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I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you

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Re: I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you

#71

Post by vkou »

falcor84 wrote: post #56
donald123 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For non-citizens, yes. But they cannot deny entry for US citizens, and they cannot detain citizens indefinitely.

I suppose an interesting form of DoS protest would be to have a large group of people refuse to unlock their phones and take up all of the space in the customs holding cells.

Good luck with that, since most people crossing the border aren't asked to unlock their phones in the first place.

If you have any doubts about that, you should visit a US-Canada border crossing. The overwhelming majority of travelers are not subjected to through inspection.

Re: I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you

#72

Post by MichaelGG »

mertevinski wrote: post #35
donald123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can refuse whatever way they want, but he/she can be detained and the device forfeited. And for non-citizens, they can be denied entry to US.

It is so easy for the 'bad guys' to carry a burner phone with fake google, Facebook, twitter, etc, accounts and log into them when requested. That way they don't have to refuse anything and there is nothing suspicious. This policy harms law abiding citizens and travelers but is completely ineffective when it comes to stopping criminals.

The majority of "criminals" CBP deals with each day are people coming in on the wrong visa. Saying tourist but having no plans to leave, or planning to work, for example. This system will be very effective there: Turn on phone, see text "baby can't wait for you, we're finally gonna be living together", question why their boyfriend is writing them that and why they didn't mention it, deny entry.

I don't think anyone really believes it'll catch a ton of "good to have you here, the bomb is ready"- or "whew so nervous carrying these 50 pounds of contraband!"-bad guys.

Also I'd slightly question the ease of creating burner accounts. Facebook will show your sign up date, and something too recent will be suspicious. Other things like "why don't you have pictures of your FB friends on your phone" and on and on could be clues to a fake account. Not saying it's really hard, but it's not something you'll whip together a week before your trip.

Re: I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you

#73

Post by Kluny »

MaysonL wrote: post #32
koolba wrote: post #4

From the article (emphasis mine): > This may upset Customs and Border Patrol agents, who are probably smart enough to realize that 85% of Americans now have smart phones, and probably 100% of the Americans who travel internationally have smart phones. They may choose to detain you anyway, and force you to give them passwords to various accounts manually. But there’s no easy way for them to know which services you use…

> You can be damn sure the government has a list of possible email addresses Hell, I've already gotten more email from the current administration than I ever got from Obama, Clinton & Sanders combined, and I'm a confirmed lefty.

... really? Can you expand on that? In my country, the government is not in the habit of sending out emails, largely so that they can tell people to disregard any email that claims to be from the government, as it's usually a scammer.

Re: I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you

#74

Post by problems »

Asooka wrote: post #69
problems wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Android world there exists a system called MultiROM, it allows you to have multiple ROMs installed on your phone with separate data partitions. You could theoretically load one ROM up with all your personal data (and have it encrypted) then have another for customs usage, just boot it up before you reach the agent. Remember to load it with plausible data to prevent any suspicions and you should be good to go.…

But if they use standardised tools those would probably have the capability of dumping your entire flash since someone would want to do so.

I don't think border security agents are dumping your entire flash - they're mostly just say, thumbing through messages to make sure you're not attempting to work illegally while on a vacation visa.

Dumping your entire flash would take a serious amount of time and would be so varied from device to device that it'd likely be impossible in practice.

Re: I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you

#75

Post by gydfi »

evo_9 wrote: post #33

Wouldn't it be equally weird to not have a phone on you on a flight or an international flight? Meaning merely suggesting that you don't have a phone with you I think would cause more/similar trouble.

I never take a phone to the US, because international roaming charges are crazy.

Or they used to be. I haven't looked into it recently, they seem to have settled down a bit.

Re: I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you

#76

Post by voxic11 »

Kluny wrote: post #73
MaysonL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can be damn sure the government has a list of possible email addresses Hell, I've already gotten more email from the current administration than I ever got from Obama, Clinton & Sanders combined, and I'm a confirmed lefty.

... really? Can you expand on that? In my country, the government is not in the habit of sending out emails, largely so that they can tell people to disregard any email that claims to be from the government, as it's usually a scammer.

The United States government owns the .gov gtld so it's pretty easy to identify their emails.

Re: I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you

#78

Post by xiaoma »

achamayou wrote: post #53
goda90 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mentioned other countries moving towards this kind of thing, and if you look around then that wouldn't be surprising for places like the UK as well.

But that's completely speculative, there is no documented instance of another country doing the same at the moment.

The UK has has their citizens to unlock devices and provide encryption keys upon demand for years, it's not limited to airports and they're not allowed to tell anyone it happened.

Re: I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you

#80

Post by squeaky-clean »

myowncrapulence wrote: post #40
notatoad wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can be damn sure the government has a list of possible email addresses associated to individuals. things the government knows, and things that a CBP agent knows, are not the same thing. They NSA doesn't just provide their database to all the hundreds of thousands of front-line law enforcement agents. If you're being specifically targeted for some reason, enforcement agencies might be provided with a history of y…

Actually, you're wrong. Just recently Obama opened up data sharing between the NSA, FBI, CIA and hundreds of other agencies. Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/12/obama-expands-the-nsas-a...

This doesn't give other agencies the ability to just grab any NSA data. It just means the NSA doesn't have to filter data before passing it on.

Could you imagine if it were that easy to get info on any citizen? What's to stop a spy/traitor from becoming a border patrol guard, downloading all the info and selling it?

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