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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

#301

Post by cryoshon »

kennywinker wrote: post #49

Everyone 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.

the technical aspect of this issue is a solvable problem.

the social and political aspects of it are not. there's no political traction against this stuff. the border patrol types are too stupid to understand simple and innocent explanations, and treating them as equals is a surefire way to incur their wrath.

the way to make privacy at the border work for everyone is for everyone to conspire to keep the border patrol in the dark. throw them a (fake) bone or a (true at first evidence check) lie, and keep moving on.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#302

Post by chrismartin »

kennywinker wrote: post #49

Everyone 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.

I disagree. Maybe people can influence policy in US, but this will still happen to journalists in China, women in Saudi Arabia, suspected drug users in the Philippines, and tomorrow's persecuted minority in tomorrow's undemocratic regime.

Technical self-defense measures are imperfect partial workarounds but the best we have to offer for people in these situations.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#303

Post by scj »

Buge wrote: post #207
kogepathic wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Canada also requires your password at the border. Recently one guy even faced 1 year in prison for refusing. At least in the US you don't face prison time. New Zealand asks as well.

It probably wouldn't have survived a charter challenge... But he accepted a $500 fine that saved years of legal battles, and the CBSA doesn't get a precedent set against them.

From what I've read, I'd suggest that the law is unclear at this point. It will probably be decided by the Supreme Court within a decade. But I find the ambiguity frustrating...

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#304

Post by Fuxy »

kennywinker wrote: post #49

Everyone 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.

What are you talking about the entire US political system is corrupt by design. Politicians need to beg large corporations for money meaning the corporations own their ass and your fooling yourself if you think your meagre contribution is going to get you heard.

Realistically speaking the US was never a democracy but over the year it's turned more and more into a corporatocracy where the only way to get heard is if you are rich or a corporation.

If the US government was code I would have scrapped it a long time a go and re-written it but then again don't expect anything to change for the better where it matters since all the interest groups are really good a protecting themselves and as log as they have the money anybody else has no say on the matter.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#305

Post by LordKano »

I have been putting a lot of thought into this because I'm going to be traveling out of and then back into the country later this year. I'm seriously considering taking an otherwise pristine device with me and wiping it before I get back to customs.

It's not so much that I have anything to hide, it's the principle of the thing.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#306

Post by Bartweiss »

fulafel wrote: post #38

Argh, you couldn't invent this kafkaesque stuff: "When he went through secondary inspection at Vancouver airport, US Customs officers didn’t even need to ask for his passwords — they were saved in their own system." "They said, ‘Next time you come through, don’t have a cleared phone,’ and that was it. I wasn’t let through. " -- I know that US/Canada privacy laws might not give people protection in this situations, bu…

The fact that they saved his passwords is pretty ugly. They're free to demand them 100% of the time, so it raises questions of whether they're saving them for some other purpose.

And more simply, it means you have to trust border patrol's password management as well as your own. (Or change them all immediately.)

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#307

Post by LordKano »

kennywinker wrote: post #49

Everyone 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.

They're attempting to solve the problem that they, as individuals, can solve.

I have no realistic chance of convincing enough of my fellow Americans that the privacy of foreign nationals who wish to enter this country is more important than maintaining the false sense of security we get by violating it to put any pressure on lawmakers or enforcers of policy and get things changed.

What you can do, today, is employ technical measures to prevent the agents at the border from snooping into your private business.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#308

Post by Bartweiss »

b3lvedere wrote: post #182
inlined wrote: post #78

> 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?

Storing plaintext, readable by random border patrol staffers? Yeah.

I'm not surprised they have access to a lot of accounts, but that's different from trusting that everyone working the front line at border patrol will use that database securely and ethically.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#309

Post by moftz »

tempestn wrote: post #121
bruceb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apparently they do it intentionally to throw people off, supposedly making it easier to spot if they're hiding something. It doesn't really hold water with me, but that's the rationalization I've heard fwiw.

I was on a school trip flying out of IAD and the TSA guy standing near security looks at me and asks me if I'm feeling ok because I look nervous. I've flown probably over a dozen times in my life at that point and everything up until that question had been a very routine day at the airport so I wouldn't have had any reason to be so. I just looked at him and said no, and he replies back that he was just checking. I think he had just recently sat through a powerpoint on detecting suspicious people by confronting them. I'm guessing the thinking is if they ask someone if they are nervous, the less experienced smugglers and terrorists are going to react even more nervously to that kind of question. But you are at an airport. There are plenty of people flying for the first time and those that are just always apprehensive about flying. Little questions like that can surely help when trying to determine the mood or emotional state of someone (like the Israelis do) but it was a dumb question. Expecting your average, uneducated TSA officer to be able to pull off those sly interrogation techniques is asking a bit much from them.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#310

Post by ohstopitu »

I've always wanted to visit the US. I grew up in India and UAE and viewed US as the ultimate place to be. It was my lifelong dream to get a job and settle in the US (and have an American way of life).

The more time goes by, the more the US is moving away from that pedestal I had put it on.(privacy is getting eroded, cops are killing people, the govt. does not trust it's own citizens etc. - and no it's got nothing to do with Trump, this was happening before Trump too - doubt if he'll make it better).

Even now, US still has a lot of ideals I consider dear, but man, they are making it hard for me to even visit the country (wanted to have an all-over-US driving trip when I get my car - but I doubt if that's happening considering recent news)

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