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Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

idlewords.com

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Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#111

Post by kasey_junk »

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…

> I think it's crazy that people walk around with phones that have access to years of email communications

You think its crazy in you wish you (and everyone else) had a viable alternative? Or, you think its crazy in that you do something else that others don't do?

If the latter, what do you do?

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#112

Post by kasey_junk »

tptacek wrote: post #46
deong wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wiping your stuff does no good at all. As pointed out in the article, they know who is on the flight hours before you land. They'll know you have a Facebook profile. The difference between having a laptop already logged into Facebook and a wiped laptop with no data is quite literally the time it takes them to tell you to type in the password for them. Ignorance isn't an escape clause. Which is, I think, the same prob…

If you're an at-risk traveler, you'd enable travel-lock pretty much as soon as you decide on your itinerary, potentially before you ever get on an airline manifest. The thing I think I see a lot of people missing here is that travel-lock doesn't wipe or disable your accounts; it just restricts history and breadth. For a lot of people, I think these services will get easier and more pleasant to use while travel-locked…

I'd turn this feature on my phone right now for gmail just for "lost phone" mitigation.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#113

Post by tptacek »

debt wrote: post #88

Most Americans don't travel so this likely won't happen in the US; even less travel internationally. http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2016-O-001/index.html

The overwhelming majority of people CBP actually deals with at the border are in fact citizens.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#114

Post by thex10 »

idlewords wrote: post #97
thex10 wrote: post #86

Nice idea. But it's treating the symptom rather than the root problem.

I agree. But the practical alternative right now is doing nothing.

Fair enough!

There are many good ideas here and I'll even wager that a 'trip mode' of some sort could even produce benefits outside of the held-at-the-border use case. It really does seem silly at retrospect that these tech giants have decided the default needed to be "expose all of the connections"

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#115

Post by tptacek »

kasey_junk wrote: post #112
tptacek wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're an at-risk traveler, you'd enable travel-lock pretty much as soon as you decide on your itinerary, potentially before you ever get on an airline manifest. The thing I think I see a lot of people missing here is that travel-lock doesn't wipe or disable your accounts; it just restricts history and breadth. For a lot of people, I think these services will get easier and more pleasant to use while travel-locked…

I'd turn this feature on my phone right now for gmail just for "lost phone" mitigation.

The problem with that is that CBP can (and surely soon will) compel travelers to log into their accounts from CBP's own equipment.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#116

Post by krapp »

idlewords wrote: post #49
tacostakohashi wrote: post #19

This is completely naive. 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 im…

People who care deeply about these issues work at Facebook and Google.

Facebook and Google also cooperate closely with the US government, law enforcement, intelligence services and state department. How can they be part of the solution when they're part of the problem?

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#117

Post by pseudalopex »

ppog wrote: post #74
idlewords wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US citizens can't be detained indefinitely at the border. The limit is a few hours.

That's fine for US citizens entering the US, but any 'travel mode' needs to work for the outbound trip too. If the country you're visiting has adopted a US-style border stance, then you're in no better a position than a non-US citizen visiting the US: the border forces of that other country can detain you until travel mode expires if they want. It seems like "They can't hold me for days while they wait for the mode t…

More likely they'd just send you home. Either way, denying people entry is bad for business and tourism. If enough people want to protect their accounts when they travel, countries will have to weigh the trade-offs.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#118

Post by aphextron »

Or we just give up social media.

What, exactly, has been gained from the days of just posting on anonymous message boards and using email?

Nothing but giving unimaginable power to creepy guys like Zuckerberg and the ability for governments and employers to track your entire life. I'll pass.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#119

Post by secfirstmd »

Ok, firstly, I think it's great that so many people are engaging on issues of privacy and at least trying to help folks understand how to mitigate their risks in these situations. Something I think that is getting missed about all this is that a lot of people are being very US and techno-centric when they create these articles. Security when travelling is about more than just digital issues.

Doing something like this requires that you consider the risks of your phone seizure versus the risks you may face without your primary smart phone. If your an activist flying from London to D.C then fine. But what about if your an activist flying from D.C to the D.R.C and back - then your threat model changes from potential TSA problems to physical security threats.

For just one example of this, let's say you ask people to ditch their phones and take a burner because of a potential risk at the US border. Now you have removed one of the best devices for the person's physical security - a smartphone that can update people about security alerts, about local news, weather, disease risk, riots (e.g the stuff we put in the Umbrella App dashboard - shameless plug -> https://www.secfirst.org), share data amongst groups of people on the ground, can send GPS alerts in a emergency, can help them navigate if there is a problem, has a flashlight on it in darkness, has access to emergency contact details, insurance information, medical data, nearest hospitals etc. Now, your relatively low likelihood/low impact potential digital security risk at a US border has overridden the low/medium likelihood but high impact physical security risks...

Ditto it's important to thing about basic tactical things like that people are lazy, data is expensive and they will often not bother to restore the most important contacts and information that they may need when they travel, which can be a problem in an emergency...

Again, it's great to see people engaging on security issues but please be aware of the threat model, context and consequences of what you are trading off.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#120

Post by ABCLAW »

It is worth noting that while social media represents a significant threat to ordinary travelers, the potential for significant harm through indirect leaks exists through retained professionals as well.

In fact, this situation might even be worse for those passing through the Canadian border. Please see: http://www.canada-usblog.com/2017/02/03/what-canadians-shoul...

& the linked: http://www.lexsage.com/documents/Border%20Searches%20of%20El...

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