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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?

#181

Post by Rarebox »

graeme wrote: post #162
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 current best practice for border crossings --- really anywhere in the world --- is simply not to carry anything you're unwilling to unlock for Customs. How do password managers play into this? I'm likely going to be traveling to the US on business. I'll be bringing a travel phone rather than a normal phone (This is my standard travel practice for any country). I could do the same with a computer. I don't mind…

Could you just bring a device with freshly installed Windows / OSX, and clone the whole disk image over the internet once you're inside U.S. ?

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

#182

Post by thunderstrike »

purple-again wrote: post #98
tornadoboy55 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your method also only works if you have a small social circle or don't go out much. Good luck planning a big party or trip without a Whatsapp/Telegram/Facebook group chat..

You understand that society did just fine for thousands of years without these things right? Maybe if you are 20 the social norms have changed so drastically that calling someone is unthinkable but I rather doubt that. Certainly for my generation and above ('84) it's not required.

Social norms have drastically changed, but not to that degree.

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

#183

Post by mjmsmith »

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…

Agreed. At the very least, we should be checking the Facebook account of anyone traveling to a state with a Planned Parenthood clinic in case there's evidence that they're a Fundamentalist Christian.

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

#184

Post by mariocesar »

Can you just send your phone or laptop through fedex, or some other post service, and just don't travel with anything with a password.

Even better, do a cloud backup and wipe out your phone or laptop, and restore a backup when you are out?

Or am I missing something?

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

#185

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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 current best practice for border crossings --- really anywhere in the world --- is simply not to carry anything you're unwilling to unlock for Customs

We're in a temporary blind spot with CBP et al not asking for iCloud, Gmail, et cetera passwords.

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

#186

Post by dave_sullivan »

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…

> "Real" spies and terrorists and whatever can obviously afford to setup enough cover.

> 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.

So we're not catching "real" spies and terrorists; we're catching nannies trying to get paid under the table; do you think maybe we've got bigger fish to fry? This is a bad precedent, and what are we gaining? Nothing.

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

#187

Post by grey-area »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #149
soft_dev_person wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I pretty much decided to never travel to the US again the first time I heard you may be compelled to unlock your Facebook profile for the customs. Not because I have something particular to hide, but as a gay person in a hostile world I have learned to care about my privacy. Not a huge loss for me, not a huge loss for the US, but it accumulates.

I agree with you. Asia and Eastern Europe are off the list for me too. China is willing to kidnap people out of Thailand [1]; people being arrested over political tweets [2]; Russia can poison people [3], shoot them [4], or have them accused of fake crimes[5]. I really hope the U.S. never comes close to this and hope I see this trend reversed in my lifetime. But people should be aware that it can happen in a modern s…

I really hope the U.S. never comes close to this and hope I see this trend reversed in my lifetime. But people should be aware that it can happen in a modern society and is already happening in large parts of the world.

The US has kidnapped people from Italy, and assassinated its own child citizens. The US (and most western countries) are already close to this, it's just that most citizens felt they were immune up till now.

This kind of overreach should always be opposed, no matter who it is done to, or where, because once it is acceptable to assassinate people with missiles, kidnap opponents, or record everyone's digital life whenever information crosses the border, all it takes is the wrong sort of people to take power and all the mechanisms are in place to control and oppress entire populations.

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

#188

Post by mikeash »

jacquesm wrote: post #39
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 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.

That may be easy for people who live in other countries, but keep in mind that it's not "simply" for the millions of non-citizens who legally live here.

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

#189

Post by iak8god »

Borealid wrote: post #170
iak8god wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But searches incident to a border crossing have always been considered not "unreasonable," because inspecting the flow of things across the border has always been seen as a legitimate government function. ... > 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 3…

I feel obligated to point out that: 1. my phone has a 200GB microSD card in it right now 2. 256GB microSD cards are readily available 3. phones with two microSD cards are available 4. I can easily purchase a 4TB hard drive that is roughly the same size as a pack of cards It's not terribly relevant, but you're dramatically underestimating the volume of data that can be reasonably stored by media carried on one's perso…

1,2,3) I kinda forgot they still make phones with SD slots :). OK, so the storage goes up by 10x, but still, there are multitude of more convenient and more secure ways to move that much data around.

4) Encrypt that drive and ship it. Why would anyone up to no good go to the bother of passing through border security with it on their person?

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

#190

Post by civilrightsyep »

These discussions tend to focus on all the inane ways to subvert the border guards.

The real question we should be asking is how to make this a big enough issue that it gets mainstream attention and action.

We shouldn't try to figure out how to continue down the fascist path but how to change it's direction.

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