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New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

papersplease.org

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Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#141

Post by gcb0 »

tomalpha wrote: post #73
alkonaut wrote: post #69

Unfortunately the recommended behavior is to be "difficult". Trying to somehow state your own rights, demand that officers perform searches in accordance with law etc. - which is "being difficult". If you are on your way to a great holiday, important meeting etc, you aren't going to risk it. Because anyone "being difficult" will be detained or rejected. So I'll just fold and give them my password. And they know this.…

This. Being "difficult" might be an option for US citizens, but if you're a visitor you're really only going to have a choice between cooperating and being refused entry. If you're refused entry you'll have a much harder job returning.

that's what they want you to belive. and it saddens me that they are achieving their goals.

as an immigrant, I have always opted out of the scanner with undocumented effectiveness and undocumented health effects with no consequences other than a pat down.

Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#142

Post by saurik »

easytiger wrote: post #36
saurik wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wiped laptop certainly doesn't look like that of a normal user without adding stuff.

> normal user The normal user browses the web and almost nothing else.

... but this laptop hasn't even been browsing the web, and so it will have no history and no cache and no saved passwords for websites and wifi hotspots ...

Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#143

Post by jermaustin1 »

wand3r wrote: post #131
jermaustin1 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked and voted, the US Election system was rigged. Due to political gerrymandering and a conservative media brainwashing machine, even when the country casts 2 million more votes for a president, she is not the one to win.

To be clear the general elections are very much rigged for the reasons you stated and many more. That said HRC lost because the popular vote is not what the candidates compete on. As an aside, I am still bitter about her attempted rigging of the election and successful interference in the DNC which left us in this current horrible predicament.

> That said HRC lost because the popular vote is not what the candidates compete on.

For sure, but the popular vote should be better represented by the district maps.

> I am still bitter about her ... successful interference in the DNC

I was a Bernie supporter, but I knew that the political machine wouldn't swing so far as to select him. He is too unorthodox, too progressive, too not-rich.

Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#144

Post by thrillgore »

saguro wrote: post #8
tehlike wrote: post #6

This should serve as a reminder to everyone to donate/support EFF and ACLU, as two of the very few organizations that watches for our rights. It is also a reminder that as we get more numb to issues like this, it gets worse. It is probably time to call your representatives and raise your voice.

Because calling paid-for representatives has such a strong record of success over the last decade of human rights erosion. Talking to your representative is roughly as useful in curbing these things, as doing nothing at all. What's the real solution?

We're really getting to the point where violence may be the path of least resistance here. I thought i'd never say that!

Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#145

Post by jermaustin1 »

belorn wrote: post #128
jermaustin1 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked and voted, the US Election system was rigged. Due to political gerrymandering and a conservative media brainwashing machine, even when the country casts 2 million more votes for a president, she is not the one to win.

No candidate since 2001 (or possible even before then) had a political platform which wanted to dismantle the practice of DHS. No politicians see the issue as a vote winner. Red or blue, the DHS funding and policy scope has been steadily increased by each administration. The blame can not be placed on any recent administration or person. The problem is a systemic issue, deriving from the constantly increased demands…

I will concede this is true, and I was going to say in the original post something along the lines of "not that she would have done anything to stymie this issue," but I felt that the comment was more on the fact that we don't have fairly drawn maps for our elected officials.

Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#146

Post by CaptainZapp »

piva00 wrote: post #71
kylec wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The complete loss of international tourism (and realistically there wouldn’t ever be a complete loss unless we closed the border) would result in a 1% loss for the US GDP/economy. Not nothing, but certainly not devastating.

You do understand there's also a downward spiral for tourism, right? Tourism generated 1% of the GDP but you don't know the impact on other industries, you haven't seen figures on lost of tax revenue from jobs lost, cost of retraining people to find new jobs, burden on society from unemployment, etc. I don't think that tourism will cease in the US but any downturn on it has larger effects than just the GDP figure bro…

I never understood why US airports never implemented the transit concept.

Theoretically it could be extremely convenient to use the US as a transit point if your final destination is, for example, a country in Latin America.

But when you connect via any US airport you need to deal with imigration, pick up your luggage, deal with customs hassle, re-check your luggage and proceed through the entire TSA song and dance.

Depending on the airport not even 3 hours may be sufficient to make the connection and the hassle you experience is just not worth it.

For comparison: Some European airports have legal connection times of 30 minutes (Vienna). Longer than 90 minutes is almost unheard of.

Just about any international airport gets that concept, even in massively underdeveloped countries. The US just doesn't seem to get it.

It must cost US carriers dozen -, if not hundreds of millions in yearly lost revenues.

Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#147

Post by crispyambulance »

It seems to me that few people are talking about what actually happens to phones/laptops when they're unlocked by a password given by the passenger.

There's a HUGE difference between...

A) A derpy mall-cop DHS agent casually browsing through your laptop/phone for a minute or two, looking at emails, pictures etc.

B) The contents of hard-drive/flash/phone being copied to a government server, stored in perpetuity, and subject to n-th degree content searches forever.

A is just annoying, B is vastly more concerning.

Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#148

Post by NoGravitas »

alkonaut wrote: post #105
batmenace wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres another case, though. Some people have no choice but to be "difficult". Consider, for example, a lawyer from an international firm travelling with company devices, which have on them privileged information that can under no circumstances be disclosed. These kinds of people have no choice but to be "difficult".

> These kinds of people have no choice but to be "difficult" Then they don't get in. Things like company secrets or client-lawyer confidentiality just doesn't apply here. You have a choice to give all that up and enter, or just return. The solution as others pointed out is not to travel with the data, but that's just cumbersome. You can always just use whatever cloud service you want, and delete the local copies, dow…

They may well ask for your passwords to the common cloud services; they already ask for your social media passwords.

Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#149

Post by alkonaut »

gcb0 wrote: post #140
alkonaut wrote: post #69

Unfortunately the recommended behavior is to be "difficult". Trying to somehow state your own rights, demand that officers perform searches in accordance with law etc. - which is "being difficult". If you are on your way to a great holiday, important meeting etc, you aren't going to risk it. Because anyone "being difficult" will be detained or rejected. So I'll just fold and give them my password. And they know this.…

> The only time I'd even hesitate to trade my precious time for my integrity is if I actually had something to hide I honestly can't tell if you are trolling, I missed the irony, or you are really as dense as a badly trained racist border office (which thankfully is not all of them)

Completely not trolling, nor ironic.

Now: I’ll be very clear that I don’t agree with these policies. They are terrible.

And obviously if I had anything sensitive I wouldn’t travel with it in the first place! But if I landed in Miami tomorrow for a holiday and someone asked me to unlock my phone so they could look around - would I? Yes! Because I know that not doing it leads to somewhere worse.

The point I was trying to make was that I don’t have the luxury of standing up for principles at the US border. Best case it will take a few hours of me being difficult while my family waits. Worse case I’m on a plane home again.

So the end result is that if I’m reluctant to show device data at the border, it’s because I realized that something on my device would be found a more serious issue than my refusal to show it.

Do not take my previous post as me subscribing to some form of “it’s no problem if you have nothing to hide”. That’s not what I was saying. It is a problem, and I just don’t have a choice.

Re: New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices

#150

Post by NoGravitas »

dawnerd wrote: post #34
saguro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

www.google.com/search?q=i+contacted+my+representative+site%3Areddit.com Knock yourself out. Spoiler alert: almost everyone reports getting a cookie-cutter email or scripted response about why the rep will stay the course. They clearly have an established strategy of how to handle the 'contact your rep' crowd and channel their efforts to /dev/null.

Oh, reddit. Yeah... I'll believe everything I see there. Yeah, some reps are bad and don't listen but I'm willing to bet most at least log down how many people complain about what. Having an attitude of contacting them does nothing only just makes things worse and has no potential upside. At least if you do "waste" your time contacting them you may have a change to do good.

I kind of have both experiences. I have frequently contacted my state and federal legislators, leaving messages with their staff, and have never gotten back any message other than a form letter or email stating that they are going to do exactly what they were planning on doing all along. But I'm also reasonably certain that their staff do keep a tally; just that there's plenty of stuff in their political calculus (demographics, gerrymandering, campaign contributions) that means they don't have to pay attention.

The biggest irony is that shortly after I contact any legislator telling them how I oppose their policy position, they start sending me mail asking for campaign contributions.

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