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Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

nytimes.com

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Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#491

Post by fluoridation »

iAMkenough wrote: post #348
hamdingers wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or keep it in a faraday bag and have the phone wipe if it sees it. If you're ever searched (or otherwise indisposed), they'll open the bag and wipe your phone for you.

> If you're ever searched (or otherwise indisposed), they'll open the bag and wipe your phone for you. Isn't that the same issue here that resulted in felony charges? Border agent was given a duress PIN and wiped the phone for the owner. Now owner is charged.

It's not the exact same situation. Whether it's similar enough to be prosecuted or convicted is a different question.

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#492

Post by dijit »

shevy-java wrote: post #454
dijit wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its only with the benefit of hindsight (and being on the winning side- thus the propaganda was never dispelled) that we consider the stasi and so on the way we do. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck.. might just be a duck. I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today.

> I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today. That's wrong. I am sure you do not speak German, because otherwise you'd have a lot more information available. If you do speak German, listen to Dieter Hallervorden. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJh9ejnpvFc He explained why he escaped from the DDR. And they AL…

But I consider what the US/UK are doing to be invasive, and if the governments fell I might be proven right (hell, Snowden already proved it over a decade ago- yet here we are).

He was not a “normal person”, normal people are like your neighbour who lives simply and doesn’t engage in politics except to share their discomfort about some relatively trivial grievance like the price of eggs.

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#494

Post by rootusrootus »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #366
throwaway219450 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes this very easy. I broke an iPhone and bought a replacement. If you have iCloud, you login to the new phone and you can see which backups you can recover from. If you are transferring a phone, say you upgraded, it’s even easier. You can also image the phone with a connected laptop and store it on a backup drive, which is nice to not use up iCloud limits. The transfer and backup system are pretty much the s…

Aha that is actually pretty long

That's mostly time for data sync in the background. It takes 5-10 minutes tops to have the phone working again, but longer to get all of the media and other data restored. Depends on how good your connection is.

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#495

Post by alsetmusic »

deepfriedbits wrote: post #268
btbuildem wrote: post #227

The naivete of some of the comments here is astounding. It doesn't matter whether you're right, it doesn't matter whether it's the law, it's irrelevant that you have rights, etc. Those things are of the past now, for the US. I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of cours…

With all due respect, this is a wild take. Things aren't great in the U.S. right now, but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing. > I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.

> With all due respect, this is a wild take. Things aren't great in the U.S. right now, but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing.

Don't kid yourself. That's what they want. They're slowly testing to find out how much they can get away with. Would you have imagined that the nation would quietly sit back and allow what's been done so far ten or twenty years ago? Just because there have been large protests doesn't mean anything. Congress should have been outraged on both sides at this madness, but one side only cares about winning (so they like it) and the other is completely feckless.

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#496

Post by winterbloom »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #369
joenot443 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech. I'm pretty optimistic that after the next general America will be ready to give up on the extremity of late turn over a new leaf. I fully expect a new president to be ushered in, whether R or D, and for some level of normalcy to start creeping back. The Sovie…

America dominance on the world is ending, it's a fact. East Asia is at least on par, India is china from 25 years ago. It's becoming more obvious every day. And yeah, people in 1910 watched Europe dominate the world for about 1500 years. Yet it came to an end. If you want to Speedrun the collapse, vote for trump. He sure is making a good job right now with diplomacy, lack of long term planning and just getting all yo…

[flagged]

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#497

Post by leptons »

wat10000 wrote: post #336
leptons wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those things are of the past now, for the US. It's a temporary situation, it isn't necessarily a permanent situation. Tell me how you think East Germany is doing these days. And no, it doesn't have to take 40 years to right the ship, so long as people get their heads out of their asses and vote. Things are likely to change by the end of this year, and in another 2 years we could have a very different government that…

On a long enough timeline, nothing is permanent. The question is how long it lasts and how bad it gets before it gets better. In terms of the ending, East Germany was nearly an ideal case. The state just sort of gently fell over. The country got absorbed into a friendly neighbor. There wasn't much loss of life, no widespread destruction. Then there's East Germany's predecessor state, which ended because it decided to…

The people want this administration and their right-wing politics gone, and the right-wing knows it - if the people really wanted the current shitstorm to continue the right-wing wouldn't be so desperate to suppress the vote, gerrymander like madmen, and use every questionable lever to prevent people to vote like trying to extinguish all mail-in voting, etc.

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#498

Post by malfist »

Vegenoid wrote: post #328
Zak wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a half-truth. In a full banana republic, technical compliance with the law will not prevent consequences for failing to do what the authorities want. In a jurisdiction with perfect rule of law, it always will. The USA is somewhere in between. One of the laws that's enforced pretty well in the USA is the protection against unreasonable search. Most of the time, a search requires showing a judge evidence that t…

Agree with the thrust of your comment, but I had to comment on this: > In a full banana republic, technical compliance with the law will not prevent consequences for failing to do what the authorities want. In a jurisdiction with perfect rule of law, it always will. I think you may be misunderstanding that many laws, even in fair, just societies, are intentionally designed to be flexible. The real world is so variabl…

Theres a reason why the motto of banana republic leaders is: "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law"

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#499

Post by malfist »

grishka wrote: post #472
Zak wrote: post #189

For exactly the border search scenario, I wish smartphones could be imaged and restored as easily as PCs. Imagine booting the phone from a flash drive, making an encrypted image of the phone on said drive, and writing a fresh OS before reaching the border. There's no deception required to protect sensitive data or avoid the seizure of an expensive phone. Consent to unlocking the phone, refuse to unlock the drive. The…

Those "nandroid" backups weren't "close" to that, they were literally that initially. Then, when Android phones started coming with the /sdcard partition mapped to the internal flash memory (a subdirectory of /data) instead of an actual SD card, the /data partition backup mechanism was changed to copy individual files into some sort of archive, but the end result remained the same. You can still do it on modern Andro…

How many mainstream phones come with unlocked bootloaders? Just pixel right?

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#500

Post by freediddy »

The difference is that this guy gave a code that wiped the device while it was under investigation. That's obstruction.

If he wiped his phone before crossing the border, he would have been fine.

If he refused to give his password to the phone, he would have been held up for a bit and then he would have to leave his phone, but he would be fine. American citizens cannot be denied entry into the US.

The difference is that the phone was wiped while it was under investigation because of an instruction he gave the CBP. That was ill-advised because that is clearly obstruction. He didn't understand the law and now he's probably going to pay for it.

And I say this as someone who had a very bad experience at the border. A CBP accused me of not being the same person on my Green Card and I had to wait 15 mins for that to clear up even though there was nothing to dispute here, it was me. The CBP are fascists and it doesn't matter who is president, this was during Obama's presidency.

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