Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 1001 posts

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

#701

Post by zarzavat »

kioleanu wrote: post #663
kelnos wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using roaming on your cellular plan, all your traffic is routed over VPN to your home country, so local blocks don't work. (That's one of the reasons why it's trivially easy for foreign visitors to China to bypass the Great Firewall.) If you were on wifi, that's notably interesting.

I was on the resort’s WiFi, no vpn. What is strange maybe is that if I search my outgoing ip address, the resort is listed as the ISP

We can tell OP is using local or unencrypted DNS because they got DNS-redirected to a message.

If you have DoH configured at either OS or browser level then you will not see a message: the site will either work, or it will error out if the IP is blocked.

If you are using an alternative DNS provider over unencrypted DNS then either outcome is possible.

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

#702

Post by theokrueger »

tcfhgj wrote: post #614
malfist wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fairphone

From memory:

- non-US Samsung phones

- Most Sony, HTC, Motorola are unlocked

- Chinese brands like Xiaomi

Not all Pixels are unlocked; carrier-bought US phones are usually OEM locked.

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

#704

Post by [deleted] »

otterley wrote: post #696
seanhunter wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want actual legal advice pay for an actual lawyer. You aren’t going to get it asking a bunch of randoms on a tech forum. Since we’re techies we tend to think about technological nuances and have a certain literal frame of mind (eg “They can’t make it illegal for me to just type the wrong pin” is the type of thinking I’m talking about here) whereas in law weird precedents and your intent really matter so you re…

I am a lawyer (this is not legal advice) and agree with the main thrust of this comment. The law is not “hackable.” Ultimately people are making decisions about guilt and punishment. And judges really, really don’t take kindly to defendants who think they’re trying to outsmart the court.

[deleted]

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

#705

Post by utopiah »

opan wrote: post #465
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…

PinePhone will boot off a microSD before the internal flash, so you could have a clean OS on the card and your real one on the flash. The SD card is under the back cover with the battery and SIM, so chances are they won't think to try to remove it.

Somebody who doesn't know what they are doing, sure. Somebody who does, and maybe even enjoy doing it, and the challenge of it, will surely know about it simply because they are maybe two dozens of types of smartphones out there. Android (including of course GrapheneOS) based ones, iOS ... then PinePhones, Volla, Purism and few others. So having a guide on how each one can have hidden partitions or booting mechanisms is tractable.

Point being that relying on a hidden trick (rather than encryption) is a very risky bet.

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

#706

Post by ant6n »

TowerTall wrote: post #635

"[...] Since 1953, the US Department of Justice has defined the border to be anywhere within 100 miles of the actual national limits.[...] According to the American Civil Liberties Union, about two-thirds of the people in the US live within 100 miles of a border. So in theory these 200 million border zone dwellers could have their phones seized and searched at any time by CBP agents without a warrant.[...]" From the…

Maybe there could be some hack to create more borders within the United States, so that perhaps 90% of the population could live within 100 miles of the border. For example, declaring the middle of some lakes to be non-territorial waters?

Could be another one of those fun exercises in legal hacking to build tyranny that people in the US seem to be so fond of.

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

#707

Post by hardbass »

joenot443 wrote: post #282
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…

> 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…

Doubt it. At the very least optimistically it must wait the deaths of the current MAGA voterbase, so at least 40-50 years.

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

#708

Post by utopiah »

utopiah wrote: post #705
opan wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PinePhone will boot off a microSD before the internal flash, so you could have a clean OS on the card and your real one on the flash. The SD card is under the back cover with the battery and SIM, so chances are they won't think to try to remove it.

Somebody who doesn't know what they are doing, sure. Somebody who does, and maybe even enjoy doing it, and the challenge of it, will surely know about it simply because they are maybe two dozens of types of smartphones out there. Android (including of course GrapheneOS) based ones, iOS ... then PinePhones, Volla, Purism and few others. So having a guide on how each one can have hidden partitions or booting mechanisms…

Coincidence but I just started to listen to 404 media podcast on tracking rare books being scanned in AI facilities thanks to just a cheap AirTag. I find this a good illustration of how easy it is to find something if you know how to look for it, and thus again why encryption is the only safe way.

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

#709

Post by KingMob »

Taek wrote: post #667
Animats wrote: post #659

Legal question: if you had whole-disk encryption, and the duress password just zeroized the decryption key, would that be "destroying evidence?" Especially if there was a recovery possible but not instantly available, such as a Yubikey in a safe deposit box in a bank. That would take a subpoena to get, and there is an opportunity to challenge the subpoena in court first. Not instantly at the border. Something like th…

I do like the idea of forcing due process to access an encryption key. I'm not sure if that idea is compatible with current law, but it seems just at the very least.

IANAL, but I understand that part of the problem is, prior to official admission to the US, you have fewer rights even if you're a US citizen.

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

#710

Post by hardbass »

ericmay wrote: post #298
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…

Your day to day is still pretty much normal. If you turned off the news and never read about Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data [1] you'd just in your head remember there are tens of millions of folks flying, going through customs and border security and all that with 0 issues. What you wrote I think regarding the decade of silliness precisely supports the point, in my opinion. [1] I'm not defending the b…

Its the same in Russia. Ignore the news go through life, don't say anything about the government. Once in a while people will fall down from windows and die of radiation poisoning of course but thats ignorable.
Post reply on HN