I think I remember reading that they can still detain you "indefinitely" even if you're a US Citizen. Is that not correct?
They can detain you indefinitely even if you're a US Citizen, but afterwards they will be sending you a rather sizable check to settle the lawsuit you file for getting your civil rights violated. Unless you commit a crime crossing the border (like getting caught with drugs), CBP does not have the authority to detain a US citizen without probable cause. Refusing to provide a password is not probable cause.
Correct. But they can retain your devices and all your stuff.
Those people don't carry that data with them, if they're competent or have competent IT staff. They have already configured VPNs with 2FA, burner laptops and mobile devices, or simply mail the devices via registered post to the hotel and have them picked up there. Device moving through the mail system don't get seen by the border grunts.
> Those people don't carry that data with them You've made a great point here. What criminal is also going to carry their incriminating data with them? This isn't an effective policy. What problem does it actually solve?
Many effective police strategies are based on criminals doing stupid things. If criminals were smart most of them would just make a honest living.
I don't know if it worries my American chums, but I won't visit the USA. As a foreign tourist bringing money into your economy I feel there is a very real risk to my privacy and increasingly my person. I am beginning to favour goods and services from EU where human rights still mean something. Perhaps it doesn't matter to you how the US is perceived overseas, perhaps you don't want my money. Perhaps you don't mind be…
Many of these policies were put in place by the Obama administration. It wasn’t all fun and games.
That sounds pretty judgmental, especially since I suspect there are human rights threats around the world that you (and everyone else) are not fighting either.
You can take it how you like. I'm simply stating the obvious. But this particular variation "you're a hypocrite for spending energy on X when there's so much Y in the world" argument was weak when it was first trotted out and hasn't aged well. Worse, the argument is an irrelevant red-herring when talking about choices an individual makes about their own reactions to their own rights being encroached in day to day lif…
I don’t know if you realized, but America is the far-away land in this context. And I was actually saying that you’re a hypocrite for blaming the guy who lets his mugger take his wallet for not fighting back, if that’s the analogy you want to use.
After the arrest of Marcus Hutchins I have already resolved not to set foot in the USA (unless badly necessary for business :/ ). It is surprising how little international outrage that arrest sparked: if the reasoning of the USA in this case were solid then international travel would halt. You would need to review everything you've done online (the last few years at least but possibly ever) and compare it to the laws…
> You would need to review everything you've done online (the last few years at least but possibly ever) and compare it to the laws of the country you are entering. Yes, that's what you must do any time you enter a country. Any country is free to arrest you for past violations of its laws when it has the physical ability to do so. Once you're physically present in a country, it no longer needs to demand your extradit…
Here's a hypothetical: the country I was born in has a statute where the distribution of a sickle-hammer or the nazi swastika sign (and similar signs, listed in the law) is a minor offense, to be punished with a short jail sentence. Now the hypothetical: You land there, the border officer asks for your phone, browses through your Facebook posts and sees a Soviet joke you made (he doesn't understand it) but sees the icon you put besides. You spend the next sixty days behind bars. Are you OK with this?
After the arrest of Marcus Hutchins I have already resolved not to set foot in the USA (unless badly necessary for business :/ ). It is surprising how little international outrage that arrest sparked: if the reasoning of the USA in this case were solid then international travel would halt. You would need to review everything you've done online (the last few years at least but possibly ever) and compare it to the laws…
> You would need to review everything you've done online (the last few years at least but possibly ever) and compare it to the laws of the country you are entering. Yes, that's what you must do any time you enter a country. Any country is free to arrest you for past violations of its laws when it has the physical ability to do so. Once you're physically present in a country, it no longer needs to demand your extradit…
In general people expect the laws of a country to apply to them only while are actually inside that country. In the UK you have to drive on the left side of the road, would you expect to be arrested on arrival for having driven on the right side of the road while in another country? Being refused entry is understandable, but being arrested? Isn't a country's jurisdiction supposed to be restricted to its borders?
> You would need to review everything you've done online (the last few years at least but possibly ever) and compare it to the laws of the country you are entering. Yes, that's what you must do any time you enter a country. Any country is free to arrest you for past violations of its laws when it has the physical ability to do so. Once you're physically present in a country, it no longer needs to demand your extradit…
In general people expect the laws of a country to apply to them only while are actually inside that country. In the UK you have to drive on the left side of the road, would you expect to be arrested on arrival for having driven on the right side of the road while in another country? Being refused entry is understandable, but being arrested? Isn't a country's jurisdiction supposed to be restricted to its borders?
Obviously every UN member state have their own jurisdiction. Henry Kissinger argued this aspect of sovereignty even applies to the highest crimes (crimes against humanity etc) while others claim universal jurisdiction over these. Noone, ever, tried to claim universal jurisdiction over circumventing copy protection. The US just does it.
I understand the anger, and I understand people wanting to protest. But why on earth would most people here feel the need to travel with a wiped, or factory-defaulted device? I mean, if you have something to hide, or sensitive information, sure, I guess. But it's not like they stop and ask for a password from everyone. This probably applies to 1 in thousands, if not tens of thousands of passengers. What on earth do y…
What can I say here? "You may have nothing to hide now, but this stays in the government records, and if you're liberal-leaning, the way things are going, you may find yourself in trouble in ten years?" Who's going to believe that the US will be hostile to liberals in ten years? Who'd believe a month before the election that Trump would be president? Be cavalier with your personal data, but in my country we say "guar…
That's a great point actually, I hadn't thought of the material being saved and potentially used later.
I understand the anger, and I understand people wanting to protest. But why on earth would most people here feel the need to travel with a wiped, or factory-defaulted device? I mean, if you have something to hide, or sensitive information, sure, I guess. But it's not like they stop and ask for a password from everyone. This probably applies to 1 in thousands, if not tens of thousands of passengers. What on earth do y…
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden
I absolutely did not say you shouldn't care about the right to privacy. I said you can care and protest that, while recognizing that you don't necessarily have to go to extreme lengths if you yourself don't need the privacy at this particular moment.
To be honest, I doubt the amount of money brought into the US by foreign tourists amounts to much in the big scheme of things. I respect your principled stand against the threats against your security and privacy by the US Government, but it won’t really make anyone here poorer.
World Travel & Tourism Council Travel & Tourism Economic Impact 2017 United States "Visitor exports generated USD 212.3bn, 9.5% of total exports in 2016. This is forecast to fall by 0.6% in 2017, and grow by 3.9% pa, from 2017-2027, to USD 309.7bn in 2027, 9.3% of total." [0] US GDP in 2016 was USD 18624bn. [1] So I suppose it's only 1.1% of GDP. What's USD 212.3bn between frenemies huh? ;-) [0] https://www.wttc.org/…
OK, but what if I stopped buying US goods and US services? What if I pulled my investments from US equities? What if I added a tariff on services provided by US companies, because they had benefited from an un-competitively low corporation tax rate?
The US is not the first empire. You might want to read up on how the others failed.