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Feds searching passenger cell phones at SFO
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bhhaskin 9y agoMore and more it seems like we are slipping towards a dystopia. Inch by inch our privacy rights are slowly being striped away. Not just by governments but by corporations, and once they are gone it is next to impossible to get them back.
- rublev 9y agoWe are in a dystopia, it's just far more boring and disjointed than what we read about.
- eli 9y agoDystopia is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed?
- colbyh 9y agoeventually consistent dystopias as a service
- jjawssd 9y agoBrilliant. Also known as globalism.
- noobiemcfoob 9y agoEveryone is in one bubble or another.
- criddell 9y agoYou think life is more unpleasant now than 100, 1000, or 10000 years ago? I don't think I'd want to live in any of those eras if given the choice.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoLife wasn't unpleasant before modern technology. You might as well say life was in black and white before the invention of the color photograph. Fun for me sometimes consisted of just a stick and a rock or a stick and my dog. The first industrial revolution initially lowered the quality of life and contentment for workers It'd take you less than a month to adapt if there were no time machine.
- criddell 9y agoCompared to today, I'd say life was indeed unpleasant. Just being free of Polio makes a gigantic difference. The opportunities I have for travel, education, healthcare, access to arts, and other experiences are far greater than my ancestors had. The opportunities my daughters have are so much greater than even my grandmother had. I wouldn't give any of it up.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago> The opportunities I have for travel, education, healthcare, access to arts, and other experiences are far greater than my ancestors had. The opportunities my daughters have are so much greater than even my grandmother had. I wouldn't give any of it up. Within a month you'd be over it. It's surprising how well humans adapt to their situation
- root_axis 9y agoThe entirety of human history can be accurately described as dystopian, and it has been much worse in the past than it is today, particularly for the demographic of this forum (i.e. affluent software engineers)
- rublev 9y agoThe present age is one of understanding, of reflection, devoid of passion, an age which flies into enthusiasm for a moment only to decline back into indolence. Not even a suicide does away with himself out of desperation, he considers the act so long and so deliberately, that he kills himself with thinking -- one could barely call it suicide since it is thinking which takes his life. He does not kill himself with deliberation but rather kills himself because of deliberation. One can't really prosecute this generation, for its art, its understanding, its virtuosity and good sense lies in reaching a judgment or a decision, not in taking action.
- bitJericho 9y agoI'm gong to have to think on this...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kabdib 9y agoThe dystopia is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. [after William Gibson...]
- anc84 9y agoSEO marketing content originally from http://travel http://travel skills.com/2017/05/06/us-customs-phone-search/ , nothing worth reading or visiting really. It's shallow and purely meant to attract clicks and links. Original source of actual content is https://news.artnet.com/art-world/aclu-artist-aaron-gach-956336 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/aclu-artist-aaron-gach-956...
- 0xCMP 9y agoI would like to add the obvious that it has nothing to do with Trump. Things like this were being done and added all the time under Bush and Obama. Simple proof: Why did the EFF and others already have extensive documentation on how to travel through airports securely? Why did people mention crossing borders with wiped phones/laptops?
- nielsbot 9y agoI don't think your examples prove this isn't Trump-related.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoWhy would it be necessary to prove that? Even the article asserts that this is a continuing trend that predates this administration.
- ItendToDisagree 9y agoWhy do you feel the need to post that? The line about the ACLU becoming much more active? Can you disagree that they have become much more active on various issues during the new presidency?
- creaghpatr 9y agoACLU has gotten so rich off of Trump, they love Trump. I love seeing my local coffee shop raise a couple hundred bucks to 'donate' to lawyers. Whoever their Chief Revenue Officer was, the 2016 election was the best night of that guy's life.
- 0xCMP 9y agoI felt the need to post this to ensure we were all aware of our current biases that just because Trump is in office these things are bad and deserve attention. I believe the ACLU is great and I've contributed for years before Trump. And that is my subtle point: Trump isn't what makes these things bad or important. They're important on their own. The ACLU should have been donated to before Trump because the issues they are fighting for are not new under Trump, even if they may have more issues to protect under Trump. This is not one of them. And we as readers need to recognize that "...in Trump's America" is nonsense added to boost page numbers because it has been our America for a long time already. So, therefore, I do not disagree ACLU has been more active. In fact, the question is why weren't they so active before? Personally, I don't think that's a great question either since I'm not sure a case exactly like this happened before so it's moot and if it did I'm almost certain they would have acted on it. But would the press have picked it up like it did? Would it say "...in [Obama's|Bush's] America" at the end? I doubt it.
- themark 9y agoI wonder if you can just stuff phone in carry-on and claim to have lost it.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoGiven that they can search your carry-on, that seems unwise.
- vwcx 9y agoWhy claim anything? Don't mention you have one on your body (because you don't).
- finnn 9y agoI wonder if they stop at the first phone they find. I picked up 10 cheap android phones at $5 each from the grocery store recently, would carry one of those in my pocket, put the "real" phone in a more difficult to find location.
- benji-york 9y agoUnfortunately not; lying to a federal employee carrying out their duties is a crime (Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code).
- _jal 9y agoPrepare your phone before coming through. Backup, wipe and set the password to "I am a panty-sniffing thug". Bonus points for filling it with nothing but articles about law enforcement overreach and pictures of pigs. Encourage everyone you know to do similar, or whatever they're comfortable with. Make being a trouble-maker a badge of honor. If you don't fight somehow, you are accepting it.
- dominotw 9y ago> Make being a trouble-maker a badge of honor. don't do this if you are an immigrant, please.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoOn the other hand, being jealous of your rights is almost a requirement for citizenship :)
- merpnderp 9y agoI love that line. Thanks.
- diminoten 9y agoHonestly, I do accept it, because I still believe they're trying to do the right thing. I know it's easy to shit on law enforcement, but I still fundamentally believe that they're a force of good. Edit: I'd love to discuss this more with all of you, but I've been told by HN moderation that I am a negative force on this website and discussions like these are why. I hope some day there'll be a place we can talk about this kind of thing civilly, but it's not here and it's not today, unfortunately.
- mikeash 9y agoThe road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I would argue that resisting evil actions by good people is more noble than resisting evil actions by evil people, because you stand a better chance of changing things when they don't intend to be evil. I've never had my phone searched, but if they tried, I'd say, "Good luck cracking my password. Can I go now?"
- nielsbot 9y agoMaybe just erase your phone then and there? Or set it to erase after 10 failed password attempts? Wonder how bad they'd make it for you in retaliation.
- hnaparst 9y agoThe most basic function of Customs is to know what is coming into the country. Customs has always had the right to search whatever and whoever they want.
- madamelic 9y agoIt really says a lot when a gov't is afraid of information.
- mikeash 9y agoApparently not. According to this, they cannot force you to unlock your phone: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/business/border-enforcement-airport-phones.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/business/border-enforceme...
- jstanley 9y agoIf they're searching information, they really need to be putting multi-minute delays on all cross-border internet communications while they search the content.
- praneshp 9y agoMore like multi hour if you want to block from tarmac to past-customs. It takes at least an hour to clear customs in SFO (For a non American)
- ouid 9y agothe cellphone comes into the country through the airport, but the information on the cellphone has no such physical barriers.
- strictnein 9y ago> The ACLU has become much more active in trying to protect the rights of travelers during the Trump era > in 2016, “the number of people asked to hand over their cell phones and passwords by Customs and Border Protection agents increased almost threefold over the year before.” I mean, it's great and all that the ACLU is working on this, but the repeated attempts to tie this all to Trump is becoming kind of maddening. Pretty soon all this stuff will start being referred to as "Trump-era security measures" in the press and most will forget who actually started most of it (the last two presidents).
- mythrwy 9y agoMaybe at this point we can't really blame presidents at all. Perhaps presidents are mainly there to make speeches and slightly tweek a few policy decisions important to constituents, but government itself is pretty large and goes right on between administrations. (Which isn't always a bad thing either).
- ItendToDisagree 9y agoPerhaps. But stuff has gotten pretty nutty recently...
- nostrademons 9y agoMy working model is that the President is there to be America's punching bag. Lots of Americans have things wrong with their life or feel they aren't getting their due; rather than fix this (which is hard, and often requires leaps of faith & commitment where you can't be sure of the outcome), they look for someone to blame. Who better to blame than the guy who is nominally in charge of it all? The actual "government", in the sense of who determines how life actually goes on in America, is distributed across a web of key employees in major corporations and governments of all levels. These are not necessarily the CEO (who is often the shareholder's & employee's punching bag); rather, it's the anonymous guy who has been there his whole life, has a huge network of connections within the company, has developed a large degree of expertise in the business, and holds the trust of both the nominal decision-makers and the line-workers who do the work. Witness how we've had 18 government shutdowns since 1976 [1], and life generally goes on during them. (Interestingly, most of them were during the Carter/Reagan years, lest people think government has gotten more dysfunctional recently.) Also observe how the President usually gets blamed or credited for the condition of the economy, which he really has very little control over. People want a figurehead that they can point fingers at; it's usually not the guy who actually holds the reins. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_Uni...
- jedberg 9y agoDoes anyone have detailed instructions on how to make a full backup of my iPhone such that when I restore it, it will be exactly like it was? Every time I do a backup/restore, things seem to get lost. It doesn't seem to be a complete backup.
- rbritton 9y agoAs far as I know, the closest you can get to that is an encrypted backup via iTunes. There are still things omitted from the backup, though. Developers themselves can prevent certain files from being backed up: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/qa/qa1719/_index.html https://developer.apple.com/library/content/qa/qa1719/_index...
- jedberg 9y agoSee, that's the problem. If it isn't a full backup then it's basically useless, because now I don't even know what's missing. Maybe it's something I really need urgently but only once a month, so it might take me a while to even figure out it's gone. And what about say my soft tokens for 2FA? Will those survive the backup? I'm kind of afraid to find out because if they don't then it's a huge pain to reset all of those. I wish backing up a phone was as easy as backing up a computer. :(
- mi100hael 9y agoJust buy a burner when you travel overseas. Chances are your home carrier would gouge you anyway.
- jedberg 9y agoThe problem is here are the things I use my phone for when I travel: - email - social media - maps - podcasts - pictures - soft tokens for 2fa The first few can be handled by a burner, but for pictures I want my nice phone (I guess I could carry a separate camera) but I have no idea how to deal with the 2fa tokens.
- utternerd 9y agoNot that I agree, but Canada has been doing it for years: https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/public-safety-and-law-enforcement/your-privacy-at-airports-and-borders/#toc3 https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/public-safety-and-l...
- bozoUser 9y agoI heard on the radio today that in Feb there were 2000 instances of the phone search which is appalling.
- Kinnard 9y agoCan we have private airports, cooperatively owned and operated, and ban governments from them???
- dajohnson89 9y agoGo home Elon Musk, you're drunk.
- cmurf 9y agoIs this a stupid question or a serious one? Privately owned and operated runways do exist. Airports tend to be publicly funded because they're expensive, so pretty much from the outset those who want an airport go to the government to get one. The regulations that apply depend on what kind of flights happen. If they're exclusively FAR 91 and non-charter then it's a minimal regulatory environment. When there are charters, air taxi, or air carrier flights, it becomes increasingly government regulated. And no you really can't ban the sovereign.
- FireBeyond 9y agoAnd yet, fly as a private passenger on your own jet at a public airport and you're also just as able to bypass almost all of these checks, too. And while a chartered Citation X isn't as likely to be as capable of destruction as a laden Boeing, it could sure do or carry some threat.
- tyingq 9y agoApple/Google: Help us out here. Put some container tech on the phones and have it driven by the entry of a "regular password" and a "duress password". Have the "duress password" bring up a container with plausible faked call, text, browser, camera, etc, history. Oh, and allow for user defined number of container/password pairs, for when the TSA asks for both passwords.
- finnn 9y agoHave the duress password also activate the various sensors on the device and start shipping data to the internet. TSA agent's face, everything that's said, etc.
- DennisP 9y agoThis is a cool idea, but it would also give them a way to tell that they're looking at the duress account.
- sokoloff 9y agoSurreptitious audio recording is a felony in Massachusetts (and possibly other states).
- tyingq 9y agoThere's some precedent that recording police officers isn't in the scope of that Massachusetts law: http://www.dmlp.org/blog/2011/victory-recording-public http://www.dmlp.org/blog/2011/victory-recording-public Though it certainly might land you in jail anyway. There's any number of trumped up reasons to haul an uncooperative person off.
- NathanKP 9y ago> Gach resisted, but finally gave in when he was told that if he didn’t, CBP would keep his phone for an indefinite period. The sad thing is if this happened to me I'd have no problems with just letting them have the phone and get myself a new one. In fact the company I work for would probably let me expense the new phone because they'd be happy I didn't give away the passcode to a phone that has company emails on it that contain private info. So this ends up punishing those who can't afford to just dispose of a phone. Disgusting. Privacy should be a right, not something that you have to ask yourself if you can afford.
- jackhack 9y agoI hate to break this to you, but the feds are snooping on your company emails/texts/phone calls anyway and filing them away forever in a nice big data center in Utah. And a passcode isn't much in the way of protection, except from the airport rent-a-cops and maybe the first tier of Homeland Security. Physical possession of a device guarantees access, if a three-letter-agency wants it. The security theatre of last year w/r/t the iPhone access was to lull us into believing the CIA/FBI/NSA could not access a 'locked' phone. Counterintelligence. It has been accessible all this time. Finally, corporate espionage on behalf of governments is a thing we'll read about in a decade or so. The stories aren't ready to break just yet.
- DennisP 9y agoI wouldn't unlock my phone, because it has Google Authenticator helping to secure financial accounts. If they want to go through enough effort to unlock it, fine. But at least I'll have a chance of resetting authentication before they get to it.
- ketralnis 9y agoOff-topic but what banks offer 2fa that isn't solely SMS based? I've looked but one but it's hard to figure out without already being a customer
- 9y ago
- enraged_camel 9y agoWith all due respect, I think your grasp of American politics is quite weak. The POTUS has immense power, not just in theory (e.g. the ability to single-handedly launch nukes and basically end the world) but also in practice. For one, he or she can nominate Supreme Court judges. This alone is huge, considering the SC is the final arbiter in the most important conflicts in the nation. Aside from that, he or she can issue Executive Orders, which "have significant influence over the internal affairs of government, deciding how and to what degree legislation will be enforced, dealing with emergencies, waging wars, and in general fine-tuning policy choices in the implementation of broad statutes."[1] The POTUS can also veto legislation passed by Congress. Historically, Congress has been able to override these vetoes only 7% of the time[2], which means the POTUS has a serious amount of influence in the direction the country goes in as well. And of course, he or she is also the Commander in Chief of the world's most powerful military, and the country's supreme representative in foreign affairs. Bottom line: POTUS is much more than a "punching bag." [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veto#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veto#United_States
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- alpsgolden 9y agoPOTUS has great power relative to any other singular person in the world. But relative to the total power exercised by the government, they have little (especially with regards to domestic policy). Trump's ability to actually "drain the swamp" is extremely limited, unless he pulls off an unprecedented and insane power grab. Yes, he can tinker with things, and those tinkerings will impact millions of people, but his ability actually bring back jobs to the rust belt, fix the economy, fix healthcare, make Washington accountable, etc, are all extremely limited. Aside from that, he or she can issue Executive Orders, which "have significant influence over the internal affairs of government, deciding how and to what degree legislation will be enforced, dealing with emergencies, waging wars, and in general fine-tuning policy choices in the implementation of broad statutes." Except that when those orders go to far against the wishes of the permanent government, the orders get blocked by the courts. The issue is that it takes virtual all of a president's political capital to fight the permanent government (the bureaucracy, the courts, academia, the credentialed media, the party apparatus). So while in theory they have quite a bit of authority, if they wish to use that authority in a way that goes against the interests of the permanent government, they will find themselves in a huge battle. They can win at most, maybe one or two of these battles a term, and only these in a limited way.
- Hasknewbie 9y agoI am aware that this was also happening in previous administrations and is slowly getting worse, but as a European I can only describe this as "communist-like", and wonder what the US citizenry, of all people, have come to that they accept such things? (Clearly this not some form of elaborate investigation, and they're only harrassing random passengers.) We are now in a Bizzaro world where we're safer "in our letters and effects" when travelling through the airports of Communist-controlled China than in the US ones...
- white-flame 9y agoIt's fear mongering that has normal citizens agreeing with overly aggressive "enforcement", and forgetting about what rights are.
- joshuaheard 9y agoI would never hand over my phone or passwords at the border. The only reason customs can search you at the border is for any smuggling or immigration issue. Since no rational person would smuggle something digital on their phone, when they could transfer it over the cloud without physical possession, there is simply no reason for them to search your phone without a warrant. If they threaten to take your phone, threaten to sue them for trespass and to go to the media.
- joncp 9y agoEven if I wipe my phone, I worry that they'll plug it into some rootkit-on-demand Cellebrite device. What if I remove one of the data pins from the USB port so that it only works as a charger? Is that enough to protect the phone from one of those Cellebrite boxes?
- schoen 9y agoWe wrote a guide about this: https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017 https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017 However, the news is not necessarily that encouraging.
- nafizh 9y agoThis is specially terrifying for non-citizens or visa holders. The border police has no obligation to let you in if you decide to not give them the password.
- rietta 9y agoI would not be okay with this. If faced with this situation, I personally would be compelled to refuse even if they seize my powered off fully encrypted iPhone. I would then have to obtain an attorney to fight the seizure on the principle of the matter. This would be so even if I had just bought the phone an hour before and had nothing custom on it at all.
- patmcguire 9y agoWhat are they going to find in that time period, with the person there? Are they just fishing? What's even the point from their side?
- twothamendment 9y agoThey can find it later. How long does it take to copy the entire contents of a phone and hand it back to you?
- patmcguire 9y agoAh, I misread the article as they had to search in their presence.
- throw2016 9y agoThis is how totalitarianism looks. Don't try to brush it aside, hand wave it away or become an apologist. People have been horrified by stories of the secret police in infamous regimes ruffling through people's diaries to find out what they wrote. You can't express moral disgust at that and live with this. This is the exact same thing. No one has any business with your phone or your personal life.
- efuest 9y agoAssuming they are using some OoTB software like Cellebrite. It would be interesting to use a vulnerability in one of Cellebrite's file parsers and infect their machine. Would a mass dump of their collected data cause any public outcry?
- efuest 9y agoAssuming they are using some OoTB software like Cellebrite. It would be interesting to use a vulnerability in one of Cellebrite's file parsers and infect their machine. Would a mass dump of their collected data cause any public outcry?
- bschwindHN 9y agoAll of you with your "clever" workarounds don't get it. It's you vs. someone who has been questioning people all day. Do you really think the agent will just go "Oh you don't have a device, you're good to go!" or "This phone looks like it's never been used, nothing suspicious here!"? That's going to raise suspicions and make your life much harder. Unfortunately there's not much you can do to fight it except at the legislative level. It's a shitty situation, but telling people to do these "tricks" is going to make their lives even shittier.