I wonder if I'd get arrested for bringing a wiped phone with me with just a phone number on it.
US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
391–400 of 566 posts
Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
For my part I don't trust PRISM partner Apple to secure anything from the government, enclave or not.
Were any of the companies listed on the PRISM slide consensual partners? My understanding is that the NSA tapped the internal network in an era where mTLS wasn't rolled out. Everyone then saw the slides and rolled out mTLS.
I believe that some companies making layer two network encryption gear also got a big boost around the same time.
Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
For my part I don't trust PRISM partner Apple to secure anything from the government, enclave or not.
Were any of the companies listed on the PRISM slide consensual partners? My understanding is that the NSA tapped the internal network in an era where mTLS wasn't rolled out. Everyone then saw the slides and rolled out mTLS.
I'm quite sure NSA had at least one backup plan, provably more. It is also impossible to know how much of Apple's stance is just for show.
Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
#394Even if you are a person who will never in your life end up as any kind of person of interest for the government, handing over data in this way could still be quite dangerous. Phones will often contain data that can facilitate theft and fraud if ending up in the wrong hands. If they're able to copy everything, including private data from all apps that could be quite bad. For example many countries now use apps to log…
> to some account in Nigeria. It must be awkward to be an honest Nigerian on Hacker News, since the country is famous for obvious online scams.
Nigerian here. At some point it gets old and you just get used to it.
Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
#395Can I ask how long it takes to 'copy' someone's phone data? The mid-level consumer tech I have access to takes a most of a work day to copy my wife's 80GB of iphone 7+ data to a flash drive. Based on this, I doubt they have some sort of magic thing that will just copy everything on your phone as you pass through a checkpoint. Do they hold you until the copy is done? Or do they have some super fast thing that works on…
I’m also curious whether the copying device works with all models. If I went back to my old iPhone 3, for example, would they still be able to snag a copy? Might their surveillance be foiled by want of a dongle?
Edit— From the photos posted further down thread it seems like they’re armed with every imaginable dongle...
Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1. Any malicious person savvy enough to pull off a crime of interest to the Feds is smart enough to provide a wiped or burner phone to DHS/ICE, and they have to know this. So, what is the point in doing this if not to target law abiding citizens. This isn't even remotely true. See for example the recent Anom honeypot[1]. Criminals do more or less the same things that ordinary citizens do, and often have strictly wo…
Criminals who get caught do more or less the same things that ordinary citizens do, because the systems setup to catch them assume they'll act like a normal person, because you catch the greatest number of criminals that way. By definition, we have no information about what criminals who don't get caught do, because they're never identified as criminals. That's the point. Selection bias is the most powerful force in…
Reminds me of the Stainless Steel Rat, where he is intentionally caught and sent to prison, hoping to further his criminal education. Only to find out he is now incarcerated with all the criminals that weren't smart enough to evade capture...
Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
The intelligence community only exists because those in power grant it so. The millennials hold the power. Certainly they delegate – there is only so much time in the day – but the outcome still rests on what lies at the top. The reality is that millennials, as a generation, don't see a problem with this. Select individuals may, but individuals don't hold power.
im not sure what definition you are using, the executive is nearly 80, the average age of congress is 60, average age of CEOs is 58. You know, the people with actual power. These are not millennial ages..
For the most part, they're barely even Gen X ages. Still a boomer world in the upper ranks once you get outside tech.
Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Criminals do more or less the same things that ordinary citizens do, and often have strictly worse security practices because they believe "ordinary" things are weaker This is a "survivor" bias fallacy.
The null hypothesis is that criminals are humans like us, except that they make money through crime instead of legal employment. Fallacious reasoning here would require us to treat criminals as uniquely invisible or otherwise unlike other humans, which isn't really borne out.
"Fallacious" reasoning here would require us to treat criminals as people who have more incentive to hide what they're doing.
Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
#399Even if you are a person who will never in your life end up as any kind of person of interest for the government, handing over data in this way could still be quite dangerous. Phones will often contain data that can facilitate theft and fraud if ending up in the wrong hands. If they're able to copy everything, including private data from all apps that could be quite bad. For example many countries now use apps to log…
To me the lack of checks/balances before handing over your device for an hour or so is the worst part.
The chain of custody in these instances is basically one guy going into a back room by himself and hooking it up to a computer.
At the very least you should be able to have the contents of your phone independently hashed before handing it over to a potentially corrupt individual. They can put anything they want on there in that time and what recourse do you really have?
Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years
#400Even if you are a person who will never in your life end up as any kind of person of interest for the government, handing over data in this way could still be quite dangerous. Phones will often contain data that can facilitate theft and fraud if ending up in the wrong hands. If they're able to copy everything, including private data from all apps that could be quite bad. For example many countries now use apps to log…
> Even if you are a person who will never in your life end up as any kind of person of interest for the government Literally no way to ensure that.
It doesn't even have to be the government itself. Let's say the sheriff in your town takes interest in your partner. Or his kid gets in a spat with your mom because the kid was DUI.