11–20 of 228 posts
The real solution is a political one where we speak up and legeislate and litigate that the 4th amendment applies a the border.
It's not like they couldn't make you turn travel mode off if they wanted to. How about pushing for a law closing this 4th amendment loophole at the borders, at least for citizens? Not that it'd do much. If the border agents really want to see one's social media accounts, I have zero doubt they can get that data from other government agencies. In fact, they probably already have it. It sounds to me like they're just t…
If we stipulate that your second paragraph is true, then travel mode is in fact a complete countermeasure to that behavior. (I don't think it's true).
> We need a ‘trip mode' for social media sites that reduces our contact list and history to a minimal subset of what the site normally offers. Not only would such a feature protect people forced to give their passwords at the border, but it would mitigate the many additional threats to privacy they face when they use their social media accounts away from home. Border security officer: I see you have trip mode on. Tur…
Please read the entire post.
It's not like they couldn't make you turn travel mode off if they wanted to. How about pushing for a law closing this 4th amendment loophole at the borders, at least for citizens? Not that it'd do much. If the border agents really want to see one's social media accounts, I have zero doubt they can get that data from other government agencies. In fact, they probably already have it. It sounds to me like they're just t…
The idea is that they cannot in fact make you turn travel mode off, because travel mode doesn't turn off. It's a time lock. The point is that while locked, Facebook and Google Mail are still usable; they just don't have your whole history available on them. If we stipulate that your second paragraph is true, then travel mode is in fact a complete countermeasure to that behavior. (I don't think it's true).
> We need a ‘trip mode' for social media sites that reduces our contact list and history to a minimal subset of what the site normally offers. Not only would such a feature protect people forced to give their passwords at the border, but it would mitigate the many additional threats to privacy they face when they use their social media accounts away from home. Border security officer: I see you have trip mode on. Tur…
Please read the entire post.
If they get your password can't they just turn of travle mode for you? Or wait until you do the same? I don't know that there is a technical answer here accept wiping your phone/laptop before you go through customes. The real solution is a political one where we speak up and legeislate and litigate that the 4th amendment applies a the border.
> To work effectively, a trip mode feature would need to be easy to turn on, configurable (so you can choose how long you want the protection turned on for) and irrevocable for an amount of time chosen by the user once it’s set. There’s no sense in having a ‘trip mode’ if the person demanding your password can simply switch it off, or coerce you into switching it off.
If they get your password can't they just turn of travle mode for you? Or wait until you do the same? I don't know that there is a technical answer here accept wiping your phone/laptop before you go through customes. The real solution is a political one where we speak up and legeislate and litigate that the 4th amendment applies a the border.
One thing I wonder about is how quickly a travel mode would become grounds for denial of entry.
Or how quickly Facebook/Google/Twitter would comply with some classified FBI/NSA directive to provide the data anyway. The first mistake is trusting these networks with your personal life in the first place. Nothing can erase that except your ability and willpower to keep your secrets to yourself.
As for your second point, there's no going back for an awful lot of people. And holding that aside, it's a sad world where using a computer to communicate is somehow a mistake.
Firstly, social media's only incentive is to make your data as widely available as possible (in the interests of ad revenue), and maintain a good relationship with the government in their jurisdiction. Every other existing "privacy" setting on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc is already obfuscated to the point of unusability, for this reason, and "travel mode" would be no different.
Secondly, lets imagine that FB did implement a watertight "travel mode" that hid your embarrassing data effectively while you were travelling. Third parties would just start capturing and storing posts while you have "travel mode" off, and sell that to CBP, or whoever else wants to pay for it.