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What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

arstechnica.com

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Re: What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

#71

> The short answer is: your device probably will be seized (or "detained" in CBP parlance), and you might be kept in physical detention—although no one seems to be sure exactly for how long. This is a precarious situation to be in an I'm surprised if this does not violate some provision of the law. Worse, there have been conflicting judgments on similar cases [0, 1]. On a side note, can law itself be unbiased due to…

No human activity is 'unbiased'.

Re: What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

#72
post #47

If your border crossing strategy involves a wiped/clean/factorydefaults device, always, always, always put a zip bomb[1] in place. Name it something helpful like "do_not_open_this_file.zip". They can't say you didn't warn them ... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb

If the device is wiped anyway, why the zip bomb? Just to be rude?

Re: What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

#73
post #3

Worth remembering: US citizens can play chicken with CBP and lose nothing more than their computer/phone hardware (perhaps having it returned 6 months later). But non-citizens, possibly including LPRs, cannot: if an alien attempts to cross the border with a device they can't unlock "because they don't have the corresponding 2FA token with them" (as one friend suggested they do), they'll be detained, their devices con…

CBP will begin asking everyone for Facebook logins. I don't understand how this doesn't run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Surely one's social media qualifies as "papers" or "effects" even though they're digital artifacts and not physical. This just seems _incredibly_ invasive.

What if you don't have a Facebook?

Re: What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

#74
If some CBP knuckle-dragger wants me to unlock my phone so he can browse through it looking for whatever as I stand there watching while asking me insipid questions, that's not a huge deal.

The real problem here is downloading of data from the phone. Once that data is off-loaded, the government can make it a part of their "Seven-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-Osama-Bin-Laden edition" game, stored forever, perpetually looking for "connections" no matter how remote. That's a scary and slippery slope to surveillance state hell. I don't think such practices are commonplace, not yet?

Has anyone here ever been in a situation where the CBP confiscated their phone/laptop or downloaded data electronically from it?

Re: What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

#75

The idea that our constitutional rights end at the border is such a travesty, contrary to everything our forefathers fought for, that alone is worthy of renewed revolution.

Happily, to counterbalance that, US jurisdiction is often assumed to cover the farthest reaches of the planet.

That's patently false. Good luck enforcing US business law in Norway.

Re: What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

#76
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The current best practice for border crossings --- really anywhere in the world --- is simply not to carry anything you're unwilling to unlock for Customs. Or, to simply stop traveling to countries that refuse to play nice with the rights of foreigners. The whole idea that this sort of thing is even anywhere near acceptable behavior revolts me.

> Or, to simply stop traveling to countries that refuse to play nice with the rights of foreigners. s/foreigners/citizens/ i.e. everyone . I'm a Canadian Citizen. When I enter Canada from abroad, they claim the same rights as the US CBP. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/alain-philippon-cb...

I had a nightmare of an experience crossing into Canada and am never visiting again.

Re: What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

#77
post #3

Worth remembering: US citizens can play chicken with CBP and lose nothing more than their computer/phone hardware (perhaps having it returned 6 months later). But non-citizens, possibly including LPRs, cannot: if an alien attempts to cross the border with a device they can't unlock "because they don't have the corresponding 2FA token with them" (as one friend suggested they do), they'll be detained, their devices con…

So maybe Facebook add a feature to "delete" your account, to later have it restored? Similar to erasing your phone and restoring it later?

Re: What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

#79

The idea that our constitutional rights end at the border is such a travesty, contrary to everything our forefathers fought for, that alone is worthy of renewed revolution.

Even worse when you consider what percentage of the US population lives within 100 miles of the border, which is where the 4th amendment apparently does not apply -- about 2/3rds of the US population!

https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

It is indeed unacceptable.

Re: What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

#80
post #9

> 4,444 cellphones and 320 other electronic devices were inspected in 2015 And recently I'm hearing about this -- it largely went ignored during the previous administration but now it's a major concern, articles on HN, my Facebook feed, Reddit, ...

Many stories on HN, for example:

2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11984609

2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6309618

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