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Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

idlewords.com

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Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#41

Post by ksenzee »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #19

This is completely naive. Firstly, social media's only incentive is to make your data as widely available as possible (in the interests of ad revenue), and maintain a good relationship with the government in their jurisdiction. Every other existing "privacy" setting on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc is already obfuscated to the point of unusability, for this reason, and "travel mode" would be no different. Secondly, lets im…

He's pointing out what social media companies should do, not predicting that they'll actually do it. That is not naive. Imagine what would happen to the Overton window if we never talked about what people should do, even when we expect them never to do it.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#42

Post by tptacek »

QuamVideri wrote: post #37
mholt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't they just detain you until the time runs out?

Exactly - the correct solution is that border inspection of luggage (for contraband) NOT be considered a legal basis for searching my information storage. Warrantless search of gadgets / accounts should be prohibited for citizens. For non-citizens, it should require a significant justification. Finally, NONE of the data examined at the border should be stored for longer than necessary to reach a go/no-go determinatio…

While you get to work on repealing 223 years of jurisprudence about border searches, how about we explore things tech companies can do in the immediacy to mitigate their impact?

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#43

Post by idlewords »

waterphone wrote: post #34
paulv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > To work effectively, a trip mode feature would need to be easy to turn on, configurable (so you can choose how long you want the protection turned on for) and irrevocable for an amount of time chosen by the user once it’s set. There’s no sense in having a ‘trip mode’ if the person demanding your password can simply switch it off, or coerce you into switching it off.

Then if border agents really want to get in to a particular individual's device, they'll just detain them (or seize their device) until trip mode automatically turns off.

CBP is not allowed to detain US citizens past some nebulous limit measured in hours.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#44

Post by TillE »

deong wrote: post #35
jethro_tell wrote: post #11

If they get your password can't they just turn of travle mode for you? Or wait until you do the same? I don't know that there is a technical answer here accept wiping your phone/laptop before you go through customes. The real solution is a political one where we speak up and legeislate and litigate that the 4th amendment applies a the border.

Wiping your stuff does no good at all. As pointed out in the article, they know who is on the flight hours before you land. They'll know you have a Facebook profile. The difference between having a laptop already logged into Facebook and a wiped laptop with no data is quite literally the time it takes them to tell you to type in the password for them. Ignorance isn't an escape clause. Which is, I think, the same prob…

> The difference between having a laptop already logged into Facebook and a wiped laptop with no data is quite literally the time it takes them to tell you to type in the password for them.

No, that's not how it works. Border agents are entitled to "search" your laptop. They can't force you to retrieve arbitrary data from a remote server.

All this with the caveat that they can, of course, refuse non-citizens for basically any reason.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#45

Post by ksenzee »

joezydeco wrote: post #8
maxerickson wrote: post #5

One thing I wonder about is how quickly a travel mode would become grounds for denial of entry.

Or how quickly Facebook/Google/Twitter would comply with some classified FBI/NSA directive to provide the data anyway. The first mistake is trusting these networks with your personal life in the first place. Nothing can erase that except your ability and willpower to keep your secrets to yourself.

Note that CBP does not have access to all the data NSA has gathered. If they did, we wouldn't be talking about this at all; they'd already have everything they wanted.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#46

Post by tptacek »

deong wrote: post #35
jethro_tell wrote: post #11

If they get your password can't they just turn of travle mode for you? Or wait until you do the same? I don't know that there is a technical answer here accept wiping your phone/laptop before you go through customes. The real solution is a political one where we speak up and legeislate and litigate that the 4th amendment applies a the border.

Wiping your stuff does no good at all. As pointed out in the article, they know who is on the flight hours before you land. They'll know you have a Facebook profile. The difference between having a laptop already logged into Facebook and a wiped laptop with no data is quite literally the time it takes them to tell you to type in the password for them. Ignorance isn't an escape clause. Which is, I think, the same prob…

If you're an at-risk traveler, you'd enable travel-lock pretty much as soon as you decide on your itinerary, potentially before you ever get on an airline manifest.

The thing I think I see a lot of people missing here is that travel-lock doesn't wipe or disable your accounts; it just restricts history and breadth. For a lot of people, I think these services will get easier and more pleasant to use while travel-locked, so it's relatively painless to give yourself a generous margin before departing and after arriving.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#47

Post by idlewords »

binarymax wrote: post #31

An article with an interesting suggestion and a noble goal but I'm not the first one to say it: Technology cannot solve the problem we currently face with erosion of privacy at the border! These clever tricks trying to get around the issue only kicks the problem downfield, and likely won't effectively work. If they found out you have travel mode enabled - you may be denied entry or worse (note the comment from @mholt…

They can't detain US citizens longer than a few hours.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#48

Post by 4ad »

idlewords wrote: post #43
waterphone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then if border agents really want to get in to a particular individual's device, they'll just detain them (or seize their device) until trip mode automatically turns off.

CBP is not allowed to detain US citizens past some nebulous limit measured in hours.

My gut feeling is that non-US citizens are more likely to be affected by this CBP policy than US citizens. Don't get me wrong here, happy if some solutions works for some subset of people, but as a non-US citizen I want something that works for me.

Re: Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

#49

Post by idlewords »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #19

This is completely naive. Firstly, social media's only incentive is to make your data as widely available as possible (in the interests of ad revenue), and maintain a good relationship with the government in their jurisdiction. Every other existing "privacy" setting on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc is already obfuscated to the point of unusability, for this reason, and "travel mode" would be no different. Secondly, lets im…

People who care deeply about these issues work at Facebook and Google.
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