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Pair Locking Your iPhone

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Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#111

Post by saagarjha »

noident wrote: post #18

If you want to keep your phone secure, enable a long passcode, turn on full device encryption, and turn it off. If you are a US citizen, you can't be turned away at the border or forced to unlock the device. If you're not a US citizen or don't want to be harrassed by customs, bring a burner phone. Tools like Cellebrite can and do take advantage of security vulnerabilities. Turning off pair locking lulls users into a…

You can also press the lock button five times to make it refuse to unlock without a valid passcode.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#112

Post by kyboren »

Keverw wrote: post #79
sneak wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, refusing to unlock/answer questions results in a 3-30 hour delay, depending on the mood of the border pigs.

You have actual experience? Like first hand? Lots of horror stories out there though, including people claiming they were sexually assaulted. Seems like a major blow to civil rights, even recently a mayor was detained but haven't been following the entire story.

I also have first hand experience as a US citizen refusing to answer any questions each of the ~couple dozen times in the past half decade or so I have crossed the US border. In my experience, not only should you decline to answer any questions, you should demand to have an attorney present for any questioning. This should end the interrogation fishing expedition, though in my experience you need to repeat yourself 3-4 times, sometimes to the supervisor, before CBP officers get the message.

My experience is nearly always (but not always) being sent to secondary screening for anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours. When due to the detention I have missed an onward domestic connection, my airlines have always re-booked me without charge. My luggage is manually searched probably 2/3 of the time. Treatment from CBP officers varies from respectful just-doing-my-job (maybe 1 in 10 officers) to outright hostile (maybe 5 in 10 officers).

So long as you provide evidence for your claim to US citizenship--especially a valid passport--a 30 hour detention is certainly unreasonable, and @sneak should seriously consider filing a lawsuit against the director of the DHS for the constitutional tort and for violating his civil rights under color of law. Ideally he/she would seek injunctive relief preventing DHS/CBP from detaining people presenting themselves at the US border and claiming US citizenship for any longer than is necessary to verify the validity of the claim to citizenship.

Airport CBP checkpoints are extensively surveilled, and documentary proof of these violations can be subpoenaed. If actually filing a lawsuit is too much, you can submit a FOIA and Privacy Act request for all data CBP holds on you, including your TECS records. I doubt you can get audiovisual surveillance data without litigating a FOIA case, but it's also worth a shot. Prepare to wait 1+ year in any case.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#113

Post by jeroenhd »

sombremesa wrote: post #104
jeroenhd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. And remember that international airports are also borders!

So does it extend 100 miles from airports?

Yes, but only the international ones. About 65% of the US population lives in such a zone according to this article: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/who-lives-in-border-p...

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#114

Post by taneq »

jwr wrote: post #35
kazinator wrote: post #2

> Pair locking is a useful feature to protect yourself against invasive device searches. Probably also a good way to get onto no-fly lists, and spend hours in detention, etc.

I find this whole discussion (including the above comment) surreal, given that we are talking about the country that used to be called "the land of the free" and that claims superiority over countries that restrict freedoms.

The more I hear about the U.S. the less I want to go there, for any reason, ever.

I'm sure the people are lovely but the government is scary.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#115

Post by earenndil »

2rsf wrote: post #102
Nextgrid wrote: post #24

Note that this disables the use of Activation Lock, so in case of theft the bad guy can erase the device and resell it. Also this won’t actually protect you against bootrom exploits.

I don't get the benefit of Activation Lock, a thief will find it out only AFTER your phone was stolen, I doubt they will give it back to you. It's the same as with GPS / Position Car Alarms- it's great for your insurance company, but in most cases I don't want to get my car back damaged or in pieces

It's like herd immunity: if most phones have an activation lock, then thieves are less incentivized to steal them. Obviously they can still sell them for parts, but they're worth less.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#116

Post by saagarjha »

javajosh wrote: post #99

Isn't it possible that searching your phone at the border is security theater? I think it's likely that the US already has permanent, remote access to most phones.

> Isn't it possible that searching your phone at the border is security theater?

I mean, many people believe that many of the things that the TSA or CBP do are a security theater.

> I think it's likely that the US already has permanent, remote access to most phones.

There seems to be a large number of cases where law enforcement were denied access to a device and seemingly were stymied by this fact (detaining the owner, etc.) What makes you think that they're doing this just because?

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#117

Post by TeMPOraL »

xwdv wrote: post #45
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's no way to verify Obscuring in this manner likely counts as lying to a federal officer, particularly if they catch on and ask if this is your main profile.

Doesn’t matter. If there’s truly no way to verify, there’s nothing they can do in a scalable way to determine people are lying about their main accounts. The only thing they can do is use fear to get you to comply, or make you doubt your deniable encryption scheme is truly secure. If they really wanted to could they find out? Perhaps. Maybe if they use CCTV footage and extract your phones screen and do comparisons or…

> Doesn’t matter. If there’s truly no way to verify, there’s nothing they can do in a scalable way to determine people are lying about their main accounts.

It doesn't have to be scalable; border control already isn't scalable and relies on uniformed officers making decisions on the spot. It's not hard to add additional point in training that says, "if a person has suspiciously empty phone and the phone is a model X, ask them to unlock the second account; if they refuse or pretend they don't have one, apply 3-30 hours of pressure". This would probably cover 99% of cases.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#118

Post by thenewnewguy »

mrandish wrote: post #43
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's no way to verify Obscuring in this manner likely counts as lying to a federal officer, particularly if they catch on and ask if this is your main profile.

INAL but I don't think that legally it would be lying. I believe lying requires more than not complying. Plus, we always have the right to remain silent.

Even if true, border officials will start asking everyone "is this your main profile". I guess you could refuse to answer, but that will make the answer obvious.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#119

Post by Keverw »

sneak wrote: post #98
Keverw wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have actual experience? Like first hand? Lots of horror stories out there though, including people claiming they were sexually assaulted. Seems like a major blow to civil rights, even recently a mayor was detained but haven't been following the entire story.

Yes, for several years I declined to answer any of their rude and invasive questions, on about a dozen border crossings.

Interesting. Wonder if they target you for some reason? but I think some questions are just following a script, so it might seem invasive but they do this all day.

My dream is if ever got rich from tech or won the lottery, is to travel full time. By plane, train, cruise ship and then buy an RV to explore more of the US. I think RVs are super cool but feel they are a bit outdated compared to modern cars. So hoping by then they'd improve.

But I feel like living an alternative lifestyle would subject me to harassment at some point. I also dream of a mansion in central FL and supercars, but I'm also into minimalism and feel like there's more to life than just buying a bunch of fancy things, that need to be taken care of.

But even starting out as a nomad, I know many states give people trouble at the DMV for full time RVing since mail forwarders aren't considered a valid address, so a lot of people have to change their domicile to a friendlier state such as South Dakota which recognizes people who travel full time. You have a affidavit to fill out, bring proof you rented a mailbox and stayed a night in the state. it's estimated about a million full-time RVers. Then some people live out of boats or a suitcase traveling around.

There's a guy who goes by Super Mario who lives on cruise ships full time. https://youtu.be/bcBzOesw7sc - I think he's a investment advisor who works remotely now. However instead of going from ship to ship, he books on a ship that circles around the same area back to back for 6 months in advance so he can get the same room. The New York Times did a little min doc on him, but traveling over and over again like that wouldn't surprise me if they think he's a drug runner based on travel patterns unless they are aware of him by now for doing this so much times. There's some other interviews with him, pretty interesting lifestyle. I can see the pros and cons.

Dreaming about things is a bit of motivation, but also a bit of distraction too.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#120

Post by mosselman »

alkonaut wrote: post #85
M4v3R wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you make backups, so even if you lose your laptop, your pairing record is safely backed up somewhere else.

If you want to look at it that way, the pairing record is just a digital token that lets you unlock (for reading, the data in) your phone. So it's effectively a kind of password then. It's like having an unlock password in a password manager on your laptop. I don't think it would fly to say at the border that "sorry, can't unlock for you because I don't know my password, it's in a password manager on my laptop".

What you say is "Sorry, I can't unsupervise that".

If you wanted to lie, you could say "Sorry it is supervised by my company, I can't unsupervise it"

Alternatively you could encrypt the key or whatever, give that to a friend on a USB stick. Then, at the border, you say "I can't unsupervise that, the keys are managed by a third party." Which is technically the truth... the best kind of truth.

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