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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...
Ugh. Canadian border crossings used to be so nice.
Question: what would happen if you are asked to unlock your device and you refuse on the grounds that it contains classified material? Presumably they wouldn't just shrug and say 'OK, then' - but neither could they (if the classifying authority was one they cared about - say, NATO) just say 'Tough luck, now unlock it!', right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated... Your phone is undoubtedly your "effects" (in 1789, touching your phone without your consent would have been a trespass to chattel). But searches incident to a border crossing have always been considered not "unreasonable," because inspecting the flow of things acro…
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> So searches of digital content are at least outside one of the key purposes of the border search exception.
Yes. And also, who in their right mind would use a phone and an airline ticket to smuggle at most 32GB (or 64, or whatever) of contraband data into a country? Absolutely no one.
How is this not in violation of international law, especially the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [1] article 17, which would apply to US citizens as well as non-US citizens? No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation. Maybe even article 9 if the law does not clearly establi…
If software identifies you as potential criminal or terrorist at the border, the following search is not "arbitrary" by any means. The state should not be transparent about the exact reasons why you were chosen (e.g. the social media post or phone call), apart from pointing out the law based on which they are acting.
How much information must be provided is certainly debatable. Article 9 continues as follows.
Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.
So what are reasons? You are in violation of US law? You are in violation of US law X? You are in violation of US law X because you did Y? You are in violation of US law X because you did Y and we know because of Z? How much reason is enough reason?
Actually, if you are only detained for some time, then there re probably no charges. Unfortunately my understanding of law has a lot to be desired. How much inference is allowed without charges?
And thinking about it again, nobody, as far as I can tell, heavily complains about your bags getting searched, for security or customs. So it seems indeed more of a matter of degree what kind of search is acceptable.
On the other hand getting your bags searched is about imminent dangers and crimes, downing the airplane, smuggling illegal things, evading taxes. Inspecting your digital life seems hard to justify from that perspective unless you think people are regularly posting on Facebook that they are about to cross the border with a bag full of drugs hidden so well that they can not be found.
Is it worth it to clear those devices and restore from cloud backup after crossing?
I think so. But you want to do it in such a way that there's no "restore" button you could push on your phone once you're compelled to log in to any accounts that are clearly associated with the phone. One way to do this would be to back your phone up, encrypt it, and stash the file somewhere else, then scrub the phone and back that up so that you could, if under questioning by CBP, perform a plausible restore.
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> 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.
How is this not in violation of international law, especially the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [1] article 17, which would apply to US citizens as well as non-US citizens? No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation. Maybe even article 9 if the law does not clearly establi…
Is it worth it to clear those devices and restore from cloud backup after crossing?
You mean if you want to look like you have something to hide? Yeah, that might help...
But if you want to be clever about it, just wipe the phone and create a separate account with your most important contacts and stuff. Nobody's going to interrogate you for having insufficient apps.