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1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

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Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#211
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly think customs agents care whether you'll get fired or not? US immigrations will permanently sever families that have been together for years or even decades with utter disregard for the emotional trauma they're inflicting. Your job matters exactly fuck-all to a CPB agent.

Yup. The correct solution is to stop traveling to the US. Stop sending your employees to the US as well. If the rest of the world starts insisting that US companies always come to them because of how US border agents act, that shit will bubble up to the lobbyists real fast.

Bingo.

Why would anyone want to go through that on their vacation? Unless you enjoy that sort of thing, go somewhere pleasant instead. (And if you enjoy that sort of thing, there are far easier ways...)

I say this as a US citizen who will be sad if it comes to pass, but this bullshit won't stop unless the rest of the world refuses to put up with it. Your average US citizen doesn't travel internationally (only about 10% of the population has a passport), so they don't notice unless it hits their wallets.

Please force us to stop.

Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#212
Its great that they have at least thought about this and developed something, but this just sidesteps the issue.

Only dissidents in despotic regimes need to resort to these kind of workarounds for lack of other options. Why should citizens of a democratic country have to workaround anything?

The solution to privacy, surveillance and overreach issues in democratic countries has to be political, and not technical.

Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#213
post #198

It's a clever idea, but how long before border authorities simply order travelers to log on to 1Password and turn off travel mode, or be denied entry? I'm guessing not very.

A solution, and what I first thought this did from the headline is to lock you out of your account for, say 4 hours

sounds like a great way to get detained for 4 hours

Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I could argue that my intent was to protect myself from identity theft, should my device be stolen. It's a reasonable explanation for having deleted the data. I'd also argue that I could've purchased a completely new device immediately prior to travel and brought that along, with the intention of being able to say that the device had never contained information that I was trying to hide. I think that part of the…

> [proving intent is] essentially impossible if you have a device that never contained sensitive data in any form. I'd like to see a short story based on this premise: man is arrested and tried for crossing the border with a brand new phone, having left his usual phone at home. The prosecution argues that since he presumably usually keeps sensitive information on his phone, not copying that data to the phone he was c…

> he presumably usually keeps sensitive information

Wouldn't they have to argue that he was a person of interest for some time now. That they have records of him traveling two and from countries of interest. That he is on a watch list?

For the average Joe. I don't think this would get very far.

My response would be. "What sensitive information are you looking for?"

Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#215
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in this case the correct technical term is "denied entry". You haven't passed immigration to the country. Deportation is the expulsion of someone who's actually in the country, past the border, and resident or visiting.

Potato/potahto, really. Good luck getting a visa next time if you've ever been "denied entry". Really, for non-Americans the best advice is just don't go in the first place. Second best advice is just comply with border security personnel. Any tricks like leaving the battery empty, bringing a burner, not bringing a laptop and getting a loaner when you get there etc, they do nothing but raise suspicions.

> they do nothing but raise suspicions

Oh god, no. Technical measures - of course - do work. So does erasing data from phones, laptops, hard drives, etc.

Do not let the security theater scare you into obedience.

Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read rosser's comment above. If push came to shove, your clever wordplay would amount to getting into a rules-lawyering contest with Federal prosecutors, and I promise you that is a contest you would lose.

I don't think it's rules lawyering to say that literally not having the data is different than hiding it. There's nothing illegal about choosing to not bring stuff with you when you travel. And as long as the CBP's authority is limited to searching your devices and not forcing you to log into websites, then simply not carrying the data on your device seems perfectly reasonable. Furthermore, I don't think there's anyt…

> Furthermore, I don't think there's anything productive at all about making the argument that federal prosecutors will get you no matter what you do. That's just shutting down the discussion entirely.

Well, it is true that if the government wants to come after you- as in, you specifically- then it is basically true that they will get you no matter what you do. But that's not the point I was making in my previous posts, so let's drop it.

The point I was trying to make was that this 1Password feature will not help you, legally, if CBP realizes you're using it and they want to make a fuss. Maybe if you rolled your own PW manager and decided not to sync the incriminating data, you'd have a case. But this feature is literally advertised as "protect your data from unwarranted searches [clearly implying, searches by the government] when you travel". The technical implementation (your "deleting" vs. "not having" distinction) does not matter: the intent is clear.

Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#217
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what is already happening across the country is not a good enough reason already, I doubt anything will be.

Yep. Quite simply, the 0.1% of the US population here on HN does not care about privacy nor protesting nor writing to their local or state government. HN needs to stop living in a bubble. Only 1/3 of the US even bothered voting in the Trump v Clinton presidential election. I'll let you think about that for a moment. Now think about border searches. Has your phone been searched? Neither has mine. I'll go back to my co…

Where did you get the 1/3 from? It's been 55% of eligble voters. Counting non-eligibles wouldn't really make sense in your argument

Source: https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/11/11/polit...

Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#218
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what is already happening across the country is not a good enough reason already, I doubt anything will be.

Yep. Quite simply, the 0.1% of the US population here on HN does not care about privacy nor protesting nor writing to their local or state government. HN needs to stop living in a bubble. Only 1/3 of the US even bothered voting in the Trump v Clinton presidential election. I'll let you think about that for a moment. Now think about border searches. Has your phone been searched? Neither has mine. I'll go back to my co…

59% of eligible voters voted (http://www.electproject.org/2016g). Not great, but much more than 1/3.

Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#219

The right solution to this problem is, when traveling, always answer "no" to "may I search your laptop?" It sucks, and it many mean a lot of hassle ranging from confiscated equipment to being held at the border to being refused entry, but this is just one of the new risks of travel. Border security only gets away with this because people say yes. Companies need to make clear to their employees (and the public) that s…

>always answer "no" to "may I search your laptop?"

Good luck with that when faced with a border nazi & zero rights.

I just leave my personal laptop behind when travelling to countries with dubious personal freedom policies...like the US.

Re: 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders

#220

This feature really should ask you to commit to your duration of travel beforehand. It's no use if you can be compelled to readd the data.

Better, the feature should _always_ show both "Enable Travel Mode" and "Disable Travel Mode" buttons so that it's not possible to tell whether or not it's enabled. Disabling travel mode should prompt for a password, then return a message like "all vaults protected with this password are now enabled" no matter what the result of the operation is.
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