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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?

#461

Post by dang »

bflesch wrote: post #160
danbruc wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the software or procedures do a reasonable job at selecting people. It is hard to tell from the outside whether this is the case but the cases that became publicly known at least suggest that the system is not flawless and also seems to pick people with opinions or doing things the US disapproves but which are not illegal. How much information must be provided is certainly debatable. Article 9 continues as fo…

I am astonished by your entitlement. The state has no obligation to tell you about the inner workings of their selection / profiling process. All that counts is safety of its citizens. If I'm not a citizen and representatives of the country I want to enter tell me that they think I am a risk, the systems actually works. Of all these one-sided stories we are hearing one wonders about what kind of darknet "activism" so…

> I am astonished by your entitlement.

That's a breach of HN's rules. Personal abuse is not allowed in comments here, so please don't post like this.

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

#462

Post by kbart »

angry_octet wrote: post #457
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm intrigued that you think that requires an IMEI.

It doesn't require it, but it helps. The IMEI gives away information like manufacturer, device model and rev, and persists across changes in SIM.

IMEI is sent when you register to operator's network, so you get that kind of information anyway. Asking for IMEI at the border links person to a physical device so you have a complete set for tracking.

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

#463

Post by coldtea »

jacquesm wrote: post #390
coldtea wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not 'as if' Actually it is just like that. What part did you find unlike that? The "sovereignty"? Mexico, which I used as my example, is also sovereign. And the rest of the things are all true: Ukraine is directly in Russia's borders, it has areas with large ethnic Russian population, and it's legitimate government was toppled. Even the part about bona fide neo-nazis being part of the power coalition is true.…

If America invaded Mexico I could get your point, but they didn't (so far, with Trump at the helm all bets are off). Oh, and Ukraine is not within Russia's borders. The USSR died a while ago.

>If America invaded Mexico I could get your point, but they didn't (so far, with Trump at the helm all bets are off).

That's an analogy of something the US could do that it would be similar to the Crimea situation.

In real life they did much worse (just in the past 10-15 years): they invaded 2 countries (and bombed 8 or so), bombed them, occupied them, created hell-holes of fundamentalism and mayhem where functional states once stood -- and they did that 6000+ miles away from their borders, where they have no place to be, and no ethnic Americans to protect there to justify their actions.

>Oh, and Ukraine is not within Russia's borders. The USSR died a while ago.

Not sure if you even know the region. The two countries share miles upon miles of borders. Except if you took "within" to mean "surrounded" -- I mean "right there in their border".

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

#464

Post by angry_octet »

kbart wrote: post #462
angry_octet wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't require it, but it helps. The IMEI gives away information like manufacturer, device model and rev, and persists across changes in SIM.

IMEI is sent when you register to operator's network, so you get that kind of information anyway. Asking for IMEI at the border links person to a physical device so you have a complete set for tracking.

The point is that the problem "Listen to Ms Jane Robert's phone calls" goes from "Of all phones on the network, identify Ms Jane Robert's" to "Ms Jane Roberts has a phone with IMEI xxxx, log all traffic for all SIM identities; prepare implant for LG G5 sold with Vodafone config."

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

#465

Post by mahyarm »

sandworm101 wrote: post #441
mahyarm wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that only work if your a US citizen? If your not then bye bye visa?

Canadian, so no visa req for visits. Special temp visa for lawyer work, issued at boarder crossing. They dont get mad. The trick is to be reasonable. They know it will be difficult to get an order/warrant to search a lawyer's machine. Lawyer-client confidentiality is one of the few things that trumps even terrorism.

Well, you have a status that could go away if the CBP officer gets grumpy. At least you don't have a living in the USA to protect.

As a client although, is that ok? Also this guy worked for NASA, and knowing many big corps that kind of policy would apply in some indirect way with work devices. But it didn't seem to matter for him.

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

#466

Post by infinite8s »

DashRattlesnake wrote: post #386
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…

> 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. Wouldn't an OK mitigation be to give the device to a US citizen for the border crossing? The US citize…

If you were traveling with said friend (you being the foreign national and friend being the US citizen), CBP would just make you unlock your own phone. This is not like a logic game you can outwit.

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

#467

Post by venomsnake »

dang wrote: post #460
venomsnake wrote: post #269

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 differe…

We've banned this account for conducting religious flamewars on HN. No one is allowed to do this here, and we warned you repeatedly. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13661540 and marked it off-topic.

Sorry but this are facts on the ground. You can double check with someone from EE what the sentiment in EE is about those refugees.

Explaining why a place is islamophobic and arabophobic and not hating all refugees is not firing a religious flamewar.

But whatever - your site your rules.

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

#468

Post by mnw21cam »

ipsin wrote: post #194
yawz wrote: post #138

The question I have in mind is "do they have the right to confiscate your device or to disappear with it?". What if I told them "I'm going to unlock it, but I'm the driver. Ask me all that you want to see, and I'll take you to that app?".

Accounts I've read of this, no you do not get to drive, at all. They will take it into a back room, do things you won't get to see, and you may get it back when they're done with you, or they may keep it (example: [1]). If you're a security researcher, or property paranoid, you can then dispose of the device in some way, because you have no idea what they did to it, the device firmware, baseband, etc. Probably nothin…

And do you get to claim compensation for the equipment that is now untrustworthy and you therefore need to replace?

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

#469

Post by jacquesm »

coldtea wrote: post #463
jacquesm wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If America invaded Mexico I could get your point, but they didn't (so far, with Trump at the helm all bets are off). Oh, and Ukraine is not within Russia's borders. The USSR died a while ago.

> If America invaded Mexico I could get your point, but they didn't (so far, with Trump at the helm all bets are off). That's an analogy of something the US could do that it would be similar to the Crimea situation. In real life they did much worse (just in the past 10-15 years): they invaded 2 countries (and bombed 8 or so), bombed them, occupied them, created hell-holes of fundamentalism and mayhem where functional…

Within means 'within'. Bordering on and sharing a border would be the right way to describe it. So no, Ukraine is not 'within' Russia by any definition just like Canada is not 'within' the USA and Germany is not 'within' the Netherlands.

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

#470

Post by shitgoose »

mamon wrote: post #290
shitgoose wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to nitpick, but so far Ukrainians have been running from Ukraine to Russia - 2.6 mil since 2014 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians_in_Russia )

Are you sure those are actual Ukrainians, and not just ethnical Russians with Ukrainian citizenship? Eastern Ukraine has a huge Russian minority.

and Crimea has a huge Russian majority, i guess that's why it fell off so easily.

i wish Ukrainians would be more inclusive and stop separating Ukrainians into "real" ones and ethnic "others", whose only link to Ukraine is the Ukrainian passport.

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