301–308 of 308 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
land of the so-called free.
It's still, at least on paper, freer than many/most other Western countries in most ways AFAIK. I agree that this is a very absurd counterexample, however.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me as a European "gun laws were pretty restrictive in UK" for me means freedom more than access to guns does. I quite value the freedom of not having to worry about guns.
“As a person from China, the fact the gov’t is putting Muslims in camps means more freedom for me from terrorism.” That’s not freedom.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since the topic came up, it's worth noting that the Border Zone Reasonableness Restoration Act of 2019 proposes reducing this distance to 25 miles along with some other changes. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/218...
Which is still nonsense. Almost all of the largest cities in the US are mostly or entirely within 25 miles of a land or water border.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worse than that in some cases. I used to work for a big 4 consulting firm and they had some horror stories about border device searches. The company policy for travel outside the EU was simple... Your own laptop would go into a server room and become a remote desktop host, you'd be given a blank laptop. When you got to your destination safely you'd call up IT who'd tell you where to download the VPN software and…
It might've been better to respond with the fact that you had only just received that laptop from the company, which was the truth.
I think the expensive legal brains the company employs decided it is better to simply admit that they do it this way to stop border inspections. Better a deportation of a single employee rather than risk compromising their IT systems and data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are some obvious broad waivers on searches to enable the enforcement of import/export and immigration laws Except those searches can be done at the behest of other law enforcement agencies and any information found can be shared with them.
Incorrect. CBP has a policy to destroy any digital data collected during a search unless it is relevant to an investigation of customs/immigration crimes or is related to terrorism, which can be broadly construed as related to immigration law insomuch as one of the primary purposes of a border is to keep out unwanted persons. I recommend reading through this document assembled by the EFF about various kinds of border…
Here's what the EFF does say about the CPB doing exactly what I described.
> The evidence includes ICE and CBP policies and practices that authorize border officers to conduct warrantless and suspicionless device searches for purposes beyond the enforcement of immigration and customs laws. Officials can search devices for general law enforcement purposes, such as enforcing bankruptcy, environmental, and consumer protection laws, and for intelligence gathering or to advance pre-existing investigations. Officers also consider requests from other government agencies to search devices. In addition, the agencies assert the authority to search electronic devices when the subject of interest is someone other than the traveler—such as when the traveler is a journalist or scholar with foreign sources who are of interest to the U.S. government, or even when the traveler is the business partner of someone under investigation. Both agencies further allow officers to retain information from travelers’ electronic devices and share it with other government entities, including state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies.
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/new-documents-reveal-dhs-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you give a few examples of ways in which a US citizen is more free than I, a UK citizen, am?
I can buy a kitchen knife without ending up on a government registry. I can own a radio or television capable of receiving broadcasts without having to pay a license and register it with the government.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 own…
>What makes you think that they're doing this just because? I don't think they'd do it "just because". I think the NSA has access to all devices, but they don't necessarily share that access with lower-level agencies. And yet, the NSA wouldn't want people to know that they have such good access, and so it would be necessary to a) not act on everything, and b) maintain the appearance that they don't have that access.…
Could the NSA get into any phone?
I'm pretty sure they could.
Did the NSA do a massive attack and introduce backdoors?
I don't think so. I think that large of a scale thing would be likely noticed and it would have to involve a lot of players that would need to keep silent. Players that don't work for the US government or in the US. It's pretty obvious that it's hard to keep secrets.