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

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

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 566 posts

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

#191

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

galangalalgol wrote: post #68
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, right are only rights if they are enforced and/or asserted. If neither is done, at best, they are forgotten and wither and at worst become a quaint memory of things that were. The rules exist for a reason. They also exist for people with guns; especially for people that do it on behalf of government. If you are afraid of guns from people in uniform, you are already doing it wrong. I will tell you this as an inter…

I have often wondered why gun control advocates in the US haven't taken the ammunition approach. Is there some precedent in the courts that limitations on ammunition are equivalent to those on the firearms themselves? I.E. ammunition commonly used for legal purposes cannot be banned?

They have. New York doesn't allow free purchase of pistol ammunition. That also includes small caliber rifle ammunition that has been used in handgun applications.

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

#192

Post by rootusrootus »

throwoutway wrote: post #96
xoa wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ACLU is wrong. The border does it all the time. Here is the one that sticks out in my mind as the most popular case: The ACLU is not wrong, if you actually read their actual words. Your case doesn't say what you think it does. From your own article: > Bikkannavar insisted that he wasn’t allowed to do that because the phone belonged to NASA’s JPL and he’s required to protect access. Agents insisted and he finall…

Let me know how successful you are crossing the border and getting home when you tell CBP to “pound sand”. They’ll just deny you entry and you’re left with very little recourse. Effectively they are the judge and jury and you’re stuck in the waiting area if you’re lucky, a holding cell if you’re not If you think you’re immune just because you’re a US citizen, you’re not.

> If you think you’re immune just because you’re a US citizen, you’re not.

That's a pretty big claim, do you have a particular example in mind? You might have your phone seized, sure, but denying a citizen entry to the country? Even CBP understands they can't do that and it would make the evening news if they did it.

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

#193

Post by josefresco »

DarthNebo wrote: post #77
josefresco wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty difficult with 2FA

2FA should be TOTP not SMS

95% of my 2FA accounts are TOTP. My issue is that not all providers give me printable backup codes - some just say "get two devices!" and that's just not reasonable for a variety of reasons.

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

#194

Post by colordrops »

xtracto wrote: post #182
colordrops wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's useless for us but not the ruling class.

As a foreigner to the US I see this as a simple display of power: See how powerful we are over you, we can and will exert control over you, your data and your belongings. If you want to enter our Empire you will belong to us and will allow us to plug all your orifices. No way I felt like that when travelling to the UK or to continental Europe. The real answer is to avoid traveling there. Empires crumble when they bec…

There's a social stigma here about being too vocal about this sort of thing, at least in the circles I encounter in California. You are either wasting your time or are a bit of a paranoid if you worry too much about these sorts of things. You even still see it here on HN, where people will pull out Hanlon's razor as some sort of proof that this sort of malfeasance doesn't exist.

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

#195

Post by rexreed »

tristor wrote: post #187

Lot's of people fantasizing about what they'll do at the border with weaponizing the data on a burner phone. Let me present a "simpler" and actually realistic option (only for US citizens) on how to handle this: 1. Have a reasonable amount of emergency savings (6-8 months of expenses stored). 2. Have someone in-country who isn't traveling with you who can make sure your bills get paid (financial power of attorney). 3…

Which country(s) other than the US were the most problematic / worst? Personally I've had more aggravation at the Canadian border than any European country.

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

#196

Post by ransom1538 »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #39

Terrifying for only 2 reasons: 1. Any malicious person savvy enough to pull off a crime of interest to the Feds is smart enough to provide a wiped or burner phone to DHS/ICE, and they have to know this. So, what is the point in doing this if not to target law abiding citizens. 2. USGOV has a spotty track record of keeping this information secure. A foreign actor is likely to access this info eventually. As one former…

"USGOV has a spotty track record of keeping this information secure."

No only problems with security. Flat out handing it out in forms of subpoena.

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

#197

Post by rightbyte »

dylan604 wrote: post #58
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #39

Terrifying for only 2 reasons: 1. Any malicious person savvy enough to pull off a crime of interest to the Feds is smart enough to provide a wiped or burner phone to DHS/ICE, and they have to know this. So, what is the point in doing this if not to target law abiding citizens. 2. USGOV has a spotty track record of keeping this information secure. A foreign actor is likely to access this info eventually. As one former…

>Any malicious person savvy enough to pull off a crime of interest...and they have to know this. You'd be amazed at how many dumb things smart criminals/people can do. Maintaining proper OpSec is hard. It only takes one mistake to give the LEOs a string to pull to unravel the whole sweater. Everything else, I tend to feel the same way as you. Just wanted to mention the OpSec part

One of the Pirate Bay founders, Varg, a proper hacker, stored unecrypted mails from the others and "framed" them when the police seized his computer.

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

#198

Post by jameshart »

xoa wrote: post #28
jaarse wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From reading the directive it appears as though they don’t have an exemption for Americans: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/PIA-CBP... Of course the official response is what you would expect: “CBP officials declined, however, to answer questions about how many Americans’ phone records are in the database, how many searches have been run or how long the practice has gone on, saying it has made no…

There is a split here between law and practicality for many people I guess. As a matter of law for US Citizens it doesn't matter whether there is an "exemption" or not: a US Citizen may not be denied entry at a land port of entry, period. Their property can potentially be taken but only with legal process and it can't be kept indefinitely without violation of law. If they're wanted for a crime they can of course be a…

And of course non-Citizens presenting for entry at the border are subject to the coercion that refusal to comply will likely result in entry being refused. Noncitizens do actually still have human rights (something Americans often seem to forget - ‘I can’t believe they used a dronestrike on a US citizen’, etc)

But take the example of a person who has been issued a visa, looking to enter the US with the intent to immigrate legally, doing everything by the book. On their phone they likely have all the privileged communications with their immigration attorney - all the conversations about which visa strategy to pursue, etc. now they’re at the border, they can be pressured by an agent into handing that data over ‘voluntarily’. What protections does that person have as to how that information is used in respect of their future immigration application? Are they entitled to due process protections? Have they waived attorney client privilege? Once they later become a citizen, is that data still on file and searchable by DHS?

Or a green-card holding US resident, returning home from a business trip, with corporate data on their phone - can they refuse to hand it over, and risk being refused entry and heap or fixing their US residency? If they can’t, does that mean some employers might refuse to hire green card holders to mitigate such risks?

This data collection is egregious even when applied to noncitizens.

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

#200

Post by lisper »

ch4s3 wrote: post #181
lisper wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think the details of the pretext matter?

We’ll I was specifically asking if there are examples of people being killed by police for refusing a search without a warrant, so it matters insofar as it’s the question I asked. I’m not here to defend policing as it stands in the US or dismiss any wrongful killing. I just disagree with a particular narrow assertion.

> I was specifically asking if there are examples of people being killed by police for refusing a search without a warrant

No, you weren't. You asked:

"Can you cite any examples of *this* happening? I’m a pretty big policing reform person and follow this stuff closely and can’t think of a single case *like this*." [Emphasis added]

The semantics of that question turn entirely on the antecedent of "this", which is pretty ambiguous in this (!) context.

So I'll revise my criticism of your original remark: you need to be clearer about the scope of what you are asking about. Personally, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to extrapolate the circumstances of the GF case to the potential for the same thing to happen during a border search, but I suppose reasonable people could disagree.

Post reply on HN