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US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

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Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

#481

Post by ROTMetro »

woodruffw wrote: post #260
ROTMetro wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so criminals that get busted follow poor practices that lead to them getting busted. Not sure what this has to do with criminals at large, you know, the ones that do stuff like use a safe phone when traveling abroad.

This is unfalsifiable: are you saying that there's some unquantifiable number of perfectly competent criminals? How would we go about verifying that? On an individual level, I am positive that there are criminals that escape the (not particularly competent) techniques of DHS/CBP. But the GP's claim (that Federal criminals are, as a category, completely above and beyond this kind of enforcement) is just not true.

I'm just going off of talking with people during 5 years in the Feds. You know, the guys that can get whatever they want in prison because 'connections'. The guys that can reach out and touch someone for you if you need it. But sure, there isn't some larger more competent network of people that arrange all this for them. It's probably their grandmothers.

Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

#482

Post by dylan604 »

Bakary wrote: post #97
gambiting wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What border guards have you seen that would inspect a laptop that closely in the first place? I fly relatively frequently and all they care about is that it's kept in a separate bin to the rest of your luggage, no one looks at it upclose(also you can damage ports in a way that isn't visible on the outside).

99% of my flights have been exactly like this with no device inspection, and I've been in multiple autocratic countries. What I meant is that if they are at the stage where they are looking to plug into your laptop, having the ports blocked like this will immediately cause problems for you in countries where blocking your ports would be useful. It's a catch-22

So what happened during the 1% where it did happen?

Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

#483

Post by BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 »

US CBP and other national border agencies change target priorities from time to time, which is reflected in the questions they ask you.

I recently had a long discussion with CBP about my Canadian passport showing a US birthplace. Under a repealed section of the INA my US nationality lapsed some half a century ago and I suspect a call was made to the Port Manager. Since then my entries have not discussed this point which leads me to suspect their system has been updated.

The current question is your plate number (already displayed by the camera). You need written permission from the vehicle owner to cross the border, even if the owner is family.

Border officers may also have quotas for more thorough examinations.

I remember a lawyer on radio saying that they take "naked" laptops across the border.

Most definitely DO NOT cross ANY border with anything that in the most remote possibility would trigger the interest of customs.

To sanitise a phone or tablet, fill it with dashcam video, encrypt and factory reset. Then set it up with a fresh Google or Apple ID.

Maybe leave your sim card at home.

Having repartitioned a tablet, I discovered that there is a massive amount of hardware data in partitions that most people are totally unaware of.

Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

#484

Post by RajT88 »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #367
macrolime wrote: post #227

Even 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.

I went to a Nigerian wedding a few years back. Met a lot of techies who lived in the bay area. One was a PM at Microsoft even.

If you get the chance to go to a Nigerian wedding, you definitely should because it is an awesome time.

Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

#485

Post by marcosdumay »

browningstreet wrote: post #470
marcosdumay wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you on the illusion that they didn't have your biometric data? Or that they didn't have the passenger list with your name in it? Those two are pretty transparent (and honestly, not a big deal).

I think federal facial recognition feels like a pretty big deal. But I also realize the egg's been cracked.

It's quite unavoidable. We are much better regulating how it's done than prohibiting it at all.

Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

#487

Post by fufi2022 »

arkadiyt wrote: post #270

Reminder for the folks using iPhones, you can prevent law enforcement from doing this by "pair locking" your device: https://arkadiyt.com/2019/10/07/pair-locking-your-iphone-wit...

Is there an equivalent feature for Android? This may be the first time I've ever felt compelled to think about getting an iPhone.

Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

#488

Post by ROTMetro »

woodruffw wrote: post #361
gmadsen wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is without a doubt a correlation between the significance of criminal enterprise and the rate of getting caught. they may be catching some low level movers with these practices, but not much else above that. The evidence is that there is functioning enterprises in the first place. If captures at the border were a normal distribution of all criminal competency.. that would be destabilizing to a trillion dollar i…

> there is without a doubt a correlation between the significance of criminal enterprise and the rate of getting caught. This is the problem with unfalsifiable claims. Why is that "without a doubt"? I can formulate a just as intuitive (and just as baseless) claim: less significant criminal enterprises get caught less, since they fail the "significance" test.

You are right, organized crime has never existed in this country. Hasn't required complex new statutes be created to go up against their sophistication. The government doesn't shout from the rooftops with their limited victories. You got me.

If you exclude the history of crime in this country and go only from the context of this specific conversation, you have a valid argument.

There are no Mexican cartels. They definitely don't operate in the USA (because they could never operate in a covert way in the USA and a public way in Mexico, being smart and adjusting to fit situational needs). The cartel just sits on the other side of the border and 'hopes' their product makes it to market and hopes they can find random repeat drug smugglers for their BILLION dollar operations.

The mafia was wiped out by the Feds. Vegas is totally clean of corruption.

MCs are just guys that enjoy riding together and having chapters spread throughout the country.

I can't buy illegal drugs in every town in American (which would require a sophisticated multistate/international logistics network). I can't launder money (yet the government continues to impose complex money laundering rules on banks at significant cost to the industry for some reason?). There aren't massage parlors in every city with women from China/Korea, with those women routinely changing out.

And if anything illegal is happening, it just random individuals, acting on their own, who HAPPEN to not get caught. A multi billion dollar international network, that has an uninterrupted supply of drugs/gambling/sex in most ever town in the country, all done by random people that somehow make it come together.

Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

#489

Post by nemothekid »

ch4s3 wrote: post #447
nemothekid wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't this essentially what happened to Philando Castile? In his case he was even complying before he was shot, and the officer who shot him was acquitted.

I believe that was a traffic stop and the officer freaked out after Castile mentioned that he had a CC handgun. Clearly the officer fucked up and murdered an innocent man. However, I think that’s different in kind and circumstances from what I was asking about.

1. A police offer stopped a citizen.

2. The citizen asserted his rights.

3. The citizen was shot and killed.

I imagine you are splitting hairs on 2, (mentioning you have a CC handgun, vs telling an officer they can't have your phone), but both are Rights and one person died trying to exercise them (i.e., Your rights don't mean shit to cops).

Re: US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years

#490

Post by toss1 »

notch656a wrote: post #475
toss1 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the shop-keeps will attmpt to protect their stores. That is completely beside the point. The point is that without a democratic government that is at least attempting to self-govern, the alternative is either a new autocracy comes in (see Russia, CCP, Venezuela, Myanmar, etc.), or it starts with anarchy, and quickly falls to the first crimelord/warlord. Every one of those options is far worse than a flawed…

What is your test to determine whether a nation has reached the level of "flawed democracy?" Is the US one? I mean even anarchism could be considered 'flawed democracy.' The power is theoretically at the individual level, with the population of each government split down to a democracy of size '1' and the individual voting how to dictate his/her own life, although of course even that is flawed. Then again, if you fra…

Criteria?

First of course is that the people elect their leaders and not the leaders selecting their "voters".

How independent are the various pillars of a functioning democracy? The Legislative, Judiciary, Executive, Press, Academia, Industry, Religions, NGOs, etc.? Are these institutions free to pursue their own course, or have they all been co-opted to serve the ends of an autocrat or oligarchy?

This all exists on a spectrum that can be measured. Hungary is, although nominally a democracy, tipping strongly to autocracy and is in danger of being expelled from the EU. OTOH, Iceland kicked out the bankers & politicians that caused the crisis a decade ago... Both nominally democracies, one strong, one weak. The US nearly fell to Hungary's fate, and still may, but things are trending better and a majority recognize that parts of one party are no longer a valid political party but are attempting to threaten democracy itself.

So, no it is not a self-defining tautology, but a characteristic that can be measured.

The US has not yet fallen, but is definitely under attack from within on two major fronts, one is masquerading as a political party, and the second was previously the greatest threat, which was corporate regulatory & legislative capture. Progress is being made against both.

I'd suggest reading a bit more about it with the Renew Democracy Initiative [0].

[0] https://rdi.org/our-values/#statement

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