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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

#801
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…

Well it’s really easy to do that with an iPhone. Just with the inconvenience of needing to use a computer for that. You can just create an encrypted backup of an iPhone and store that anywhere.

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

#802
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…

Why bother with the drive at all? Just store your image in the cloud, and once you're past the border, download and re-image.

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

#803
post #726

From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 -------- Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-de…

The US is not a country governed by the rule of the law

Except that the UDHR is not the rule of law.

It is a mere declaration, as specified at the top of the page, that "is widely recognized as having inspired [...] the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties"

That does not make it an enforceable law. Moreover, treaties are agreements between countries, not laws, which a country can violate at will.

People might create supranational organizations like the UN or the ECHR, but that has, untimately, no enforcement power because that always belongs to sovereign countries. Violating a treaty can also lead to retaliation by other signatories or even war, but it still does not make a treaty law.

It might well be that the US has specific laws that prevent charging a citizen when they wipe their phone. But that must be a law passed by the US legislature, not a "universal declaration".

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

#804
post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. People here imagining workarounds based on automatic wipe, encryption, etc. should rather acknowledge that their country is slowly drifting to a fascist state. Your tech tricks are childish. Act like adults. Take responsibility, make decisions, take action, gather support.

I'm not in the US, but say I was. I'm fully on board that the country is slowly (or not so slowly) drifting into becoming a fascist state. Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do? What amount of taking responsibility, making decisions, taking action and gathering support is gonna help in that situation? Technological workarounds…

> Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do?

Don't take your phone and/or other devices you don't want to have searched. It's the advice routinely given to those planning a trip from the rest of the world to the US.

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

#805

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.

Not a lawyer, but the law is hackable in a sense. Interpretation sets precedent and strategic litigation is common.

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

#806
post #726

From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 -------- Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-de…

What relevance does that have here, though? Most countries that are actually signatories don't even adhere to it. The UN is totally feckless and hypocritical, and even if they were not, they are antidemocratic.

> What relevance does that have here, though?

It is a moral statement, not a law.

The poster is arguing that the US is behaving in an immoral manner. The basis for their argument is the Declaration of Human Rights.

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

#807
post #726

From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 -------- Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-de…

The US is not a country governed by the rule of the law

Yes. We need to respect all laws. I am strongly uphold the Peruvian Naval Law here in Michigan.

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

#808
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…

Well it’s really easy to do that with an iPhone. Just with the inconvenience of needing to use a computer for that. You can just create an encrypted backup of an iPhone and store that anywhere.

This method is missing the details of the restore process. Which would require a Mac you trust. Or trusting your backup to iCloud.

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

#809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What relevance does that have here, though? Most countries that are actually signatories don't even adhere to it. The UN is totally feckless and hypocritical, and even if they were not, they are antidemocratic.

> What relevance does that have here, though? It is a moral statement, not a law. The poster is arguing that the US is behaving in an immoral manner. The basis for their argument is the Declaration of Human Rights.

> > What relevance does that have here, though?

> It is a moral statement, not a law.

How do you figure that? Does the UN define morality for all peoples in the world? Evidently not. What moral weight is added to some text if some governments of some countries have voted for it?

Not even the votes of the majority one people group in their national home define morality, so the votes of the UN General Assembly definitely does not define morality.

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

#810
post #758
post #726

From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 -------- Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-de…

[flagged]

You must know that this stuff was later also codified in successive (so-called hard) international human rights treaties like the ICCPR (see Article 17 in this case), right? That Covenant now has 175 parties, plus six more signatories without ratification (most notably China and Cuba) — North Korea is the only state that has tried to withdraw.

In some of those states, the provisions of the Covenant may be considered directly applicable/self-executing, having the legal force of a provision of constitutional rank, while others require some kind of national step or implementation. Whatever the case, it's arguably at the level of incorporation into national law, though, that the ICCPR has exerted its greatest impact. Basically, post-WW2, when anywhere in the world a national constitution has been framed, the ICCPR has served as the natural yardstick for drafting the fundamental rights provisions.

And beyond nation states, I'm glad we're not dependent on UN bodies and agencies for the development and enforcement of human and fundamental rights more globally either. Sure, the European Court of Human Rights doesn't have an army of its own, and part of the influence and relevance of the law it creates is a bit squishy, frankly, hinging on the authority, gravitas and respect bestowed on it by a somewhat opaque and shifting web of institutions and so on. It's certainly not nothing, though, especially since nowadays the ECHR's jurisprudence is mainlined by the ECJ basically uncut, and also applied as constitutional-level law by the rest of the eurocracy basking in the supremacy of Union law.

But I don't know, man, this human rights talk is always a bit of a gamble in terms of using your time well, at least if addressing a crowd where potentially more people support the death penalty than the ICC.

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