's not perfect privacy, but I think a border is one thing that for better or worse you'll need to accept some compromises on.
(Is this in South Africa?)
Crazy.
What city was this, if you don't mind me asking?
I invite you to read about daily life in latinamerica. Kidnappings were very common in the early 2000s and millions of people indeed leave leading to some of the biggest human refugee crises in the world ... Lol, GTA
I think you should sit this one out since you clearly don't know what you're talking about
A variant of this is the well-known scene from a previous century's movie involving extracting an eye to bypass retinal scanner.
The single incident was an individual in Malaysia who added an after-market finger-print based engine immobilizer to his car in 2005. The attackers threatened the individual with machetes, so that he would put his finger on the sensor, and then drove off with him in the car. The attackers later cut off his finger believing it would let them restart it without him present.
Remember noticing that "walls" in Caracas meant 10' high concrete or brick, topped by glass shards or razor wire.
And there were walls around everything: university professors' homes, social clubs, etc.
I don't think it ever makes sense to transport actual data across borders if you care about governments gaining access to it.
Then everything else is documented inside Bitwarden. It's just a matter of installing the apps and logging in using the credentials stored in Bitwarden and a 2FA token generator.
There's no need for relying on any phone OS features.
I want to back up my phone and restore it in one step, possibly to different hardware, and have it work like nothing ever happened. I can do that with a PC. I ought to be able to do that with a phone too.
I'll use Signal as my example of an app that's especially annoying to deal with in the border crossing scenario. I want to back up Signal and install it on a clean device without losing messages, changing my safety number, or verifying by SMS with a phone number I may not have access to at my destination. It's not possible, though I'll grant some of that is design choices made by Signal rather than the operating system.
I have to use its built-in backup function to keep my messages; if I just copy the data, it can't decrypt because the keys are in the old device's TPM. Even with the backup and password, I have to use SMS verification. Finally, the safety number seems to be tied to the keys in the old TPM, so I there's no way to do this without changing it and annoying my contacts (or teaching them to ignore safety number changes).
Like, get a cheap phone, install the bare minimum stuff you need for travel.
For extra safety, before returning home wipe it and just put back the exact apps you need for moving around (e.g.: ride hailing app).
Same thing with laptops, tablets, etc.
A pin that boots into a dummy account, full of benign messages, photos, innocent web browsing, etc. is going to get you a pass. They'll flip through everything and get bored after a minute of not finding anything.
Far less likely to aggravate them than wiping your phone
It's not possible unfortunately due to low level SSD architecture[1] and other reasons:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
Then have some planned means of restoring the backup when it's safe to do so.
Being caught with a honeypot looks much worse than being caught with a new phone. You can always say you bought a cheap "travel" phone if asked.
Good times.
How hard would it be to admin-allow some apps to work across barriers. E.g., wallet apps work, airline tickets work, but email/socials do not.
the issue is that when a phone is unlocked, they can just plug in a USB device and scrape everything off it. The TSA agent may not be eyeballing a facebook account so much as plugging in an exfiltration software stack or malware.
That's useless if the backup account and the main account use different keys for the home partition.
VeraCrypt (used to?) have this. It was called a hidden volume. One volume, but two keys, two passwords, and two different containers full of data. Technically, the second volume is written into the partition "from the back" using key 2, while the first volume is written "from the front" using key 1.
Fun fact, there's no protection against writing over data in the other volume if volume 1 + volume 2 exceed the size of the partition - and there can't be, otherwise the volume wouldn't be hidden.
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
I thought about that. And I came to the conclusion that a phone is a pathetically bad device to both store your data and to access your data. Mediocre screen. Mediocre input methods. Moreover most phones happen to also be spying device.
So if you think about "protecting your data", a reasonable idea is that a lot of data is way better kept on your homelab, with say encrypted backups in a safe at the bank, at a relative's place, on a server you rent, etc., rather than on your phone. And there's really little need to access your data from your phone.
Oh and I'm no luddite: I've got a homelab, I rent servers, I pay three AI subscriptions, etc.
But my phone is boring. There's no app on it besides the stock ones (say Google Maps) and then I added the Google Authenticator app (for stuff still using that kind of 2FA).
If people were to wake up and stop being glued to that mediocre thing, the problem would already be 99% solved.
Agreed off-site is way better for duress though.
Our citizens as well!
You forgot a word.
Your word memory is faulty as well
2. "Some" is a superset that includes "most"
I had to look up the word to double-check as a non-native English speaker. A quick definition I'm working with is "Arousing or meriting strong dislike, aversion, or intense displeasure." The synonyms assumed are: evil, cruel, hostile, nasty, wicked (all from Grammarly).
The experience of "you" - Americans - for non-Americans is shaped by cultural exports, personal contacts, and interactions with available American institutions. The last of these is likely to start with the immigration policy and its execution in the form of an embassy visit to apply for a visa and later with the officers at the airport. How confident are you that these interactions cannot be described as "odious" in a significant percentage (maybe even the majority) of cases? I've never experienced it myself, but in my social circle, almost all who tried were pretty bitter about it, even when successful. There were some outright Kafkaesque situations as well. Does it come as a surprise that a completely ruined "first impression" ended up biasing them to some extent?
I think that's rather expected. I'm pretty sure the same is true for a portion of people who want to visit or immigrate to my country. I can hope it's maybe less prevalent - we're not as sure of our greatness here (still better than those others around, obviously! /s) - but I wouldn't count on it to be an entirely positive experience, either. Admitting this and trying to fix it (including, unfortunately, convincing that dude who had to deal with his fair share of assholes to get here that not everybody is an asshole) would probably be a better course of action than isolationism you seem to favor, but to each their own.
I, personally, don't favor isolationism. I am a US-EU dual citizen, and support strong ties between the two. I think the world is a better place when we work together. But people like me are erased with the dumb comments about "all Americans." Honestly, this feels like one place where modern society is falling apart: the "if you're not with me 100% then you are against me 100%" attitude that social media "engagement" metrics reward.
One can cry about being a pariah all they like, but don't be surprised when the rest of the kids don't want to play when one's unmitigated petulance and intolerance is on display.
Who are you talking about here? This isn't even half of voting Americans, who probably represent about 20-25% of the American population. Your argument is analogous to saying that all men are rapists, because many men have committed an act of sexual harassment. It's so shockingly Manichean that it wouldn't pass a middle-school composition assigment.
Are all men rapists too?
K.
Does that include the people who are out protesting at various protests against the administration?
Does that include Renee Good, who was murdered by ICE?
Does that include the Democratic members of congress?
Does that include my children, who are not yet old enough to vote?
Does that include felons who are disqualified from voting?
You said "all" americans. All. (Even using that one word construction.)
Now consider my analogy: "All men are rapists" was a hallmark of some second-wave feminist theory who used that framing to indict the facets of a patriarchal culture that contributes to rapey-ness. Here's [1] an actual reddit thread where people are talking about how the "not all men [commit sexual violence]" framing enables sexual violence. (To be absolutely, I think that conversation is nuts, just as I thought your comment was nuts.)
I stand by my analogy. Are all men rapists?
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/Feminism/comments/1f92lxb/its_not_a...
The way to outsmart them is to stay maximally anonymous.
One of the best ways to get through airport CBP quickly without being overly hassled is to be overtly, clearly sick in a gross way. If you're about to vomit or have horrible diarrhea, they do not want you in that line any longer than you have to be. If they're the type to want to take people down a peg, they won't bother with you because they're already miserable, and if they like picking on the weak, they're probably going to go for a solo young female traveler who isn't ill.
Nobody wants to risk getting vomit on their clothes or in their work area, having to close a line and shuffle people around while their coworkers glare daggers, or subject themselves or their coworkers to the very fun smells of human bodily fluids.
At the same time, it isn't purposeful so it's not read as malicious.
You might need some additional screening or to have a seat on the Drugloo to make sure everything comes out OK.
Perhaps your friendly smiling Yes-Sir-No-Sir-3-bags-Full-Sir act might just be enough to let you get on your way without anything else happening apart from a stamp in your passport.
Even the slightest hint of defiance or surliness from you to a border guard/policeman/etc - potentially at the end of a long shift, tired, angry, pissed-off or whatever - and you're straight away hugely more likely to have a bad day.
Finding strategies to "beat the system" will, I think, just be a shortcut to some other punishment/crime/taken-out-of-sight-and-given-a-proper-kicking-oh-they-resisted-and-went-for-my-gun/etc as this person found out the hard way by trying to be difficult.
I genuinely don't think there is a "get out of jail free card" or magic incantation you can say to get out of these situations apart from just smiling and being polite and not being a dick - if you get into a "who can be more annoying" competition, then the border guards/police will always win since they hold all the cards and will happily ruin your day/holiday/meetings etc by detaining you (its their job to do this after all)
There have been cases very recently in the US where the authority figures down dealing with the public are evidently in a very defensive, aggressive "us-vs-them" mindset, with an itchy trigger-finger to go with it. Don't be the person on the receiving end of a cop seeing-red because you're being a jerk.
The house always wins.
Being rich and politically connected would probably do it.
But I'd never unlock my phone for US immigration. That's my whole life on there, and they don't have the right to compel me to unlock it. Even there, be polite. You can say "no" politely.
Where this guy went wrong was actively wiping his phone. That's no good. What you do is put your phone in its most secure state (generally powering it off) before you reach the immigration desk, and then if they seize it, you have to trust its security to keep them from getting into it.
Not sure what it is about Canadian border guards...
Not in US, but had my phone seized by authorities and was asked to unlock it. I'm walking free, but I think what really saved me is that I genuinely complied with investigation and the only place where I drew the line was me giving away my password.
If I used my right to remain silent AND not give away the password, I'd probably be charged with something. I'm sure its very similar in many countries, including US.
From CBP themselves:
"If a traveler being admitted as a U.S. citizen does not present their device in a condition that allows for examination, the U.S. citizen traveler will not be denied entry into the United States based on CBP’s inability to complete an inspection of their device. However, as noted above, their device may be subject to exclusion, detention, or other appropriate action or disposition."
Worst case would be losing the phone, which is a tradeoff I'm willing to make.
You will find "temporary" can be long enough to make your life extremely unpleasant, that they can do unpleasant things to your body (another lady at my point of entry was raped, sued, and lost, -- the raping was done to "probe for drugs" and held to be justified), that they can run up debt in your name (what they did to me is just travel around to different ER and tell them an emergency, then bill it to my name, and to multiple hospitals to rack up the debt), that they can put you on a list so that you have no hope of making any airport connections for many years. I don't even bother scheduling same-day international connections anymore, and I have to plan on family members and animals being taken care of for at least 72 hours in advance before I cross the US border.
You later contact a lawyer, several lawyers in fact, only to find out they've handled many of these cases, always lost, and reluctant to bother trying again.
Respectfully, you don't realize how horribly naïve you are. You are not dealing with people that follow the law, rather genuinely evil people that will do whatever they can get away with because they can get away with it and find supreme satisfaction in sadism.
Anyway, there’s wide gulf between not giving up the passcode to my life and not answering basic questions.
Except CBP harassment instead of a bobcat. Only 1-in-30 people will ever know there's a serious problem.
You may not be convicted for obstruction in the end but wow they will make things horrible for you right up until the court case is dropped at the last minute.
From that point on, every further interaction you have with any officer or official is another high-stakes situation for you where they will be looking to build up a case against you. Every word you say, every slip of the tongue in the interrogation room, the prison van, the holding cell at the station, your complaint at the cuffs being too tight, about needing to go to the bathroom, etc it's all being recorded and used by THEM to paint a picture of THEIR CHOOSING about YOU and build a case against YOU. They are actively trying to trip you up and get you to say/admit/confess to anything and they are professionals who are highly practiced at this and I assume - with respect - that you are not trained to withstand hostile interrogation and incarceration, even for short periods of time while they "straighten things out down at the station".
If you are in that situation I highly recommend you REFUSE to saying a single thing to anyone without legal representation (assuming that is even an option in the country where you decide to be a jerk) because they're out to get you for something, even if not the original thing they took you in for. Be extremely careful about what you say without legal representation.
Good luck on your next flight. Remember that there are different counties at both ends of an international flight and the laws are different in different countries - the laws you are used to at home don't apply elsewhere.
Only in theory. Yes you have "rights", but they have power.
If you're referring to the power to do illegal things, do you apply this everywhere? If a cop asks to enter my home, should I let them because they can illegally shoot me? If a beggar asks for money, should I give it to them because they might become violent?
There is also a huge space between "obeying the laws and policies in the most conservative sense" (which is what you described) and being "illegal".
> do you apply this everywhere
In fact I do.
> should I let them because they can illegally shoot me
I'm not suggesting what you should do. That's up to you. I'm just saying the government can do a lot more than you think and get away with it, including "illegally" shooting you in circumstances. It's always a balance of risks. For me personally, If a normal cop ask to enter I'll refuse. But if it's ICE? That's suddenly a much harder choice.
Actually no I'll probably die either way. Who cares.
At what point did the German people find it morally acceptable to start killing Nazis?
At what point will the US stop accepting the boot and act to remove the tyranny stamping on our collective face?
Late 1960s at the very earliest, and it's only been a tiny minority.
There's also another war where the Germans think they're the good guys because it hasn't been a decade yet.
Functionally never, after the war the Allies handed "denazification" over to the West Germans to handle themselves in 1946. They then let basically everybody off and lots of former Nazis were let back into power. By 1957, 77% of the West German justice ministry was comprised of former Nazis, which was actually a higher percentage than the amount of Nazis in the ministry during Hitler's reign. The Soviets were more strict with the denazification of East Germany, but many former Nazis were still able to retain high positions in government and society.
Absolutely astonishing seeing people try the “I’m going to be as annoying as humanly possible” to the guy with the gun with the “my YouTube lawyer says I can” defense. You don’t want to have to defend your civil rights in court.
This goes doubly when at immigration where you basically don’t have rights.
This guidance also applies to: bank tellers, call takers, baristas, waiters, other people standing in line with you, the bus driver, your mom, the neighbors upstairs, the raccoon across the street, …
Also, you do have rights, but don't seem to really care a lot about them since, in the face of unlawful and oppressive demands by overreaching authorities, your suggestion is to be courteous with the oppressors for some reason.
"Land of the free, home of the brave"
At some point, you should fight for what you consider basic human rights. Where you draw the line and how you fight is up to you.
It sounds like your attitude is to comply with whatever the authorities want.
It seems like a completely innocent person is the best one to push back on authoritarian overreach.
Am I misunderstanding something here?
And idk how people don't understand how "politeness" gets weaponized.
This video is an example
https://youtu.be/amSIcL3V5C4?is=hmlOx2t7dHg5j-lJ
Here, the only way this guy could've had a "good attitude" is if he had let the lady do whatever she wants with his service dog. This behavior is very common in situations where people feel entitled to something, but know the counterparty has the absolute right to refuse to cooperate. No matter how politely that information is conveyed, it's "rude" because they're being denied something they want.
The police don't like my attitude when I firmly say "no, sorry, I won't be unlocking my phone. I will only do what I am legally required to do."
People have a hard time understanding this because they are under the impression that they know how to be polite because they do what they think is polite. They are unaware that politeness is subjective and slippery and that people can and do use it to manipulate others into doing things they're uncomfortable with.
In a normal functioning society with law enforcement that is actually accountable to it's citizens, yes - polite pushback will likely have no horrible consequences.
In a country that is either already in the depths of fascism/authoritarianism - or rapidly heading there, fighting for rights is seen as a "red flag".
See also: "On Tyranny" (Timothy Snyder) and "Do Not Obey in Advance".
If someone jumps out at you in a dark alley and they have a weapon and they ask for your wallet, what are you going to do? Swallow your pride and give it to them, or willingly enter into a high-risk and highly-imbalanced scenario where you are at a huge disadvantage against the other person for who this is essentially zero-risk, something they do multiple times a day, and they have nothing to lose from it either way.
Sure it is legally wrong and you can stand up for your legal rights in that situation, but it's a high-risk strategy to take.
Is that particular moment, that exact moment in time, the right time to take a stand for the rule of law? Or perhaps there are other things you can do after the fact?
Up to you.
Someone stabbing you and leaving your corpse in an alley is obviously pretty bad, but getting on a no-fly list for life/prison time/beaten senseless in a backroom in some random airport in a country where you are a foreigner and don't know the language or law/etc because you wanted to prove some point to a border guard at some airport somewhere and were generally being a jerk is no joke either.
Where I think people are a little confused here is not realizing that this would be equally illegal in many other countries. At least in the UK and France, border investigators also have the power to demand your PIN. And it is also illegal to wipe your phone during an investigation in those countries.
All these fancy tricks don't work because the doofus/poor soul at the border doesn't understand the nuances and they don't know if you are lying or not. Even if you wipe your phone and restore it once in the safe usa, that's no doubt suspicion of a crime.
If it's a routine inspection, being uncooperative will probably lead them to escalate. You generally want to keep things routine and boring. If they want to access your device you have to weigh the costs, just log out of everything before you fly and throw away your device after they have had access to it, it's now compromised.
If you are targeted your compliance is irrelevant and only weakens your position, the thing is at the border you don't get all of the protections you get at say a traffic stop they can search everything you have on you without warrants reasonable suspicion or anything.
I am not a lawyer but if you are a citizen they probably can't deny you entry but can probably detain you for an uncomfortable amount of time, and seize whatever they want. Your best defense is to have a burner phone and no other devices nothing they can seize that would hurt you.
For foreign nationals pretty much the same applies except they can deny you entry and ship you off to alligator Alcatraz, just don't fly to America for a few years.
Remember he is not being prosecuted for not handing over his device but for destroying the data they were trying to seize, if he just let them keep the phone he would be Scott free. I.e.the best technical defense is secure encryption with a key thats long enough and not stored on the device.
Actually for the particular case the best technical defense is to not have any data whatsoever on you.
Even having a burner phone without any personal information on it can be deemed suspicious. It would be best for your phone to have a recently-reinstalled OS, with a few critical apps like Whatsapp or iMessage set up with a few personal messages sent. You need to be able to set those up without a password manager. Anything else needs to take place on devices that you aren't carrying with you. Fortunately enough people don't update their Facebook these days that just having an account that exists but you don't use will probably work, assuming you don't look like someone that would be obsessed with their socials.
Maybe there are USB thumb drives that operate like a YubiKey unless special setup is performed to access the storage inside? That's one way to carry data with you if you have to.
The point is even if they become suspicious all they can do is seize the burner ask you a bunch of questions etc. search you, etc they can't get access to your data. You can't get in real trouble, just majorly inconvenienced.
So yeah you can be imprisoned, brought to ERs while they run up private medical bills (they told doctors I had drugs up my ass), have a search warrant executed, and then at the end of the day be chased by debt collectors for the search that turned up nothing.
(I've never done it, but I suspect you could get rid of a significant percentage of real debts like this, just on the strength of the industry's terrible record keeping practices.)
Just something I deal with every year or two, doing the process over again every time they resell it.
Probably even more suspicious if you make sketchy excuses when the truth is fine. I’d go with “I (or %COMPANY%) figure electronic devices get imaged at borders or potentially stolen abroad, so we don’t carry them when we travel.” Blame the other country you’re coming from if you want.
Although I’d just not carry a phone across a border in the first place.
Related, regarding the “hiding a partition on a thumb drive” thing (8 days ago, 287 / 166; project is cool but note that tptacek and others in the comments know what they’re talking about):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48974862
And the immortal words of James Mickens come to mind:
It is the same advice that cops give to young black men in “the talk”. Comply, don’t get killed, hire a lawyer and fight injustice in court.
You have the right to refuse to unlock your phone as far as I know. You do not have the right to refuse lawful orders. So you cant resist being arrested or being searched, or them taking your stuff but you can refuse to answer questions, you don't have to tell them anything, whether that is the best plan of course varies.
But in general you don't know what they know, where their questions are leading, what minor detail in your answers may corroborate your "guilt" or minor inconsistencies may be construed as lying and obstructing.
So you are in general better off not answering police questions.
That of course excludes questions you are legally obligated to answer. Which in the specific case of CBP interactions is most questions.
You should also always keep in mind what the consequences of your actions are don't commit a felony to avoid a misdemeanour, in the case in the article if this guy had child sexual abuse material on his phone, or chats conspiring to commit major felonies his call was probably the right one. If his phone was clean and he was being adversarial, he chose poorly.
You have to try to strike a balance between being respectful, generally agreeable and cooperative while exercising your rights.
With CBP, we are in a gray zone. It is hard to know what to do.
Thanks for that, it's been a few years and I'd forgotten about this.
<https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf> (PDF)
Truth-in-parody.
I get what you are saying, but this is incredibly expensive and not really practical for most people.
Evaluate your threat model and the chance that a wipe and reinstall of the OS will be insufficient protection.
If you were targeted, you may have some tough choices. Might as well think about them ahead of time.
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
Can they force you to log into another remote computer in another country to examine it? I'm not discussing politics, simply the solution that you can actually do now side of things.
I don't have any hope of this situation improving globally and my gut says it will get much worse over time. I wonder if in the future you will have to not only give them your computer but have some sort of follow up investigation of your "real" computer if you do this two device method.
Can you just like have the graphene OS device wipe itself if it knows that it's going through a border and you haven't logged into the device in 24 hours?
Or maybe, Enter into a precipitous one false move mode, where it's just about to wipe itself if the 24 hours elapses, And it does wipe itself if someone doesn't put in a code the next time the device recognizes that is being handled, within like 90 seconds of being picked up?
How would it reliably reach the internet.
No real advantage over cloud backup and way more risk.
There's already the reboot timer which works fine for securing data but not under duress.
Us citizens should use that.
The big picture problem is that the agents performing the searches have an enormous amount of power in terms of potentially seizing devices and potentially denying entry for non-citizens. I think they should not have this power, but the agents and courts probably don't care that I think that.
The end result (not inherently different from what we wrote in the guide) is that you may have to think both about protecting your data by technical means, and about not angering the agents more than you plan to. I was fascinated by techniques for being unable to comply (which is straightforward to achieve if you want!) but probably didn't think enough about how much this might antagonize border agents in many cases.
I definitely don't know a comprehensive big-picture solution.