What has been the initial motivation for this procedure? Just gathering the data and rejecting people not willing to give in or actually looking for red flags justifying the denial of entry? If the latter applies, what does the set of red flags look like? I assume the given example in the article is not part of the initial motivation but rather consequence of misbehaviour of the guard.
US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
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Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
#182> US Customs officers didn’t even need to ask for his passwords — they were saved in their own system This is also horrifying. So there's a government database of plaintext passwords and a massive body of people have legitimate access?
Are you really that shocked that a government has databases like this?
Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
And besides, it still wouldn't help. They could hand you a device and tell you to log into your social media accounts. If you say you don't have the passwords because of whatever technical measures you cooked up to make them temporarily inaccessible, you're back to, "Don't do that next time. You're not entering today."
I'd be interested in their response to this technical measure: they're written down in a book on my desk at home.
They would probably tell younto bring them next time.
Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your take on the story?
It shows a hole in our rule of law. There's a case in front of SCOTUS, Hernández vs. Mesa , exploring the Constitutional protection of foreign nationals at the U.S. border [1]. In 2010, an unarmed fifteen-year-old Mexican boy was shot in the head by a U.S. Border Patrol agent. The boy was in a culvert jointly patrolled by the U.S. and Mexico, but officially, the agent was in the United States and the boy in Mexico. T…
The monthly fee thing sounds a bit much for visitors.
If there is a way to quickly get the data back on they can ask the password for that service or refuse you entry.
Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
This! Also, clever technical solutions won't help when not having any data is seen as suspicious. Like, you cannot tell them "I don't know my passowrds. They are in a password safe, and I do not have access right now". When the law says you have to hand over your passwords, "I don't know them right now" is probably not a valid excuse anyway.
what about the old My-dog-ate-my-sim-card-routine aka ditching your 2fa token ... like i really don';t know because I denied myself access: "...Then, before you cross the border, make sure you don’t have the SIM card that allows you—or customs officials—to receive that text message, essentially denying yourself the ability to cooperate with agents even if you wanted to. Zdziarski suggests mailing yourself the SIM car…
Then you will quite possibly be denied access simply because they cannot harvest your social media profiles for profiling.
Kennywinker's comment is right that technological cleverness won't help much here. Carry no devices, and you are suspicious and/or non-cooperative (unless you are over the age of sixty). Carry devices with no data, and you are suspicious and/or non-cooperative. Carry devices with carefully prepared fake profiles and datasets and you might pass muster… or be regarded as suspicious, non-cooperative, and/or actively resisting (if the border agent judging you suspects he is seeing fake data).
I wonder how they are trained to react to people without social media accounts.
Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
#186Everyone proposing clever technical solutions. Burner phones and encrypted cloud data etc... you are solving the wrong problem. Instead of engineering a way for the few people who care deeply to avoid this at great effort, engineer a way for this to not be legal. Write your congressperson, donate time and money to political parties, make privacy at the border for ALL (not just citizens) a priority in every election.
> Everyone proposing clever technical solutions. Burner phones and encrypted cloud data etc... you are solving the wrong problem. Yes, and this is why I will happily pay airlines more to transfer in another country that is not America (e.g. Canada, Mexico). It sucks because it makes travel more expensive, but US airports are not traveler friendly (they could start by having international transfer zones so you don't h…
Back in the late 1990s, they did used to have transfer zones. I am not sure why they stopped. US airlines lose some non-trivial amount of money especially from Latin American travelers headed to Europe.
Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
#187After many unpleasant dealings with US Customs, I avoid flying to or through the US completely even if it costs me more. The last time I flew from Canada to Singapore through the US, the US Customs officer - on Canadian soil - was hostile, asked me numerous questions about my travel, itinerary, who I was intending to meet, and my personal finances. When I questioned if all this was necessary as I'm not even traveling…
This is part of the problem, not the questions but the attitude. I can understand them asking questions, they have a short time to figure out if the traveler might be "up to no good". That is no reason to ask questions in way that attacks a person. Ask all the questions you want just don't be terrorizing jerk about it. Now one instance can be chalked up to a bad apple but over and over again I have heard stories like…
> Canadian customs officers may ask questions but they are generally not in a abusive tone.
Brit here, anecdata. I once entered Canada for business reasons and (long story short) my employer hadn't given me the correct visa paperwork. The Canadian border guys let me leave the airport and gave me 24 hours to come back with the correct paperwork (and threatened arrest if I didn't return). It was stressful but the guards were professional and relatively courteous. The guy I spoke to the next day basically said "we get this all the time, we know it's your company and not you".
Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
#188I'm Canadian running a company in California, and every time I cross the border, I get pulled into the office for an hour. There was one time last year where I got detained for 8 because they didn't believe that a college dropout could run a company, even calling me "full of shit" at one point. They had my computer and went through my email one by one asking me to cite specific dates of employment at 3am in the morni…
Why run a company in California?
Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
#189There needs to be some reasonable way to get your digital life into an E2E encrypted cloud, wipe your devices, fly into the police state you call home, and get setup again when you land. You can promise at the border that your head doesn't contain anything either. I get very worried about traveling with an object as alien and shiny as a Yubikey. I don't know how I'd explain it to an aneurism in a Kevlar vest without…
Encrypt the disk passwords to your lawyer's PGP key. Give them your lawyer's business card if they ask about it. Or don't bring your devices with you.
Then they can just refuse entry, like they did to him after he tried to enter after deleting the apps.
Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Educated won't visit the USA anymore. Only the people with desperate need for a job will "visit" the USA.
I know plenty of Europeans who are still enchanted enough by "Friends", "Sex and the City", "Breaking Bad", etc who are dying to visit the US. These stories don't have mainstream impact yet.
not sure about being enchanted by some tv shows, but yeah some people would still want to visit US, in land mass this big there is always something interesting to see (culture really ain't the draw for the US). these days I just keep explaining to them all the humiliation they would be exposed and hence they change plans accordingly. so will we. world is a beautiful place, too big to cover it properly in a lifetime.
go where it's exotic (this ain't US), where you are actually welcomed (again not US), experience traditional culture (what? seeing how shamefully native indians were/are treated? no thank you) and so on. if you are into big cities, european and asian places are way more interesting and intense anyway.