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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?

#111

Post by ramy_d »

MichaelGG wrote: post #50
toddmorey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel any parent with a teenager who's tried to monitor her Facebook account can see where this is headed. This policy is incredibly ignorant of how online communities work and where communication is going. The only thing I can see happening is terrorism-minded individuals actually creating and maintaining clean Facebook profiles as a smokescreen. That's an easy win and great distraction as communication moves to no…

This isn't to catch terrorism. Though they'll probably get a few idiot "extremists", this will mostly stop people coming in under false pretenses. It's bizarre how people don't think ahead to their border crossing and are willing to admit they are going to live with their SO, or work as a nanny -- while under a tourism visa. It'll be very effective at this. Most people aren't going to establish a plausible social med…

genuine question then: why do this on citizens then? what are they expecting to gain? are they just casting a wide net to catch dumb extremists?

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

#112

Post by jrochkind1 »

ashark wrote: post #109
jrochkind1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have a dirt-cheap android to recommend?

Moto G4 Play if you want something that's not totally disposable but is also sort-of an OK phone, by cheap Android phone standards. ~$130, which is pretty cheap for someone from the US on HN, most likely. You'd be sad to lose it but not that sad. If you want an Android smartphone that's really cheap go to Wal-Mart. Unlocked Android phones south of $60. If you can do without a smartphone you can get a dumb or feature…

Nice, that's pretty much what I had identified too. I had been focusing on the full Moto G4, which is like $200, hadn't realized the G4 Play could be had for $130 no contract.

I would call neither _dirt cheap_ for _my_ budget, but that is what I had arrived at as the cheapest possible that is still usable too. "Dirt" cheap, not for me, or probably most Americans, but what can you do.

(FWIW, I think it's no longer possible to get a dumbphone that will work on AT&T for $10-$30, now that AT&T turned off 2G and requires 3G even for voice. More like $60-$80 at the very lowest end that will work on AT&T. Don't know about internationally. :( )

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

#113

Post by haswell »

ashark wrote: post #49
biscuitsandbbq wrote: post #38

This happened to me crossing into Canada and to be honest I really wasn't expecting it. I had tons of very private pictures and messages on there stretching back years. I really didn't want to turn over my password so that 3 border agents could look through all that stuff in some back room, but at the same time I knew there wasn't anything illegal on there. Anyway, I was with my partner and didn't want to ruin her va…

Or instead of going through a bunch of effort in order to risk pissing off border agents with shenanigans, you can buy a dirt-cheap Android phone for travel. Bonus: then you don't have to worry about it being stolen, lost, or broken, either. It'd be a sensible move even without the border search risk. Incidentally, is this limited to phones? Are they only searching these accounts because they're authed to the phone t…

When I'm traveling (which is often), I NEED my "good" phone. Maybe a cheap Android phone would be feasible for occasional recreational travel, but this is not a solution for many.

Better to have easily restorable backups and just wipe & configure as a "new" device (not connected to cloud services) before entry. Restore from backup when you get home.

This is actually pretty painless these days. Sad that it's necessary.

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

#114

Post by purple-again »

mikeash wrote: post #97
bflesch wrote: post #81

In a world where thousands of people annually travel to some "freedom fighter" camps in order to get combat training, I very much agree that it is necessary to intensively screen travelers who return to their country of origin once they fit a certain heuristic. As one single returnee who is not caught might actually cause dozens or hundreds of citizen deaths, there shouldn't be a screening exception for smartphones o…

Why limit it to international travel? People can learn how to kill without leaving the country. We need random checkpoints set up on major highways (and occasionally on minor roads, just to ensure you can't reliably bypass them) to stop and search people to ensure they aren't up to anything nefarious. Actually, it needs to go ever further. You can get up to a lot of trouble without even leaving your home. The police…

Ridiculous arguments don't foster rational debate. We know their are training camps abroad. We know there are no training camps within our borders. What if space aliens are controlling our leaders brains?

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

#115

Post by cousin_it »

When you arrive at the border, it might be too late to get privacy-conscious and refuse to unlock your stuff. Unless you're using non-American devices and social media, your data probably gets inspected anyway when you apply for a visa, and might be monitored at other times as well.

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

#116

Post by mikeash »

tptacek wrote: 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…

Yep, the story is totally different for non-citizens.

My plan, if this ever comes up, is to refuse to unlock the device, ask for a lawyer if they hold me, and wait it out. I already make sure to power down my device before I hit customs just to be sure they can't compel my fingerprint.

I couldn't advise my wife to do this, though. It's likely that they'd revoke her green card, deport her, and basically wreck our lives. At least she (probably) has nothing to hide....

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

#117

Post by leesalminen »

tom_mellior wrote: post #93
leesalminen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a show on Netflix that follows the Australian immigration cops. They go hard and frequently examine text messages, email, social, etc. for non resident entrants. If you think this is just the US, you are mistaken.

> They go hard and frequently examine text messages, email, social, etc. for non resident entrants. Interesting. Do they ever find anything that's actually incriminating?

Normally it's young people entering Australia to work "under the table" and only have a student/tourist visa. They denied entry for this reason very frequently.

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

#118

Post by WildUtah »

bflesch wrote: post #81

In a world where thousands of people annually travel to some "freedom fighter" camps in order to get combat training, I very much agree that it is necessary to intensively screen travelers who return to their country of origin once they fit a certain heuristic. As one single returnee who is not caught might actually cause dozens or hundreds of citizen deaths, there shouldn't be a screening exception for smartphones o…

Actual trained terrorists with experience at an organized training camp aren't going to have any actionable material on a laptop or cell phone. You have to be able to identify the dangerous citizens by other means.

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

#119

Post by ashark »

biscuitsandbbq wrote: post #87
crispyambulance wrote: post #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…

I was crossing into Canada and 3 agents demanded my phone and password (as well as my SO) under threat of detention. They took the phones in the back for 45 minutes before they came out. Asked questions about a conversation I had about marijuana with a friend months ago, basically accusing me of being a drug dealer when even in the most wild reading of that conversation, that cannot possibly be the case. Anyway, who…

Cheap Android phone. Temporary, cheap SIM (or none—you can get one where you're going) with a different number from your real one. Only way to go. Bonus that it's 100% reasonable to do this because you don't want to risk having your main phone stolen/lost, too, so it's not even a weird (suspicious) thing to do.

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

#120

Post by jrochkind1 »

M_Grey wrote: post #110
jrochkind1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP article says this particular law hasn't really been tested in court, nobody's really sure if it's legal or not. One way to find out. I'm up for it. As a US citizen with white skin and money for a lawyer, it's unlikely anything _too_ terrible will happen to me. It is at worst a misdemeanor.

You want to bet on that, with the Trump administration? I'll say an 'ave' for you.

I do, yes. I'm white, I've got some money (and family with more money; for lawyers, I mean), I'm a US citizen. That's within the level of risk I'm willing to take for standing up for freedom. We're not going to fight this stuff without being willing to take any risk at all. That's being a human, doing what's right involves some risk and sacrifice, almost always.
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