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I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again
- dudul 10y agoThe factory reset seems more practical to me than leaving your phone at home.
- trome 10y agoAlso, carry multiple phones of the same model. I've been throwing my main phone anywhere besides in plain view and carrying a couple $5 Androids in my pockets instead when going thru TSA, better they try to search one of them than my main phone buried in my bag next to 2 others that look just like it.
- scrumper 10y agoKeep in mind that it's a felony to lie to a customs & border patrol officer. "Is this your main phone?" How will you answer that?
- melvinmt 10y ago"Talk to my lawyer."
- crestedtazo 10y agoThat's a great way to never get into the country.
- Spooky23 10y agoReply: "Ask the judge in six months."
- digler999 10y ago> "Is this your main phone?" This is my main phone I use when crossing constitution-free zones. > it's a felony to lie to a customs & border patrol officer That makes me livid: "Oh, sorry, the constitutional laws (that apply to us) don't apply here, see it's not technically the US because reasons." [lies to officer] "FELONY!".
- jedberg 10y agoNo it's my backup I use when I travel because my main phone is expensive and I don't want to risk breaking it.
- eridius 10y agoWhy does that make you livid? Did you think you don't have to obey any laws simply because you're at a border? I guarantee you it's still a felony to murder someone there, so why would lying to a federal agent be any different?
- digler999 10y agoBecause the purpose of law is to protect people. The purpose of murder laws is to protect people from the act of murder. The purpose of constitutional law is to protect people from tyranny.
- eridius 10y agoI don't understand what point you're trying to make. My point is that you can't reasonably claim that all laws go out the window just because some constitutional protections are suspended. Saying that it should be legal to lie to a federal agent under those circumstances is roughly equivalent to saying it should be legal to murder said federal agent under those circumstances (which is obviously not true).
- digler999 10y agoyou: "murder == lying" me: "no it's not" I don't claim "all laws go out the window". No clue how you reached that conclusion.
- babygoat 10y agoGiven multiple phones, how do you legally establish which one is "main"?
- a3n 10y ago"No, this is a cheap backup phone that I intend to throw away if it leaves my possession."
- Natsu 10y ago"My main phone is SIM locked and I don't have international roaming on my plan, so there was no reason to carry it. I had to get a cheap phone so I could buy a SIM when traveling."
- VLM 10y ago"This is the phone owned by my employer for corporate use, I'd be glad to unlock it and you can look at corporate secrets all day, I don't care although I'll have to report the data breech to my employer. My personal phone doesn't have the hardware to work internationally and I don't pay for international service so its sitting on the shelf in my bedroom at home." Remember they're not just dumping the contents for analysis, but also installing a rootkit, assuming the phone isn't already rooted, so once it leaves your presence or they plug anything into it, its no longer a trustworthy device. Something I don't understand is the postal system is essentially wide open for transportation of drugs and stuff as per numerous dark web stories, so simply putting the phone in a box and mailing it would seem to reduce the chance of anyone in the .gov accessing it down to roughly 0% odds. I'm convinced most of these stories are submarine marketing by big internet companies that have a wide open door to the NSA as most of the discussion revolves around the government not accessing your "private" Facebook activities where no such situation could possibly exist, so there's no point in not unlocking the phone. Ignore the man behind the curtain providing the NSA root privs on the server, the problem is individual officers gaining access to your CRUD app end user device LOL. Given that the government already has all the data, the real battle is you are trying to appear to be an individual in their database and they'd like to know exactly who, which makes it about as nefarious as asking for your passport, and they know and understand that, so they freak if you won't give them access. As an analogy they know they have all the data on your drivers license and if you refuse to show them your drivers license that will make them extremely interested in why not, you claim you're j random hacker and you claim thats j random hackers drivers license and we have all the license data for j random hacker now why won't you show it, perhaps you have a fake ID for j random hacker or you're someone else trying to set up j random hacker or ...
- ucaetano 10y ago"Please hand over your personal phone, not any replacements you carry as decoys"
- mamon 10y ago"I don't bring my personal phone when traveling, because last time my 700$ iPhone was broken by stupid CBP agents" - that, or any reasonable excuse should work. EDIT: "I bring dumbphones when traveling because battery lasts two weeks, unlike iPhone" "I heard that there are lot of thieves in the country I visited, so I was afraid to bring my real phone" "I heard that airport X-ray machine can brick iPhone" "I really like cheap, Chinese phones, they are so cute" "iPhones are for hipsters, I prefer cheap, practical devices" possibilities for excuse are endless. And, as the old rule goes, the stupider the excuse the better - if you can convince CBP agents that you are harmless idiot you win.
- digler999 10y agoon a scale of 0-9, I'd put factory reset at about a 5. I'd wager there's still software out there that could do a raw read of the SD storage device's blocks. Unless Apple and friends have the device reset go to extra measures that tell the drive (at the chip-level, not the OS) "report all zeros" when read from, I think to increase your safety to "level 9" you should overwrite the disk by copying a large file several times until all the free space is consumed. Even then, flash drives have more physical storage than they report, but accessing those blocks would be pressing the edge of whats practical except in the most exigent situations. Edit: I didn't realize virtually all phones' storage is encrypted nowadays.
- LamaOfRuin 10y agoDoesn't seem necessary if you had disk encryption enabled. The data remaining unerased on the disk is already meaningless without the key.
- digler999 10y agoTrue, but I meant my post as a one-size-fits-all rule. I'm sure there are many smart phones that don't use disk encryption.
- psybin 10y agoAll Apple devices are AES encrypted with a combination of a key on flash in the CPU, and a unique static key in the CPU core. "Erasing" the phone just removes the key, rendering the bulk flash storage completely useless. There's never any data stored which is not encrypted.
- anotheryou 10y agoWhen you are rooted you can even make an image before and put it back later I guess.
- nkrisc 10y agoUntil you're detained for not having a phone to turn over. I'm only half joking.
- trome 10y agoI recommend having a few $5 Androids on ya, they are both fun to play with, handy, and will throw inquisitive 3 letter agencies for a loop.
- psybin 10y ago"Is this the phone you use on a day to day basis"- felony if you lie.
- exhilaration 10y agoOption 1: "No, I left my phone at home." Option 2: If you're at the US border and a US citizen, "Sir, I'm an American citizen and just want want to get home" -- citizens can't be blocked from re-entering at the border.
- GuiA 10y agoNo, but they can be detained and harassed - just what happened to the fellow mentioned in the article.
- psybin 10y agoOption 1, why did you bring decoys? You should probably sit here in this cell for a bit while we work out what the fuck you're doing. Option 2, they can't stop you from entering but they can make you enter directly into a jail cell, or generally make your life miserable. See the owner of cock.li, who had all of his electronics seized twice.
- unethical_ban 10y agoOK, what's your point? Your responses are all pretty defeatist, and definitely speculative.
- antisthenes 10y agoI have a prepaid plan that only works in the US anyway. I never bring my US phone on international travel, because it just won't work. Instead, I carry a cheap Chinese GSM phone that's wiped before every trip and preloaded with some music and entertainment videos (TV Shows, etc.) I buy the sim-card at my destination and throw it away when I go back to the States. I'm not sure this solves anything, but then again, I don't work for a company that makes me required to be able to access sensitive data from any point in the world. YMMV.
- rch 10y agoPhones should load different profiles based on the password provided, with some activity logged across profiles so none of them appear stale.
- Spooky23 10y agoYou're implying that people should behave in a manner that is a serious felony in the United States and likely other places.
- sosborn 10y agoHonest question: How is that a felony? I have multiple profiles on my home machine. Does that make me a felon?
- mustacheemperor 10y agoI'm assuming they're referring to the serious felony of lying to border police that you've fully unlocked your phone as requested when in reality you're presenting an artificially limited profile.
- idbehold 10y agoI don't know what you mean by "fully unlocked". Is there a legal definition for this? I made available to you more than just the lock screen software of my electronic device by entering a passcode, what more does "fully unlocked" entail (Please cite sources)?
- khedoros1 10y agoAn argument like this is fun on the internet, and it might (eventually) help you out in the courtroom. Let us know how it works out for you if the border guard decides that you're trying to make a fool out of him.
- Spooky23 10y ago
- skepicurean 10y agoIf a border official hands you a tablet and asks you to login to Facebook, Amazon or even LastPass, are you required to do that?
- gyger 10y agoI suggest mentioning in the title that it concerns the US-border, I travelled across a lot of international borders, that didn't care. Only some international borders are a problem, one of these, the US one.
- Spooky23 10y agoIt's always a risk. We're fortunate to live in a timeframe where this sort of bullshit has been unusual up until now for most people. Ask a US citizen of Pakisanti descent about travel to India sometime. International conflict gets taken out on poor saps trying to travel all of the time. Sometimes it's petty chickenshit, sometimes real.
- ThrustVectoring 10y agoI know of companies that do not allow employees to bring work devices into China. That's probably a somewhat different issue of industrial espionage, though.
- type0 10y agoThen I'm sure US is doing fine in that regard, because american agencies are morally superior to be involved in such a thing, cogh, cogh...
- capote 10y agoIt would be nice if there were a feature built in to phones to facilitate this. Like, on the lock screen, an emergency wipe button that runs a procedure you specify (log you out of everything, obfuscate which services you subscribe to, etc) and this way as you're going through customs, you can gauge your risk and at any point you feel uncomfortable, you discreetly click your button before smoothly handing over your phone and password with a warm smile.
- psybin 10y agoThe area you are frog marched into is strictly no devices allowed, if they see you with any electronics in your hand you will be pounced upon. This is very obviously because people try to destroy evidence they have on their devices once they discover they are screwed.
- jedberg 10y agoThey claim to be device free, but yet everyone has their phones out texting and doing email as they wait in line. I've never seen a border agent even say anything, much less march someone away. As long as you aren't taking pictures of the procedures they don't really care.
- capote 10y agoExactly. With and without Global Entry, I've always had my phone in my hand through passport check and customs.
- psybin 10y agoThe waiting line for immigration/customs is not the area I'm talking about, this area is where you go once you fail the initial screening. In some international airports like Sydney you will receive a $300 on the spot fine if you have your phone in your hand, they're serious about it.
- ue_ 10y agoAustralia does have some outrageous laws, so I suppose they want you not to be destroying the things that are governed by those laws on your phone. But I'd rather take the fine than have them find out, if I had such things.
- andr 10y agoI'm interested to see how Apple will react to this, given their history with the FBI. Right now, you can connect your iPhone to a computer and get all the information off it - doesn't matter if you are iTunes or Cellebrite. It'd be good to have a permanent way to disable this ability in the future, so that your phone data cannot be siphoned out, even if you provide the PIN. Of course, that's not the only way for data to be extracted, but all other options would be considerably slower and less practical.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- eridius 10y agoApparently there already is. It's called Pair Locking, and it's something you can do with Apple's Configurator software. Forensic data dumpers use the same functionality that iTunes uses to talk to the phone, which uses a process called "pairing", and Pair Locking makes it so the device refuses to establish any new pairs.
- helpfulanon 10y agoFun fact - the "border zone" in which your 4th amendment rights are suspended and you are subject to search, is 100 miles wide and overlaps where the majority of Americans live and work https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
- mnm1 10y agoIf you can't change the constitution/law, redefine the meanings of words and you get the same tyranny.
- temp-dude-87844 10y agoEvery time I see this map (which, AFAIK, is a visualization by the ACLU and not based on an official government publication) I wonder why Chicago and the coastline of Lake Michigan is included. The border with Canada runs diagonally down the length of Lake Superior, clears the Straits of Mackinac by at least 40 miles, and then continues southeast along Lake Huron to Sarnia and Detroit. The entirety of Lake Michigan is within the borders of the US, so while this entire "100-mile border zone" business is bizarre enough as it is, it's truly disingenuous to include the lower Lake Michigan coastline. It makes me wonder if this is an interpretational liberty taken solely by the ACLU, or if the government's demonstrated behavior truly justifies what is shown on the map.
- greglindahl 10y agoSo what did the ACLU say when you contacted them? I'm curious how it turned out.
- maxerickson 10y agoIf you are sailing you apparently you only cross the border when you dock your boat. http://www.great-lakes-sailing.com/canada_us_border.html http://www.great-lakes-sailing.com/canada_us_border.html I guess sailing from the Canadian shores of Huron to somewhere in Michigan wouldn't be all that weird.
- chadgeidel 10y ago
- oAlbe 10y ago> Since most of our private data is stored in the cloud — and not on individual devices — you could also reset your phone to its factory settings [...] Then if you’re asked to hand it over, there won’t be any personal data on your phone This makes me wonder: is it true? Is the data truly unrecoverable if you factory-reset your phone? I doubt so. But maybe there's some special tool to truly wipe a device (say like the equivalent of DBAN)
- psybin 10y agoAt least on an iPhone, erased is erased. On android some versions use full disk encryption but many do not, it's a guess.
- ajross 10y agoIt's not a "guess". The last Android release that lacked support for block-device-level encryption was KitKat, which shipped in 2013. Any device being advertised with the "Android" trademark (to be fair: AOSP-based clone OSes like Amazon's have been slower to evolve) over the last two years has that support. Please don't hijack an important security discussion to engage in meaningless platform flamage. Users with Android phones have this available and they should enable it, not be told that they need to "guess".
- oAlbe 10y agoI have some questions actually. Is it something you need to enable on Android? I seem to understand from the comment above yours that iOS has this enabled by default. If so, how do you actually enable it?
- accountface 10y agoThey can detain me indefinitely if they want, I will never give my pin to border security. I'm not going to bend to this bullshit by not carrying a phone.
- korethr 10y agoIt's easy to say that now. When the pressure's actually on and a person now has things at stake, priorities can change, and yielding starts to look like the eminently sensible thing to do. I suspect your tune may change when you find yourself in indefinite detention, have missed your connecting flight, and your family/friend/spouse/boss has called said phone and been told by CBP that you're refusing to comply with an investigation.
- accountface 10y agoNo. If my peers find it acceptable that I am detained indefinitely simply for not unlocking my phone, then throw away the key because all is lost.
- yakshaving_jgt 10y ago“Land of the free.”
- DanHulton 10y agoMy current plan is to wipe my phone before travel and restore it on destination. Nothing to unlock because there's no phone there. Forcing you to restore your entire account is a whole 'nother level beyond simple forcing you to unlock your phone.
- maxxxxx 10y agoHow do you do that with an Android phone? With iOS this seems pretty easy
- hrehhf 10y agoI have used the Android development tools to make backups over USB and it is fast. You can install just the command-line tools from https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html#downloads https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html#downloads and use: adb backup -apk -shared -all -f backupname.ab adb restore backupname.ab
- abeyer 10y agoThough be aware that this won't backup everything. (at least on a non-rooted device) Notably, if you use google authenticator for 2FA, it won't backup and you'll restore a device that will no longer work as your second factor.
- hrehhf 10y agoThanks, that is good to know. I wish there was something as easy as the iTunes backup for iPhones. There are Android apps that claim to do a more thorough job but I haven't tried them.
- maxxxxx 10y agoTitanium backup for a rooted device works great. If you have access to recovery you can also do a Nandroid backup which gives you 100% restore capability. For non rooted this seems very tricky, that's why I asked. Most likely you will spend hours getting your phone to work again.
- js2 10y agoThey may choose to detain you anyway, and force you to give them passwords to various accounts manually. But there’s no easy way for them to know which services you use and which services you don’t use, or whether you have multiple accounts. This would seem to imply lying, or at least deceiving, a federal agent. IANAL, but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements
- ruslan_talpa 10y agoWell ... two can play that game "any matter within the jurisdiction" of the federal government of the United States and since you are not in that jurisdiction this does not seem to appply :)
- inestyne 10y agoTry 'I am a born in America citizen on american soil, I want to talk to my lawyer, no i'm not giving you my password. No I won't tell you why.'
- brachistochron 10y agoI had same strange situation a week ago when passing Ukraine border. Whats purpose of this?
- brachistochron 10y agoI had same strange situation a week ago when passing Ukraine border. Whats purpose of this?
- brachistochron 10y agoI had same strange situation a week ago when passing Ukraine border. Whats purpose of this?
- DigitalJack 10y agoI wish Apple would have a duress password that when entered would wipe the phone.
- aplomb 10y agoIf you have a Nexus Android phone, just change to guest mode or add another user. It's a seldom used feature and limits what people can see or do with your primary account - inspectors are unlikely to know as it's fairly low-key when users are swapped
- pfarnsworth 10y agoBut if they do know, that's a good way to get yourself banned from entering the country for lying to a border guard.
- slyall 10y agoI read the comments here and I'm reminded of a Tweet I read yesterday: "Next programmer bro who explains his clever travel information security hack has to change his name to Mohamed Hussein Ali and try it at LAX" https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/831316334973579264 https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/831316334973579264
- yawz 10y ago> Then if you’re asked to hand it over, there won’t be any personal data on your phone That would probably look even more suspicious.
- taylodl 10y agoSeems to me Apple and Google should be working on "roaming profiles." You can reset your phone to factory settings, or even get a rental phone at your destination, and then quickly restore it from your profile. After all it's the data you're interested in, not the device per se.
- eridius 10y agoHow is that any different than just backing up to iCloud and restoring it to a new device?
- pfarnsworth 10y agoCan border agents force me to reveal my personal email address and password?
- jdalgetty 10y agoWhen someone creates a dumb phone with a great camera and GPS this won't be a problem for a lot of travellers.
- greenyouse 10y agoOnce customs and border patrol is holding you is there any way to back out? Could you say something like "Uh... I think I'm just not going to enter right now."? (then back up your data, ship the computer device with an insurance policy, and give the border crossing another shot)
- outworlder 10y agoCertainly, 6 months later, when you are cleared for a hearing after getting deported to who knows where. Don't try shenanigans at the border.
- greenyouse 10y agoOK, fair enough. Maybe just plan to not have your device like the article says.
- deathanatos 10y ago(IANAL) If you're a US citizen, indefinite detainment without cause is unconstitutional: they must release you eventually; you also (provided you have your passport/can prove citizenship) have a right to enter your country. Further, if they try to detain you indefinitely illegally, you have the right to a writ of habeas corpus — a legal challenge that your detainment or jailing is illegal (your jailor must go before the court and show cause that he/she has the right to hold you). (Though, if you are in this position, you may need someone to file it on your behalf.) Again, I'm only asserting this in the specific situation of a US citizen attempting to enter the US. My understanding is that they are permitted to search you, for the narrow purpose of border security. (I.e., the search here is not a violation of fourth amendment rights.) But I don't see how they can force you to divulge your password. You might not get the phone back, though, and they'd likely make your life very difficult; it's probably better to not mess around with them, and plan ahead. Specifically, I don't think leaving and trying again is ever an option, and wouldn't look good to the officer.
- dgudkov 10y agoYou can. You have the right to withdraw the border crossing submission which is what you effectively do when you try to cross the border. I once was denied entry to the US and the CBP officer offered me to make it as I'm withdrawing my border crossing application in order to make the consequences less severe.
- colemannugent 10y agoThis might have been suggested before, but I think it's novel enough to repeat: You should be able to create two passwords for all devices. One, your password, would allow you to use the device normally, the other, your lastword, would start a silent erasure of the device. The device could even present a fake successful authentication, like dumping you to some fake desktop, while it erases your data. While in this case it would not really benefit someone in situations like US border crossings who have almost no rights, I think it would be very effective at discouraging attempts to force people to divulge their passwords, as the person entering the lastword would effectively be informing the device that it was under attack. With something like this I would think that questioning people for their passwords would be pointless.
- outworlder 10y agoAnd then you get prosecuted for destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice and whatever else they can come up with. As said in other threads, the solution is not technology.
- colemannugent 10y agoThis assumes that law enforcement actually knows you will have evidence. If the technology could remove everything that would be incriminating and leave benign data you would just be another non-techie traveler.
- eridius 10y agoThey don't need to know you have evidence. All they need to know is that you deliberately caused them to erase your device under the guise of unlocking it. Which means your device could have had evidence, and now you've made it impossible to prove that it didn't.
- idbehold 10y agoThe burden of proof is still on them, no?
- Tepix 10y agoFeature Request: set auto-wipe on your phone that cleans it unless you enter your cancellation code within the next x hours.
- spaghetti-guy 10y agoSigned up to pose two questions :- 1/ I legitimately do not know a lot of my usernames and passwords. I sign up with a unique email that includes the name of the site (I'm not particularly religious about the format of this and usually end up checking previous email to figure it out). Passwords are saved in Chrome and I mostly don't remember them. I'm sure I am not unique. Where would one stand with this scenario? 2/ Wherever I can, I use a U2F device as a second factor. Could one be compelled to provide this along with the passwords (providing I can remember them)? Where would one stand if the key was unavailable - i.e. lost/left at home? Assuming they have a PC nearby for checking your social media accounts, I'd very much doubt it had it's USB ports enabled so, even if I did provide it, I would suggest they probably couldn't use it. Is there any documented precedent for how this is handled?
- lamerman 10y ago"And you can bet that countries like China and Russia aren’t far behind" - I am a Russian citizen and I cross the border of Russia very frequently and I cannot agree with the statement. The worse thing I've been asked about was "what is the goal of your trip". Getting your phone on the border of Russia is something impossible, it's just unimaginable. I've never been asked to show anything except for my passport. At least now and for the time before this moment.
- effingwewt 10y agoHow sad that by now it's far easier to simply mail your stuff to yourself, pick it up on arrival to destination, and mail it back to your house before departing. I am beginning to hate my country so bad I can't wait to get out. It feels nothing like the country I grew up in.
- setikites 10y agoWhy not ship your phone to yourself at your destination?
- nojvek 10y agoIn this age of digital instant copy, Facebook has made a lot of things the norm. I watch TV shows and cyber stalking is seen as normal. A good friend of mine was blackmailed by her boyfriend that her sensitive pictures would be released on the Internet if she didn't return his calls. It was the first time she realized that what was considered silly can really be very serious. She deleted her Facebook and Twitter account. I really want to see a big hack, sort of a global financial crisis level on the surveillance govt is collecting for people to realize this shit can really fuck society up.
- janstenpickle 10y agoOK, those of us who know better travel without phones, what about people who don't know better but have received information from me? The data about me on their phone cannot be protected by me.
- hysan 10y agoIf your rights are suspended at the border, then whose rule of law does apply? Clearly not the US, then would it be the neighboring country like Canada? Or is it some sort of no mans land? With more and more of these stories bringing up the lack of 4th and 5th Amendment rights, I'm becoming curious as to what can legally happen at the border. How would common crimes be handled in this area?