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Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

idlewords.com

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Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#61

Post by JoshTriplett »

ksenzee wrote: post #45
joezydeco wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Note that CBP does not have access to all the data NSA has gathered. If they did, we wouldn't be talking about this at all; they'd already have everything they wanted.

Relying on dysfunctional communication between portions of government doesn't seem like a sustainable strategy.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#63

Post by rdl »

I'd been thinking about a similar thing: a "limited access for border guards" mode.

Basically, you can turn over the phone to border guards in a way which gives them access to what is on the phone, but which logs actions, and allows you to easily revert/revoke any changes they make. (This would also be a mode you'd turn over to an employer demanding access).

Potentially this mode might also block access to certain things (secret FB groups, archives over a certain age, some chat logs), but would otherwise be fully functional.

The benefit would mainly be that all actions taken would be logged and reportable, as a way to try to keep authorities from poking in places they shouldn't. It seems they are NOT mostly using forensic imaging tools, but logging in directly on the devices, at least right now, so there would be some value.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#64

Post by nodamage »

jethro_tell wrote: post #11

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.

> The real solution is a political one where we speak up and legeislate and litigate that the 4th amendment applies a the border.

Considering the tiny percentage of Americans that travel overseas or even hold passports, I'm not sure a political solution is realistic. I think we might be outnumbered by the people who don't care about such privacy issues because it will never affect them.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#65

Post by TorKlingberg »

tptacek wrote: post #4

To be effective, this would need to become a kind of norm for overseas travelers, the same way traveler's checks used to be. The idea would be that just as you don't carry a bag with your birth certificate, stock certificates, property titles, and jewelry with you, you also don't carry a 10 year archive of every email you've ever sent or a detailed list of every person you've ever spoken to. In particular, it needs t…

Good point, but it doesn't need to be anywhere near a majority. If just 1% is travelers use it, it would not trigger more than a few extra questions. Especially if those 1% are mostly computer professionals where deeper questioning hardly ever turns up anything.

One feature I'd like with this travel mode is having a log of every bit of data that was accessed during the trip. At least then I would know how much was copied. Some kind of rate limiting would be good too, so they cannot just copy everything.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#66

Post by deong »

robbiemitchell wrote: post #24
mholt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't they just detain you until the time runs out?

Ideally it would not be evident that the account is in travel mode.

I think that would be difficult to achieve. If it's minimal enough to achieve the goal, it's minimal enough to look like travel mode.

If the only goal is to refuse them access to your account, you can do that already. Your devices will be confiscated, non-citizens will be refused entry, but you can do it if your device encryption is strong enough.

The goal here seems to be to give you the ability to get through the border without giving up your information. If it looks like "trip mode", it's failed at that goal, and I'm not sure it's possible to make it both mainstream and stealthy enough to work.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#67

Post by mahyarm »

4ad wrote: post #48
idlewords wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CBP is not allowed to detain US citizens past some nebulous limit measured in hours.

My gut feeling is that non-US citizens are more likely to be affected by this CBP policy than US citizens. Don't get me wrong here, happy if some solutions works for some subset of people, but as a non-US citizen I want something that works for me .

TillE: If your immigrating (this includes green card holders) to the USA, and have lived there for years, that isn't a very practical solution.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#68

Post by 4ad »

TillE wrote: post #58
4ad wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gut feeling is that non-US citizens are more likely to be affected by this CBP policy than US citizens. Don't get me wrong here, happy if some solutions works for some subset of people, but as a non-US citizen I want something that works for me .

Hey, you have any easy solution: never ever visit the US. The overwhelming majority of non-citizens passing through the border are on some kind of temporary visit, so it's relatively easy to choose to stay the hell away.

That's a very defeatist position (not to mention that this policy is emulated, or will be soon emulated by many other countries). Isolationisms won't help neither the political situation in the world at large, nor the situation in the US right now. The US is a great place to visit, a great place to do business in, and a great place to live in. Not to mention that many, many people that are affected by this policy are non-citizens that are in the process of becoming a citizen (either formally, or not started yet). Or many are employees of some US company living in some other country.

My parents and my partner are in the US. They have lived there for 27 years, but I am not a US citizen. Are you telling me that I should just give up on my family?

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#69

Post by Bokagha »

Why not go further with the idea of a Travel Mode toggle and have it be tied to the device itself. This cuts out any possibility of any data being left on the device from being analyzed easily, social media or otherwise.

Google and/or Apple could add this as a new menu toggle similar to Airplane mode. Once switched on, while in an airport, prevents the device from being unlocked. Then by utilizing geofencing, once the device leaves the airport it unlocks and can be used again.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#70

Post by tptacek »

idlewords wrote: post #59
4ad wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gut feeling is that non-US citizens are more likely to be affected by this CBP policy than US citizens. Don't get me wrong here, happy if some solutions works for some subset of people, but as a non-US citizen I want something that works for me .

I agree with you. Non-citizens traveling to the US are in a very bad position right now.

A significant part of why things are bad for non-resident aliens is that protecting your social media accounts is abnormal, so doing it flags you as an anomaly.

But that's not because people don't want to protect their social media accounts. You could probably make decent money with a "travel lock" product that groomed your accounts this way, in fact. The reason nobody does it is that the big cloud services don't offer this as a built-in feature.

So this is a case, it seems to me, where helping citizens will have a knock-on effect of also helping non-resident aliens.

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