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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?

#261

Post by bfuller »

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?

Maybe no training camps of the Islamic extremist variety but there are for sure right wing militia groups operating training camps on American soil

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

#262

Post by bfuller »

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?

Maybe no training camps of the Islamic extremist variety but there are for sure right wing militia groups operating training camps on American soil

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

#263

Post by tptacek »

M_Grey wrote: post #102
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…

Solution: No Facebook (which is a solution to so many other problems too), partition and hide what you don't want browsed by some inept CBP agent, and then play your part in their security theatre. It might even be nice if someone could make some programs that offer false home screens for various devices that only open when a given password is input... your CBP "clean slate". Don't say, "I don't have x,y,z..." accoun…

The words "inept CBP agent" get you in trouble here. If you're a citizen, by all means, play chicken! If not: remember, they have vastly more resources than you do. Money buys a lot of forensics techniques --- in fact, governments are better at computer forensics than software developers. They're the ones doing it all the time, and funding all the research.

They don't have to decrypt. They just have to decide you're suspicious enough to confiscate equipment and bar you from entry.

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

#264

Post by graeme »

tptacek wrote: post #242
graeme wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. But as tptacek said: "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 confiscated, and then put on a flight out of the country." I'm not a US citizen. I don't have anything in particular I care about…

I'm traveling overseas this summer, and I don't plan on having my 1Password database handy when I reenter the country.

So you will be a position of "can't login to that site". How does that square with:

"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 confiscated, and then put on a flight out of the country."

I guess they haven't yet started asking for social media passwords, so maybe I'm overthinking this. I'm certainly going to be prepared to unlock any devices. It's the web passwords I'm not sure what to do with.

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

#265

Post by klipt »

jacquesm wrote: post #165
tptacek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they were not.

I suspect that part of the reason here is a tit-for-tat. The USA has a long history of being nasty to Canadians on the suspicion of them going there to work. Similar things happening to US visitors to Brazil and several other places. Having a Dutch passport this never was a problem for me when returning to Canada, even though I was actually working there.

If you're on a work visa you're obviously allowed to work.

If you enter on a tourist visa (or visa waiver, whose conditions are usually the same as tourist visa) they want to be sure you aren't committing visa fraud and planning to work. That's what causes the grilling.

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

#266

Post by klipt »

anon2264 wrote: post #228
tptacek wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tagential but is it not absolutely bizzare that at the US/Can border relocating to work is seen as a deadly sin, while broader US policy has brought so many immigrants into the country since JFK? Without saying either side is right or wrong, US Gov policy wholistically appears schizophrenic

If you're on a work visa then you're being upfront about planning to work and have the appropriate visa for it.

If you enter on a tourist visa (or visa waiver, whose conditions are usually the same as tourist visa) they want to be sure you aren't committing visa fraud and planning to work. That's what causes the grilling.

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

#267

Post by rebuilder »

deong wrote: post #241
graeme wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Since they may ask for social media passwords, would that imply making a travel profile for my travel devices that has password access to things like Facebook and a subset of sites I'd need, but not necessarily all 400+ of my logins? I don't care if they login to my Facebook (well, I think I don't). I just don't want to have them have everything , because then I'd have to change it all. To be very clear, not p…

It doesn't matter what you have in your password manager. If you're not a US citizen, they can demand your facebook access. If you don't have it, can't unencrypt it, or just feel like telling them to fuck off doesn't matter. You have no legal right to enter the country except with their permission, and they may well tell the person who didn't put their facebook passwords in the password manager to get back on a plane…

So basically, as a non-US citizen, if you don't bring a device that can log into your Facebook account, they might deny you entry? Of course rhey might deny you entry for any reason, and them caring so much about your social media accounts is probably a sign you're on a shitlist somewhere, so maybe it doesn't matter so much.

I wonder, though, if you don't have FB etc. accounts, do they believe you?

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

#268

Post by llamataboot »

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…

This, to some extent was already happening. The last time my partner came into the US on a visa waiver (from the EU) before our fiancee visa was approved, her entire PUBLIC facebook wall was printed out and waiting for her in an interrogation room at O'Hare. (This was a few years ago now) -- it was a little eerie b/c her facebook is not under her "real name" - that is not the name on the flight manifest. So it took some digging.

At the time they were mostly concerned with posts where it may have insinuated she was accepting photography or graphic design clients while in the US on a tourist visa which is a big no no, but I could see that switching to political allegiances, etc quite quickly.

She is now an LPR on her way to naturalization and I am a USC. We are going to Turkey in a few weeks and seriously considering leaving phones at home, getting burner phones for our month abroad, and wiping laptops and restoring them from the cloud on either side.

Seems like there could be a market for device upload/wiping/restoration as a service.

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

#269

Post by venomsnake »

We barely stopped the last mostly male refugee wave at Vienna.

For you islam may be just a religion but for EE it is dervishme, being second tier humans and the reason the renesaince in Eastern europe started 500 years later.

If the refugees were vulnerable it is possible. But the majority of them are male.

And some of them are draft doggers.

If the Ukrainians start to run from Russia the reception will quite different - case in point - the armenias during the genocide.

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

#270

Post by acejam »

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…

If your password manager doesn't encrypt it's own files on disk, then you're using the wrong password manager.
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