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Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

theregister.co.uk

111–120 of 378 posts

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#111

I'm hoping that manufactures will start building a plausible deniability user profile you can log into while leaving your actual profile encrypted, appearing to be slack space. This kind of thuggery seems to be getting more common.

TrueCrypt had hidden volumes with plausible deniability. Aside: don't use TrueCrypt anymore for other reasons.

Btw, who picked up after TrueCrypt left? VeraCrypt?

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America is awesome, I appreciate and know how lucky we are to be here. In which regard? Compared to which place?

We lead the world in R&D, we aren't in a surveillance state like China (~1.3B people), we aren't undeveloped, we have the US dollar - the commanding world currency. We develop the best military technology, space technology, most all technology. We issue the most patents, by far. We (as people) have more rights than most all other nations and we led many other rights to attain rights for their own citizens. We protect…

We can't afford healthcare for our people.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#114
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have mentioned, lying to the agents is illegal. This isn't: The password to this freshly wiped device is "Orwell1984". Feel free to have a look, but all you'll find is an app called "Secure Erase Free Space". This SD card I'm carrying separately? No, you can't have the password to that. Yes, I know, you can hold it indefinitely.

> No, you can't have the password to that. Yes, I know, you can hold it indefinitely. I have a hard time believing that an audience that finds buying a car stressful (as is often stated in Tesla threads) is going to demonstrate assertiveness to a real authority...

The audience here is not uniform. Andreas Gal is definitely in the target audience for HN and was able to stand up to the border agents.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#115
post #65

It would be nice if phone and laptops had removable batteries, so we literally could not turn them on until we got to our destination and buy a new battery.

Batteries activated by the device itself could work. Like giving agreement to use/charge/manage, only when device is unlocked of course;)

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America is awesome, I appreciate and know how lucky we are to be here. In which regard? Compared to which place?

We lead the world in R&D, we aren't in a surveillance state like China (~1.3B people), we aren't undeveloped, we have the US dollar - the commanding world currency. We develop the best military technology, space technology, most all technology. We issue the most patents, by far. We (as people) have more rights than most all other nations and we led many other rights to attain rights for their own citizens. We protect…

I think you left the /s from that post. I don't believe you can seriously believe such statements.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#117
This assumes that he was not picked by random but instead there is some sort of list of people to check at airports that you can be put on because of your work within IT-security.

That would be a big story if that is the case.

I will offer a counter-narrative which is more in line with my own experience (from other places than the US):

The people who work at border control in particular in airports are bored.

They are also overstaffed and given extreme discretion over the people they patrol; most of whom are non-citizen and thus have basically no rights at all.

This leads to them doing work for the sake of showing they work, overreacting to the least of resistance and maybe even some games of entertainment.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#118
post #14

Quick reminder: US citizens have an absolute right to reenter the country. Customs can temporarily detain you, but they cannot refuse entry. Any threat, whether implied or stated, that they will hold you until you unlock your device is not real. They can hold your stuff indefinitely, so be prepared to lose it if you go this route, but never unlock your device based on the idea that it’s the only way to go free. Non-c…

> They can hold your stuff indefinitely, so be prepared to lose it if you go this route CBP do need reasonable suspicion to hold you belongings or do a forensic search of your computer (Cotterman 2013) - they can't just randomly take things on a whim. The longer they hold it, the higher standard required.

Does refusing to unlock your devices trigger a reasonable suspicion?

(In Cotterman, it sounds like the Ninth Circuit said reasonable suspicion was required, but also decided on its own - despite it not being argued by the government - that an alert from a CBP database about Cotterman's previous conviction justified a search. Which seems reasonable to me, as a layperson, I thin.)

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick reminder: Non US citizens only go to conferences outside the US. There is no excuse we should put up with this. Canada and EU are much better locations for this reason alone.

Alternatively, prefer to avoid bringing your own devices with you when you fly. Leave your laptop and smartphone at home, and rent temporary ones after you cross.

How do you find a rented laptop trustworthy?

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#120
post #39

It was my understanding that 5-th amendment protections against unreasonable searches are suspended at the border. That would certainly include customs at the airport. So, in a strict legal sense, demanding to unlock a device does not violate the 5th.

It sure shouldn’t be. Can you point to a law (it would have to be an amendment to the Constitution) that codifies this? As far as I know, it’s only practically a “constitutional exclusion zone”, not legally.
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