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Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#231

Post by ngngngng »

This is why i'm so excited for the Librem smartphone. If i'm in complete control of the operating system, I can put measures in place to combat this. For example, a function that requires a password whenever the phone leaves a certain location (so if the police confiscate my phone, i'm sure it's locked).

Or maybe a function that you can activate that makes the phone appear bricked until the power button is pushed 20 times in a row. You could activate this before going through customs.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#232

Post by macintux »

folex wrote: post #181
abstractbarista wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point. The key here is to make sure your devices are all fully encrypted. Feel free to turn them on to prove they are real. But never decrypt. If this results in you missing your flight, so be it .

> But never decrypt. If this results in you missing your flight, so be it. Why? Is that more important to stay locked than miss granma's funeral, or more positively, 75th birthday?

That’s what makes this all the more malicious. No one wants to miss a flight, and sometimes the consequences are irreparable. Time is the one resource you can’t recover.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#233

Post by t0astbread »

leesalminen wrote: post #167
musha68k wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick reminder: Non US citizens only go to conferences outside the US. There is no excuse we should put up with this. Canada and EU are much better locations for this reason alone.

In the past several years, I’ve entered 6 countries as a US citizen. Only Canada has demanded access to my phone.

Are these kinda searches that common?

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#234

Post by pmoriarty »

Marsymars wrote: post #60
musha68k wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick reminder: Non US citizens only go to conferences outside the US. There is no excuse we should put up with this. Canada and EU are much better locations for this reason alone.

Not much better in Canada: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/guilty-plea-ends-case-t...

Countries often have reciprocal arrangements regarding how they treat each other's citizens. If your country treats country X's citizens like crap, odds are country X will start treating your country's citizens like crap too.

Because of this, it's likely that the world will likely spiral to worse and worse treatment of everyone. As the saying goes, an eye for an eye and soon the whole world is blind.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#235

Post by RyJones »

gruez wrote: post #224
RyJones wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was returning from Hong Kong a few weeks ago, the agent asked what city I was born in (fine) what hospital I was born in (I remember where it used to be, but I can't remember the name) and what the "number" of the county was I grew up in. What he meant was the prefix for the license plate. Luckily I remembered it. I suspect he grew up in the area, but it was super weird; also, he was probably fairly bored.

>what hospital I was born in people are expected to know this?

He expected me to, so yes, I guess?

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#236

Post by DDub »

darksaints wrote: post #151
busterarm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better, have a secure server at home and ansible playbooks to set up laptops (including getting any minor secrets that you need onto that laptop. Restrict more important stuff to just ssh). If your threat model doesn't include physical tampering/rootkits, just wipe your devices pre-travel and set it up when you get where you're going. If it does and you can afford to mitigate that risk, arrange to have cheap new devi…

If you're going that route, why not just create a disk image and scp it from your server? Certainly a lot easier than trying to rebuild everything from scratch.

actually I'd find running my ansible playbook much, much easier than transferring GB of disk image about. I maintain the playbook so that I can keep work laptop and personal laptop in sync. Although I am looking at Nixos as a possible replacement.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#237

Post by macintux »

ngngngng wrote: post #231

This is why i'm so excited for the Librem smartphone. If i'm in complete control of the operating system, I can put measures in place to combat this. For example, a function that requires a password whenever the phone leaves a certain location (so if the police confiscate my phone, i'm sure it's locked). Or maybe a function that you can activate that makes the phone appear bricked until the power button is pushed 20…

Lying to law enforcement is illegal, so subterfuges like that are perilous in their own way.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#238

Post by ngngngng »

tomohawk wrote: post #87

The process is the punishment, and they know it. The current state is as exactly predicted by those of us who were against creating the TSA in the first place.

Seriously. When traveling with my pregnant wife we realized that we weren't sure the scanners were safe for pregnant women, so we asked for a pat down.

She was in tears by the end of the experience.

We have both received many pat downs in Chinese airports that didn't bother either of us.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#239

Post by ngngngng »

macintux wrote: post #237
ngngngng wrote: post #231

This is why i'm so excited for the Librem smartphone. If i'm in complete control of the operating system, I can put measures in place to combat this. For example, a function that requires a password whenever the phone leaves a certain location (so if the police confiscate my phone, i'm sure it's locked). Or maybe a function that you can activate that makes the phone appear bricked until the power button is pushed 20…

Lying to law enforcement is illegal, so subterfuges like that are perilous in their own way.

Would it perilous if you just plead the fifth? If you knowingly state that you don't know how to turn the phone back on, then it's a lie, but if you just plead the 5th?

Also, why is it legal for them to lie to me when I can't lie to them?

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