111–120 of 257 posts
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Actually if I were alone I would have done that just to prove a point, but I was with my SO and I didn't want to ruin his vacation as well.
Once you are denied entry in to Canada (or the us) be prepared to answer questions about it for the rest of your life every time you cross the border. Even if you decide not to enter as opposed to being denied I bet it pops up on their screen for a long time.
If the device is powered off it requires a complete pass phrase to decrypt and is not susceptible to cold boot attacks. Beyond that I will adamantly refuse to turn over my passwords to ANYONE, EVER. Anybody who has a legitimate need to bypass my authentication has the ability to do so without my passwords (ala SSO at work). If that ends up with me being unjustly imprisoned, I will fight that battle when it happens.
My findings though are there are two types of border agents that ask inanely stupid things like having you login to a device. The first are bullies on a power trip. These guys will make spurious claims and try to hold you to them, hopefully their supervisors are more reasonable or things go South fast.
The second type are wheedling opportunists. These guys will ask for unreasonable things as an opening to negotiate a large bribe or because they think you'll play along and let them display a power trip to their nearby cronies. If you're adamant and serious, they'll usually just not target you.
The fact this sort of behavior is becoming commonplace in the "more civilized" parts of the world is truly worrisome though. Corruption in most Western governments tends to be at the top, not officers taking bribes. That means this behavior has the full backing of the law (or at least some semblance) and you play a real risk of your entire life being ruined if you don't comply. Personally I still plan to refuse and not give in, but that's not a reasonable choice for most people in this situation. The whole thing is disgusting.
Don't be fooled, Canadian border patrol proudly engages in this as well. I was recently driving across the border to Montreal on vacation when Canadian border agents, in addition to searching my car and personal belongings, demanded to see my cell phone and turn over the password. I simply asked why, since I didn't think I was doing anything suspicious, at which point the agent angrily responded "because I can and no…
And it's about to get worse for Canadians: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/cnslttns/ntnl-scrt/thm09-...
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> I asked what would happen if I didn't turn the password over and just went back home to the US, they told me they'd seize the device and put me in prison until they break into it. I guess it depends on how much you care about your personal info or how sensitive your data is, but I wouldn't budge based on this. I'd say, "Okay, I want to talk to the American embassy," then wait it out. Edit: To be clear, this would b…
Is this a right you have in Canada? Can't they just be like "yeah, no"?
I'm so embarrassed how America treats people entering the U.S. It's the first experience foreigners have in our country, and we make it one of the worst experiences in the developed world. Industries that benefit from tourism should lobby the Federal Government to improve the travel experience to, from, and within the US. I personally would fly at least a few more times a year if the TSA/CBP process treated people wi…
Even more depressing is the fact that many countries take the US as their idol and start also requiring all 10 finger prints at border crossing. It's an epidemic these days.
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It's usually a pretty grim experience even as a citizen reentering the US, but at least we're not required to give our fingerprints. I would never travel to a country which demanded that.
I don't know about your state, but a few years ago mine started requiring a full set of fingerprints for driver's license renewal.
Is it Texas? I think they gave up on that last year:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2015/02/06/texas-dps-sto...
Don't be fooled, Canadian border patrol proudly engages in this as well. I was recently driving across the border to Montreal on vacation when Canadian border agents, in addition to searching my car and personal belongings, demanded to see my cell phone and turn over the password. I simply asked why, since I didn't think I was doing anything suspicious, at which point the agent angrily responded "because I can and no…
I think that settles it. I was already considering this before, but now I'm actually going to do it. Before crossing the border, I'm rooting my phone so I can take a full disk image, which I'll leave at home. Then I'll factory reset and just load what I need for the trip^. It's a pain, but worth it to avoid the chance of this kind of invasion of privacy. ^Can make an image of that too for ease of use on future trips.…
Given how everything in most phones is by default encrypted these days, I wonder how diffult I would be for someone like Apple to offer a border crossing mode that has whatever apps you deem acceptable, while firewalling off others in an undetectable way?
Android isn't encrypted, is it? You can encrypt it BUT say goodbye to your pattern-based login, you'll have to type a password on the Qwerty keyboard every time. So, I don't think anyone enables encryption on Android.
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Indeed, from now on I will back up my phone to the cloud, wipe it before going over a border, then reinstalling after. It's the only sane thing to do.
For that you would need to be able to fully trust your cloud storage provider, the ISPs used in transint to and from, the used encryption methods and last but not least: the baseband firmware of your phone.