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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?

#121

Post by mikeash »

bflesch wrote: post #106
mikeash wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this type of argument only comes from egocentric people. Nobody cares about what you are doing, and you will most likely not be screened. If you are arguing online about civil rights you are not exactly the type of person they are trying to catch at the border. In my country of origin there is no way to train with military weapons. People travel to other places and learn it there, all while being indoctrinate…

I bet people can train with trucks in your country, right? We've seen that those can be potent weapons.

Why does your argument not apply to the other scenarios I listed? If I'm unlikely to be screened at the border, then surely I'm unlikely to be screened at an internal checkpoint, or to have my house searched. I'm not likely to suffer from government key escrow.

The only thing that's ridiculous is making arguments for border searches that apply just as well inside the country, and then crying foul when I point that out.

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

#122

Post by bflesch »

cousin_it wrote: post #115

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.

It empowers the border agent to assess risk of a traveller right on the spot without consulting other agencies or even getting read access to those types of databases.

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

#123

Post by Zak »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #99
jacquesm wrote: post #39

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. " Which countries would those be? As far as I know, every country (or quasi-country, such as the EU) asserts the right to carry out a full inspection of anything crossing its border.

I think this is more an issue of practice than theory. Every country might claim the authority to search phones, but if they never actually use it, there is no concern entering those countries in a practical sense.

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

#124

Post by refurb »

thrusong wrote: post #86
adekok wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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've never had a nice experience returning to Canada (either by plane or car) after a trip to the US or Mexico. I get the full "random search" in a secluded room every single time.

Same here! When I was on a green card, I got grilled probably 30% of the time going to Canada. We're talking accusations of smuggling a car into the country and harsh questions about exactly what family I was visiting.

Going back to the US (even as a non-citizen!) I usually just got a "Welcome home!".

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

#125

Post by mikeash »

purple-again wrote: post #114
mikeash wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What's ridiculous about them? We've seen plenty of home-grown terrorism. I'm not sure if searching social media profiles would ever have prevented an attack in the US, for example, whereas internal checkpoints and random house searches certainly could have.

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

#126

Post by purple-again »

rsync wrote: 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

You might think that's funny but the authority has plenty of power to fuck with you at their discretion. You just gave them probable cause to hold you for 24 hours by destroying potentially terrorist documents. Not quite 'dead right' level but certainly 'dumb right'.

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

#127

Post by Zak »

ramy_d wrote: post #111
MichaelGG wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A lot of metadata-oriented mass surveillance centers around who is talking to whom. If someone is identified as potentially relevant, for example, for being involved in publishing leaks, spies might be very interested in filling in as much information as possible about that person's contacts and communication methods.

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

#128

Post by tptacek »

adekok wrote: post #57
jacquesm wrote: post #39

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 was detained and aggressively searched at the Canadian border (Montana/Alberta, for about 2 hours) in 1997; not because they thought I was a terrorist, but because they wanted to confirm that I wasn't coming to Canada to work. Friends of mine were turned back at the Canadian border later that same year. Canada has always claimed these rights.

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

#129

Post by bflesch »

WildUtah wrote: post #118
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.

Based on the practical anti-terrorism experience of the agencies involved it seems that a lot of people are actually bringing actionable material with themselves.

The procedures performed by border agents give different puzzle pieces of the whole picture. When researching crime rings you always need to look at communication pathways, much of that information is stored on the smartphones. Why not pick it up when people are actually bringing it with them?

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

#130

Post by pavelmelnichuk »

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…

The question is where is the line?

Say I have sensitive or proprietary information on my laptop that is in an encrypted drive. Do I have to unlock my laptop, or do I have to unlock each encrypted file itself?

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