6 ms·

Is it safe to travel to the United States with your phone?

170 points by Tomte 2y ago

mouse_ 2y ago
I'm afraid this one's no exception to the law of headlines.
dartos 2y ago
I’m no fan of the current administration at all, but I’m also weary of just accepting stories that confirm my bias. I _feel_ like the administration would brag about blocking potential European terrorists or something of this was actually going on intentionally. My gut tells me that the people getting blocked at the border are either running into extremely overzealous border guards OR are making some kind of ruckus anyway and complaining to the media after provoking guards somehow. Still not acceptable behavior by border guards, but it’d be a far cry from a top down order. I guess we’ll see how often these stories keep popping up.
- jfengel 2y ago
  I agree, to a point. If an order were coming from the top, it would be happening many times a day. But it could also be that the overzealous staffers feel like they want to impress the higher ups. So it could well be happening bottom up. The administration certainly isn't jumping in to fix it when it happens. If so, that's something you need to take into account if you want to travel here. Many are going to boycott us entirely anyway, just because of how hostile the administration is to our erstwhile allies.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
    If it were an express order from the top, it would easier to fight against. This is more of 'obeying in advance' where people in various positions get the vibe that they both can and should be doing this kind of thing and that not only will they get away with it, but may even be rewarded for it. This stage affects of the already willing participants. At later stages 'obeying in advance' will be done even by unwilling participants out of fear of retribution.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      > This is more of 'obeying in advance' where people in various positions get the vibe that they both can and should be doing this kind of thing Yeah like meta killing their DEI programs to suck up to Trump. I don't see a similar hatred of such programs here in Europe luckily. I work for an EU company that has a big footprint in Europe and they have no plans to reduce their inclusivity programs. I'm directly involved in those. And really, no they are not about quotas at all. It's all about being "colourblind", to remove inherent bias, exactly what the Trumpians claim to want.
      - dartos 2y ago
        > Yeah like meta killing their DEI programs to suck up to Trump. Or because Zuckerberg wanted to avoid “life in prison” Which may be worse, actually. https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/31/politics/video/smr-trump-zuckerberg https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/31/politics/video/smr-trump-zuck...
        wkat4242 2y ago
        That's a totally unrelated issue. And just some grandstanding by Trump. Besides, Zuckerberg has more than enough money to evade US law if he needs to (and that's if Trump can manage to make such BS into law!). Even Snowden has successfully done that and he wasn't even rich. He's not really at risk of going "to prison for life".
        jfengel 2y ago
        If Trump wanted to, he could simply send the marshals to arrest him. Zuckerberg has a lot of ability to evade, but it's not infinite. Trump probably was just grandstanding there. He makes hundreds of meaningless threats per day, to make it impossible to tell which ones he means to carry out. But they do cause fear, because you can never be 100% certain. And not even other oligarchs are safe.
    - dartos 2y ago
      It very well may be. That’s why I’m going to wait to believe these stories until more time has passed. If these were just a blip come a few months, then they were a fluke. If it becomes a pattern… well it wouldn’t be surprising…
- LastTrain 2y ago
  Keep carrying that water, kid.
- cjs_ac 2y ago
  It doesn't matter whether it's an official policy or just overzealous border guards. It's a real risk that people now need to account for when making travel plans.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  I'd imagine a combination. Overzealous and probably demanding border guards, the traveller getting offended by that and not showing them the respect they think they deserve... Then they throw the book at you :( The problem is that normal US law doesn't apply at the border. They even held an American NASA employee with a security clearance and this was before Trump. It does look like it's getting worse now though. I'm definitely not going to the US anymore even if my work asks me to.
- flawn 2y ago
  3 german citizens had been recently detained for multiple weeks in Detention Centers..
  - chneu 2y ago
    A British or Irish gal was flown back to the UK in chains.
  - squarefoot 2y ago
    Sources: https://archive.ph/zNMKP https://archive.ph/zNMKP (NY Times) https://apnews.com/article/border-tourists-german-canadian-detention-immigration-408cd27338e8065268fabc835f8b0c34 https://apnews.com/article/border-tourists-german-canadian-d... Better to give always links to (reliable) sources to keep noise from shills and deniers low.
  - idkfasayer 2y ago
    [dead]
- NalNezumi 2y ago
  My guess (judging from similar historical events) would be that it's a combination of: * New administration means people (including border guards) are now feeling emboldened to act in a certain way. This means people that already had that leaning, will be unabashed in their action, and middle-manager level will be less strict on stopping these behavior since it might backfire on them. * Now suddenly the topic is interesting to the vast cohort of the population. Which means that in the media boardroom, where they decide what to cover, put out, etc, they take that in to account and report & investigate more of it. Sometimes, things that was already endemic but unnoticed get a huge bump in coverage and create a perception that it's top-down, while in reality there have always been the issue, but now it's more blatant. Days after the Brexit vote, people went out of their way to vandalize non British business establishment. One Polish boutique was trashed and people now felt it was "ok" to leave graffiti in the form of "get out you're not welcome here". Those sentiment was always there and if you go to any immigrant community in any country and ask locals they usually have stories about it, but with the brexit vote many felt that was justified and did it in excess, which lead to media coverage. Did leave campaign say any of that, or instructed people to do anything similar? No. But part of the follower of that campaign already had the leaning to it, and it wasn't until the comparison to Kristallnacht started to pop up until the parties took a firm stance to it. Probably same thing happening here. So the thing to watch out for is probably what would be the official reaction to it. a silent nod might just mean this is the new norm.
  - graemep 2y ago
    There is a lot of idiocy in UK immigration (most often random decisions that someone is an "overstay" risk when they are clearly not) but it is less dramatic as it happens when issuing visas rather than at the border. > Days after the Brexit vote, people went out of their way to vandalize non British business establishment. One Polish boutique was trashed and people now felt it was "ok" to leave graffiti in the form of "get out you're not welcome here". That is also attributable to your second reason about the topic being interesting and reported in the media. The number of people who actually did things like that is tiny, but because it happened to people originating from the EU after Brexit it was newsworthy. When it happens to people from other countries or if it happened before Brexit it was not newsworthy. We had racist stickers put on your door in the 1990s, and quite people had a lot worse happen to them in the 80s, but it was not newsworthy at the time unless it was extreme or happened to someone who was high profile or knew some jouranlists.
- yodsanklai 2y ago
  > complaining to the media after provoking guards somehow. I don't know if there are many people who want to provoke guards, at the risk of being deported, or worse. Just for the fun of telling a nice story to the medias? > it’d be a far cry from a top down order. Trump has been sending a clear message that bullies were getting a free pass, for instance when he pardoned the rioters. It's not because there's not a top down order that the administration isn't directly responsible.
- SkyPuncher 2y ago
  My understanding is bringing a cell phone to the US has been an increasing concern well prior to this administration.
  - Erwyn 2y ago
    This here. I’m European, we’ve been told for years that should we travel to the US we should bring a wiped phone AND laptop because of that. This is nothing new but maybe exacerbated by the current administration. From what I gather from the news and from a European citizen point of view what’s new are the detentions.
- Majromax 2y ago
  > My gut tells me that the people getting blocked at the border are either running into extremely overzealous border guards OR are making some kind of ruckus anyway and complaining to the media after provoking guards somehow. My default guess is Goodhart's Law. The current administration expressly values 'tough' border enforcement, and it publicly uses removals and associated statistics to describe how 'tough' it is being. Border agents respond to these incentives by looking for any excuse to deny or remove would-be entrants, minimizing the independent judgment and discretion that's an ordinary part of the job. It's not a 'top down order', but it's an entirely predictable consequence of the administration's messaging.
- thi2 2y ago
  As a straight white male I also believe racial profiling does not exist because it never happened to me.
- piva00 2y ago
  Or the people working under this administration for CBP and ICE are "Working Towards the Führer"[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw#%2522Working_Towards_the_F%C3%BChrer%2522_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw#%2522Working_Towar...
- aisenik 2y ago
  It is difficult to read this as anything but an attempt to absolve yourself of accepting confirmation bias. You feel like, your gut tells you. And you land exactly where your beliefs are confirmed and where any response/call to action outside of the status quo is unwarranted. If you ignored your feelings and took a look you could find the people responsible for these policies gleefully advocating to accelerate and enhance the abuses. It is easier to accept their self-serving lies and Kafkaesque legal machinations than it is to confront the realities of the world we face.
- addicted 2y ago
  Long time immigration lawyers are not randomly advising their clients to not travel outside the U.S. and to use burner phones if they do. The threat is real and elevated.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
malfist 2y ago
I can't believe we're at the point in history where criticizing our president is labeled "potential terrorism" and used to punish people. Free speech is literally the first right granted by the bill of rights. Criticism of our president has _always_ been allowed.
- comrade1234 2y ago
  Supposedly for the French guy that you are referring to it was because he had confidential information on his phone from JPL, and not for the reason the French minister was saying. But I find that hard to believe - that someone in CBP would recognize what’s confidential government information, and then just deport him and not arrest him for spying…. I did find it curious though that the French guy himself never said it was for his messages about trump - only some people in the French government were saying that.
  - neuroelectron 2y ago
    Yet none of this is ever cleared up in the public sphere. Obviously something more is going on between USA and France.
    - alpinisme 2y ago
      I don’t know that it’s “obvious” that anything more is happening than the simplest explanation that the current administration (and its lackeys at the lower rungs of government power) is delighting in humiliating and disempowering its critics, domestic and foreign.
      - neuroelectron 2y ago
        Yes because that always happens. Did you not notice the last decade of negative press on Trump and other Republicans? That's just noise and frankly I'm baffled I have to explain this. France is probably one of the most capable military intelligence centers in Europe, have a large amount of nuclear power and supporting infrastructure and is a Muslim stronghold in some areas. So clearly, something more than just surface level WWE-style drama is going on.
mactavish88 2y ago
What's a good "dumb phone" these days to travel with?
- orangecatte 2y ago
  When I travel presumably I'd want to have a smart phone to take pictures, check internet (maps, recommendations, itineraries, etc) and to make communication with people back home or people I'm visiting. What would be the best way to protect myself with a phone while still being able to do all of this? Having a burner smart phone with an ESIM so I keep my number (for communication), itineraries saved to device, and no account logins or apps?
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Yeah just buy a $100 smartphone, set up a brand new Google account for it, a prepaid SIM with a data bundle and off you go. Use only temporary accounts on it. Use your traditional comms apps through a web browser not apps. That's what I would do anyway.
    - prmoustache 2y ago
      you don't even need a google account, just aurora store installed.
      - wkat4242 2y ago
        True, that's what I do on my main smartphone. But technically it's not really without a Google account. Aurora just has a batch of common accounts it assigns randomly when you log in with the "anonymous" option.
        prmoustache 2y ago
        Sure but you don't have to create one yourself
      - yencabulator 2y ago
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
I only bring a secondary, recently factory reset phone with a basic account setup overseas. But I haven't been overseas since prior to COVID. My primary phone stays at home, it's too potentially valuable to allow any country's airport security to paw through freely. I used to buy a local SIM card when I got to the airport. Next time I go overseas I might have to buy a new phone and SIM card. Edit: from what others have said, I'll also be making sure my phone is shutdown before the plane lands. I might also be looking very closely at GrapheneOS on a second hand pixel.
- rurban 2y ago
  In Texas it was explicitly disallowed to shut off your phone. You needed to sign a paper to have enough power, not shut it down and keep it unlocked. They threatened to send you back if you won't comply
kotaKat 2y ago
... Honestly, no, because they're gonna slap it on a Greykey, Cellebrite UFED, or just call up Cellebrite Professional Services for a remote crack on the spot. At a minimum power it down so the best extract they can gank is a before-first-use dump.
qgin 2y ago
Hypothetically, what would happen if you did a cloud backup and wiped your phone before going through customs, then restored the phone on the other side?
- southernplaces7 2y ago
  If you did it well, and of course are willing to lie when asked if you'd done such a thing (major red flag for the CBP flunkies) you'd probably be okay, but with an obvious caveat: entering the country with a phone and other electronics normally stuffed with personal information but in your case curiously empty would probably cause you to get flagged for special attention much more than if your device content looked normally cluttered.
  - squarefoot 2y ago
    That's why plausible deniability should be implemented in such a way that one could have multiple encrypted profiles on a phone, each one with its hidden and encrypted storage, but the safe one wouldn't be empty or unused to avoid raising warning flags; all sensitive social media and communication would take place only on other accounts, still the user should maintain their day to day communications (family, friends) on the safe one. Encrypted profiles would activate only after entering their unique password, but the phone would immediately default to the safe one at each sleep or power off. This however doesn't protect from cell traffic analysis which would reveal for example the phone (tower+location+source and dest. IP+IMSI+IMEI+time) was connected to that server at a certain time, still would require more efforts from an officer than merely scanning all mail or posts on social media. A VPN helps, but as per above, now one would have to explain why they're using one, and I totally expect VPNs to be criminalized very soon.
    - southernplaces7 2y ago
      All of that's great advice and quite detailed, but i'd just bring a second burner phone with some basic social media and etc content on it from intermittent safe use so it's always ready for travel.
- 2y ago
b8 2y ago
Huh, I found this interesting, "Because the agents couldn’t bypass Malik’s password, they sent the phone to a forensics lab, which extracted all the phone’s data.", I wonder how they bypassed his password unless it wasn't fully encrypted. Well AFAIU my Pixel 6A is extractable even withe encryption and a long password via a cellebrite device now. Unsure if GrapheneOS would help prevent extraction.
- protimewaster 2y ago
  It depends on a variety of factors, including whether the device has previously been unlocked after the most recent boot (AFU: after first unlock) or not (BFU: before first unlock). AFAIK, almost every device is more secure BFU.
- fph 2y ago
  In their capabilities page, Cellebrite says they can't break into GrapheneOS.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Wow why would they give GrapheneOS such a marketing boost? I don't think they're lying, after all if they did they'd lie about much more common mobile OSes too. But personally I wouldn't inform the public of my weaknesses if I were a 'security/forensics' company.
    - rfoo 2y ago
      Because they want to advertise that they CAN break into phones loaded with GrapheneOS. Just not the latest version. Likewise they "announce" that they can't unlock BFU iPhone-s running latest iOS, and the real message is "we can unlock just slightly older iPhone-s and you may expect us to be able to unlock current version after few months".
      - wkat4242 2y ago
        Ah makes sense thanks!
amiga386 2y ago
No, it's not. It's also not safe to live within 100 miles of any border in the US... which is where 2/3rds of all US citizens live... because the CBP decided to themselves that they can search anyone, any time, within 100 miles of any border, for any reason, with no warrant. And sometimes it ignores the 100 mile limit too. So just warrantless searches on anyone of anything at any time for no reason. Warrantless searches all round. The EFF and ACLU have been fighting that belief for years. They're making progress but they're not quite there yet. https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/31/us_border_phone_search/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/31/us_border_phone_searc... But generally speaking, don't bring your real phone to the USA. Bring a burner phone that's empty. Download whatever it is you need on the phone well after you've cleared the border.
- Tostino 2y ago
  I was driving up i-75 and i-95 in Florida yesterday and saw three or four border patrol agents posted in the middle of the highway over a couple hundred miles. They were acting like Highway Patrol how they were positioned in the median after bridges or hidden in the trees. Never seen their vehicles before. Extremely disconcerting.
  - wombatpm 2y ago
    I just heard a recruiting add for the CBP on several podcasts. Plenty of opportunities with signing bonus. I guess they need more jackbooted thugs.
  - clown_strike 2y ago
    When you see them after weigh stations or agricultural inspection checkpoints, they are positioned to intercept runners.
    - Tostino 2y ago
      I don't think it was that. I generally pay attention to those and don't remember it being near a weigh station for any of them (it was only one car at a time, and was spread out over a couple hundred miles that I saw them). I haven't seen any other CBP agents on the rest of my trip so far after I got out of FL up to NJ.
anonzzzies 2y ago
Outside the EU, I have a travel kit which has a cheap Android phone and cheap Android tablet. Both have convincing stuff on it, but in reality, everything goes via my personal vpn/ssh vnc for which I carry the keys well hidden. I have 'nothing to hide' but free speech is not what Elon thinks it means (in many countries), including now, the US. I don't want to be arrested for something I said 10 years ago which was now mined, or hallucinated, by Palantir AI scanning my phone.
- markx2 2y ago
  If you want very well hidden, get a writable NFC chip implanted. You write the data to it, delete the phone app which did that write, and once you are through, re-install the phone app and read your data. Last time I went through the TSA scatter scanners and wand waving theatre the 3 implants I had were not detected.
  - tazjin 2y ago
    I remember watching this Keanu Reeves movie.
  - ratatoskrt 2y ago
    That's somehow feels even more dystopian than what the current US administration is doing.
    - markx2 2y ago
      My day to day for that chip is for PINs. I know my bank account PIN, and it's linked through Apple Pay. My other cards - credit x2, building society I have no clue. Those PINs are stored and given I'm never out without my phone I always have access to the numbers. I was constantly stopped and quizzed by the TSA to the point I would wipe my macbook and phone before travelling. Using the NFC chips that had all the details I needed made sense.
- XorNot 2y ago
  One of the Libre phone providers needs a decent story surrounding blanking and restoring the phone with minimal fuss. What you should be able to do is wipe it, then pull down the backup image and get it back exactly the way it was. Which you just...can't do AFAIK.
amiga386 2y ago
Also, the USA is not alone in doing trumped-up bullshit to visitors. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65314605 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65314605 The French authorities did not like what a French publisher published about them. So they asked Britain to fuck about with one of the publisher's employees who was going to visit a book fair in London. They arrested the employee on terrorism charges, because they demanded to search his phone when he arrived in the UK, and he refused -- that's a crime, because the UK is a shit nation with evil laws. That should not be a crime.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  > Also, the USA is not alone in doing trumped-up bullshit I see what you did there :D But yeah. Other countries do it too and they should be called out. The government at that time in the UK was the Tories though and they aren't really all that different from the Project 2025/Heritage Foundation guys. Also very conservative.
  - amiga386 2y ago
    I'm afraid to say this is bipartisan. The law the Frenchman was charged under - the Terrorism Act 2000 - was passed by Labour. Both Labour and the Tories are rather authoritarian. However, on left-rightness, both Labour and the Tories are to the left of the US Democrats, who are themselves left of the US Republicans. The specific issue of it being made illegal to not reveal your passwords/keys caused an enormous outrage in the UK, but the Labour government passed it anyway. Activists sent Jack Straw, the home secretary at the time, encrypted files on disk, and said that because the files are now in his possession, they want to demand he decrypt them, and because he definitely cannot - he never knew the password - he should go to jail for two years under his proposed law. Jack Straw's response to this was not "I see, what a stupid law, let me get rid of it". His response was to write into the law "this law doesn't apply to government ministers"
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Ah I didn't know :( I see more conservative (anti-LGBTIQ+ in particular) talking points from tories though. The UK is also on my list of "never travel to" countries anyway, it has been since Brexit and the xenophobic sentiments that empowered. Really the "taking back control" was really a euphemism for "less black faces on our streets". At least it seemed that way when I spoke to some of the more outspoken Brexit proponents in my circle. They turned totally rabiate anti-immigrant. All people that were decent before, by the way. Obviously I will never go to the US again either. Though nobody has asked me to go there. I did get asked by work to go to some Google thing in London and I refused for that reason which was totally ok.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
[dead]
ekianjo 2y ago
It was never safe to travel to the US with your phone since the Patriot Act was in action, since they made it possible to search all your electronics and decide to refuse you entry for any reason. It's safer to come with a phone that's completely empty of private information, and re-image it remotely once reaching your destination.
- ghaff 2y ago
  If I felt that way, I'd probably conclude that I just didn't need to travel with a phone.
xoa 2y ago
No, but while the situation in the US is (relative to our own history and the Constitution) very bad, in this particular instance there is nothing particularly special. It's equally "unsafe" to travel to any country on the planet "with your phone" where that means "your phone as you would go about your day-to-day life with". In many cases far more so since you could face far worse then deportation, but if nothing else every country gets to keep non-citizens out at will and even citizens can still potentially have stuff confiscated for long periods with irksome requirements to get it back, even if they themselves cannot be barred from return under any circumstances. Of course, traveling is also a higher risk time anyway in terms of having your phone stolen or lost. So it's definitely not a bad idea regardless to consider workarounds. Used phones drop in value very fast for example while still being extremely powerful and useful given how the pace of improvements in smartphones has leveled off heavily in the last 5 years. Like an iPhone 12 or 13 Pro are still fully supported, likely will be for another 2-4 years, and still solid devices. Both can be readily found at this point for $250-400, something like 1/3 the price of a current gen. Depreciation in price is very fast vs depreciation in relative performance or features. So simply flat out having a phone for travel and not putting anything on it sensitive is an option, and then if something happens it can be abandoned with less concern. Alternatively in some cases one could erase their main phone, set it up for travel, and then restore via VPN after crossing borders. This is more trouble then ideally it should be, and depends on either having a high bandwidth connection at your destination or some other workaround (mailing yourself a hard drive for example), but can let you stick to one main device. But I'm glad it's getting more attention even from those who typically haven't thought about it. I hope it spurs demand for better technology answers as well. The more convenient privacy and security are the more adoption and the better for all of us.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Exactly. One of the big tech companies, maybe Google, had employees travel with essentially a "burner" Chromebook to certain countries. At some point, the answer is to revert to pre-electronics travel--or just not travel. Or just decide that the individual risk is pretty minimal compared to all the other things that can happen if you leave your home.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Hizonner 2y ago
It has not safe to cross any international border with your phone, at least if you haven't wiped it, and it hasn't been for ages. Which isn't to say that it hasn't gotten a lot worse in the US recently.
- coolThingsFirst 2y ago
  yeah but what if it's PIN protected. they'd force you to unlock your phone?
  - riskyingo 2y ago
    yes, you will be asked to unlock it
    - Majromax 2y ago
      > yes, you will be asked to unlock it To elaborate, per the CBP (https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-search-electronic-devices https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-searc...), if you refuse to unlock your phone or other electronic device it may be confiscated. If you are a non-citizen, they can also use that refusal as evidence that you are not 'entitled to enter the United States.' In theory that alone is not sufficient to result in denied entry, but in practice it seems that border guards have a great deal of subjective leeway about things. If you are a US citizen, they cannot deny you entry at the border. However, the device might still be confiscated.
coolThingsFirst 2y ago
idk what happened to the world 2020 onwards, things are becoming bleak everywhere.
- ozmodiar 2y ago
  Power keeps consolidating and the only people who want to do anything about it are those that want to speed it up.
  - lifestyleguru 2y ago
    If that's comforting, in EU it doesn't go any better.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
I would take a brand new phone, with crowned King Trump as a background, browser history full of Tucker Carlson, and Horst Wessel for a ringtone. Then I'd fly through customs. In fact, I often cross borders into/out of totalitarian countries. I usually uninstall all messengers, Firefox, financial and security apps and use Shreddit to wipe the free space. Then I restore everything after crossing the border. My laptop has a large movie file which is really a VeraCrypt volume where all the programs and data sit.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  First paragraph: old school hacker bona fides on show. I like it.
  - timacles 2y ago
    This is truly the way. If we are to beat them we need to play their game, blending in 99% of the time and then subverting them at the most prime opportunities. USA #1!
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  It's best to stay neutral because political parties can change. You don't want the next party to classify you as a troublemaker either when they get their hands on the historical dataset.
chris_engel 2y ago
Not that I am planning to travel to the US at any point but the first thing that came to my mind was: why not just sending the phone by parcel, fly without it and pick it up later on? Even tough I find it embarassing that such hacks are necessary in the first place.
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  International shipments, not to mention transcontinental, are expensive and unreliable enough. Then you have to manage receiving international package at the hotel or in some temporary housing....
bvan 2y ago
It’s a sure way to kill tourism.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  Most tourists have zero awareness of it.
apexalpha 2y ago
Our company prohibits it explicitly to bring any work electronics to the US. You get a burner and leave it there
xqcgrek2 2y ago
[flagged]
raydev 2y ago
This shouldn't be flagged. The article is informative and is about rights/privacy related to software/hardware everyone carries.
- dang 2y ago
  Users flagged it. I've turned the flags off now, but it's easy enough to understand why HN readers would be flagging an article like this: there have been a bunch of other major recent threads on the same topic cluster. Avoiding repetition, and especially the deadly duo of repetition/indignation, is a core principle to keeping the site interesting.
more_corn 2y ago
No

170 points by Tomte 2y ago

I'm afraid this one's no exception to the law of headlines.

I’m no fan of the current administration at all, but I’m also weary of just accepting stories that confirm my bias. I _feel_ like the administration would brag about blocking potential European terrorists or something of this was actually going on intentionally. My gut tells me that the people getting blocked at the border are either running into extremely overzealous border guards OR are making some kind of ruckus anyway and complaining to the media after provoking guards somehow. Still not acceptable behavior by border guards, but it’d be a far cry from a top down order. I guess we’ll see how often these stories keep popping up.

jfengel 2y ago
I agree, to a point. If an order were coming from the top, it would be happening many times a day. But it could also be that the overzealous staffers feel like they want to impress the higher ups. So it could well be happening bottom up. The administration certainly isn't jumping in to fix it when it happens. If so, that's something you need to take into account if you want to travel here. Many are going to boycott us entirely anyway, just because of how hostile the administration is to our erstwhile allies.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  If it were an express order from the top, it would easier to fight against. This is more of 'obeying in advance' where people in various positions get the vibe that they both can and should be doing this kind of thing and that not only will they get away with it, but may even be rewarded for it. This stage affects of the already willing participants. At later stages 'obeying in advance' will be done even by unwilling participants out of fear of retribution.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    > This is more of 'obeying in advance' where people in various positions get the vibe that they both can and should be doing this kind of thing Yeah like meta killing their DEI programs to suck up to Trump. I don't see a similar hatred of such programs here in Europe luckily. I work for an EU company that has a big footprint in Europe and they have no plans to reduce their inclusivity programs. I'm directly involved in those. And really, no they are not about quotas at all. It's all about being "colourblind", to remove inherent bias, exactly what the Trumpians claim to want.
    - dartos 2y ago
      > Yeah like meta killing their DEI programs to suck up to Trump. Or because Zuckerberg wanted to avoid “life in prison” Which may be worse, actually. https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/31/politics/video/smr-trump-zuckerberg https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/31/politics/video/smr-trump-zuck...
      - wkat4242 2y ago
        That's a totally unrelated issue. And just some grandstanding by Trump. Besides, Zuckerberg has more than enough money to evade US law if he needs to (and that's if Trump can manage to make such BS into law!). Even Snowden has successfully done that and he wasn't even rich. He's not really at risk of going "to prison for life".
        jfengel 2y ago
        If Trump wanted to, he could simply send the marshals to arrest him. Zuckerberg has a lot of ability to evade, but it's not infinite. Trump probably was just grandstanding there. He makes hundreds of meaningless threats per day, to make it impossible to tell which ones he means to carry out. But they do cause fear, because you can never be 100% certain. And not even other oligarchs are safe.
  - dartos 2y ago
    It very well may be. That’s why I’m going to wait to believe these stories until more time has passed. If these were just a blip come a few months, then they were a fluke. If it becomes a pattern… well it wouldn’t be surprising…
LastTrain 2y ago
Keep carrying that water, kid.
cjs_ac 2y ago
It doesn't matter whether it's an official policy or just overzealous border guards. It's a real risk that people now need to account for when making travel plans.
wkat4242 2y ago
I'd imagine a combination. Overzealous and probably demanding border guards, the traveller getting offended by that and not showing them the respect they think they deserve... Then they throw the book at you :( The problem is that normal US law doesn't apply at the border. They even held an American NASA employee with a security clearance and this was before Trump. It does look like it's getting worse now though. I'm definitely not going to the US anymore even if my work asks me to.
flawn 2y ago
3 german citizens had been recently detained for multiple weeks in Detention Centers..
- chneu 2y ago
  A British or Irish gal was flown back to the UK in chains.
- squarefoot 2y ago
  Sources: https://archive.ph/zNMKP https://archive.ph/zNMKP (NY Times) https://apnews.com/article/border-tourists-german-canadian-detention-immigration-408cd27338e8065268fabc835f8b0c34 https://apnews.com/article/border-tourists-german-canadian-d... Better to give always links to (reliable) sources to keep noise from shills and deniers low.
- idkfasayer 2y ago
  [dead]
NalNezumi 2y ago
My guess (judging from similar historical events) would be that it's a combination of: * New administration means people (including border guards) are now feeling emboldened to act in a certain way. This means people that already had that leaning, will be unabashed in their action, and middle-manager level will be less strict on stopping these behavior since it might backfire on them. * Now suddenly the topic is interesting to the vast cohort of the population. Which means that in the media boardroom, where they decide what to cover, put out, etc, they take that in to account and report & investigate more of it. Sometimes, things that was already endemic but unnoticed get a huge bump in coverage and create a perception that it's top-down, while in reality there have always been the issue, but now it's more blatant. Days after the Brexit vote, people went out of their way to vandalize non British business establishment. One Polish boutique was trashed and people now felt it was "ok" to leave graffiti in the form of "get out you're not welcome here". Those sentiment was always there and if you go to any immigrant community in any country and ask locals they usually have stories about it, but with the brexit vote many felt that was justified and did it in excess, which lead to media coverage. Did leave campaign say any of that, or instructed people to do anything similar? No. But part of the follower of that campaign already had the leaning to it, and it wasn't until the comparison to Kristallnacht started to pop up until the parties took a firm stance to it. Probably same thing happening here. So the thing to watch out for is probably what would be the official reaction to it. a silent nod might just mean this is the new norm.
- graemep 2y ago
  There is a lot of idiocy in UK immigration (most often random decisions that someone is an "overstay" risk when they are clearly not) but it is less dramatic as it happens when issuing visas rather than at the border. > Days after the Brexit vote, people went out of their way to vandalize non British business establishment. One Polish boutique was trashed and people now felt it was "ok" to leave graffiti in the form of "get out you're not welcome here". That is also attributable to your second reason about the topic being interesting and reported in the media. The number of people who actually did things like that is tiny, but because it happened to people originating from the EU after Brexit it was newsworthy. When it happens to people from other countries or if it happened before Brexit it was not newsworthy. We had racist stickers put on your door in the 1990s, and quite people had a lot worse happen to them in the 80s, but it was not newsworthy at the time unless it was extreme or happened to someone who was high profile or knew some jouranlists.
yodsanklai 2y ago
> complaining to the media after provoking guards somehow. I don't know if there are many people who want to provoke guards, at the risk of being deported, or worse. Just for the fun of telling a nice story to the medias? > it’d be a far cry from a top down order. Trump has been sending a clear message that bullies were getting a free pass, for instance when he pardoned the rioters. It's not because there's not a top down order that the administration isn't directly responsible.
SkyPuncher 2y ago
My understanding is bringing a cell phone to the US has been an increasing concern well prior to this administration.
- Erwyn 2y ago
  This here. I’m European, we’ve been told for years that should we travel to the US we should bring a wiped phone AND laptop because of that. This is nothing new but maybe exacerbated by the current administration. From what I gather from the news and from a European citizen point of view what’s new are the detentions.
Majromax 2y ago
> My gut tells me that the people getting blocked at the border are either running into extremely overzealous border guards OR are making some kind of ruckus anyway and complaining to the media after provoking guards somehow. My default guess is Goodhart's Law. The current administration expressly values 'tough' border enforcement, and it publicly uses removals and associated statistics to describe how 'tough' it is being. Border agents respond to these incentives by looking for any excuse to deny or remove would-be entrants, minimizing the independent judgment and discretion that's an ordinary part of the job. It's not a 'top down order', but it's an entirely predictable consequence of the administration's messaging.
thi2 2y ago
As a straight white male I also believe racial profiling does not exist because it never happened to me.
piva00 2y ago
Or the people working under this administration for CBP and ICE are "Working Towards the Führer"[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw#%2522Working_Towards_the_F%C3%BChrer%2522_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw#%2522Working_Towar...
aisenik 2y ago
It is difficult to read this as anything but an attempt to absolve yourself of accepting confirmation bias. You feel like, your gut tells you. And you land exactly where your beliefs are confirmed and where any response/call to action outside of the status quo is unwarranted. If you ignored your feelings and took a look you could find the people responsible for these policies gleefully advocating to accelerate and enhance the abuses. It is easier to accept their self-serving lies and Kafkaesque legal machinations than it is to confront the realities of the world we face.
addicted 2y ago
Long time immigration lawyers are not randomly advising their clients to not travel outside the U.S. and to use burner phones if they do. The threat is real and elevated.

deleted 2y ago

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malfist 2y ago

I can't believe we're at the point in history where criticizing our president is labeled "potential terrorism" and used to punish people. Free speech is literally the first right granted by the bill of rights. Criticism of our president has _always_ been allowed.

comrade1234 2y ago
Supposedly for the French guy that you are referring to it was because he had confidential information on his phone from JPL, and not for the reason the French minister was saying. But I find that hard to believe - that someone in CBP would recognize what’s confidential government information, and then just deport him and not arrest him for spying…. I did find it curious though that the French guy himself never said it was for his messages about trump - only some people in the French government were saying that.
- neuroelectron 2y ago
  Yet none of this is ever cleared up in the public sphere. Obviously something more is going on between USA and France.
  - alpinisme 2y ago
    I don’t know that it’s “obvious” that anything more is happening than the simplest explanation that the current administration (and its lackeys at the lower rungs of government power) is delighting in humiliating and disempowering its critics, domestic and foreign.
    - neuroelectron 2y ago
      Yes because that always happens. Did you not notice the last decade of negative press on Trump and other Republicans? That's just noise and frankly I'm baffled I have to explain this. France is probably one of the most capable military intelligence centers in Europe, have a large amount of nuclear power and supporting infrastructure and is a Muslim stronghold in some areas. So clearly, something more than just surface level WWE-style drama is going on.

mactavish88 2y ago

What's a good "dumb phone" these days to travel with?

orangecatte 2y ago
When I travel presumably I'd want to have a smart phone to take pictures, check internet (maps, recommendations, itineraries, etc) and to make communication with people back home or people I'm visiting. What would be the best way to protect myself with a phone while still being able to do all of this? Having a burner smart phone with an ESIM so I keep my number (for communication), itineraries saved to device, and no account logins or apps?
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yeah just buy a $100 smartphone, set up a brand new Google account for it, a prepaid SIM with a data bundle and off you go. Use only temporary accounts on it. Use your traditional comms apps through a web browser not apps. That's what I would do anyway.
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    you don't even need a google account, just aurora store installed.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      True, that's what I do on my main smartphone. But technically it's not really without a Google account. Aurora just has a batch of common accounts it assigns randomly when you log in with the "anonymous" option.
      - prmoustache 2y ago
        Sure but you don't have to create one yourself
    - yencabulator 2y ago

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

I only bring a secondary, recently factory reset phone with a basic account setup overseas. But I haven't been overseas since prior to COVID. My primary phone stays at home, it's too potentially valuable to allow any country's airport security to paw through freely. I used to buy a local SIM card when I got to the airport. Next time I go overseas I might have to buy a new phone and SIM card. Edit: from what others have said, I'll also be making sure my phone is shutdown before the plane lands. I might also be looking very closely at GrapheneOS on a second hand pixel.

rurban 2y ago
In Texas it was explicitly disallowed to shut off your phone. You needed to sign a paper to have enough power, not shut it down and keep it unlocked. They threatened to send you back if you won't comply

kotaKat 2y ago

... Honestly, no, because they're gonna slap it on a Greykey, Cellebrite UFED, or just call up Cellebrite Professional Services for a remote crack on the spot. At a minimum power it down so the best extract they can gank is a before-first-use dump.

qgin 2y ago

Hypothetically, what would happen if you did a cloud backup and wiped your phone before going through customs, then restored the phone on the other side?

southernplaces7 2y ago
If you did it well, and of course are willing to lie when asked if you'd done such a thing (major red flag for the CBP flunkies) you'd probably be okay, but with an obvious caveat: entering the country with a phone and other electronics normally stuffed with personal information but in your case curiously empty would probably cause you to get flagged for special attention much more than if your device content looked normally cluttered.
- squarefoot 2y ago
  That's why plausible deniability should be implemented in such a way that one could have multiple encrypted profiles on a phone, each one with its hidden and encrypted storage, but the safe one wouldn't be empty or unused to avoid raising warning flags; all sensitive social media and communication would take place only on other accounts, still the user should maintain their day to day communications (family, friends) on the safe one. Encrypted profiles would activate only after entering their unique password, but the phone would immediately default to the safe one at each sleep or power off. This however doesn't protect from cell traffic analysis which would reveal for example the phone (tower+location+source and dest. IP+IMSI+IMEI+time) was connected to that server at a certain time, still would require more efforts from an officer than merely scanning all mail or posts on social media. A VPN helps, but as per above, now one would have to explain why they're using one, and I totally expect VPNs to be criminalized very soon.
  - southernplaces7 2y ago
    All of that's great advice and quite detailed, but i'd just bring a second burner phone with some basic social media and etc content on it from intermittent safe use so it's always ready for travel.
2y ago

b8 2y ago

Huh, I found this interesting, "Because the agents couldn’t bypass Malik’s password, they sent the phone to a forensics lab, which extracted all the phone’s data.", I wonder how they bypassed his password unless it wasn't fully encrypted. Well AFAIU my Pixel 6A is extractable even withe encryption and a long password via a cellebrite device now. Unsure if GrapheneOS would help prevent extraction.

protimewaster 2y ago
It depends on a variety of factors, including whether the device has previously been unlocked after the most recent boot (AFU: after first unlock) or not (BFU: before first unlock). AFAIK, almost every device is more secure BFU.
fph 2y ago
In their capabilities page, Cellebrite says they can't break into GrapheneOS.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Wow why would they give GrapheneOS such a marketing boost? I don't think they're lying, after all if they did they'd lie about much more common mobile OSes too. But personally I wouldn't inform the public of my weaknesses if I were a 'security/forensics' company.
  - rfoo 2y ago
    Because they want to advertise that they CAN break into phones loaded with GrapheneOS. Just not the latest version. Likewise they "announce" that they can't unlock BFU iPhone-s running latest iOS, and the real message is "we can unlock just slightly older iPhone-s and you may expect us to be able to unlock current version after few months".
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Ah makes sense thanks!

amiga386 2y ago

No, it's not. It's also not safe to live within 100 miles of any border in the US... which is where 2/3rds of all US citizens live... because the CBP decided to themselves that they can search anyone, any time, within 100 miles of any border, for any reason, with no warrant. And sometimes it ignores the 100 mile limit too. So just warrantless searches on anyone of anything at any time for no reason. Warrantless searches all round. The EFF and ACLU have been fighting that belief for years. They're making progress but they're not quite there yet. https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/31/us_border_phone_search/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/31/us_border_phone_searc... But generally speaking, don't bring your real phone to the USA. Bring a burner phone that's empty. Download whatever it is you need on the phone well after you've cleared the border.

Tostino 2y ago
I was driving up i-75 and i-95 in Florida yesterday and saw three or four border patrol agents posted in the middle of the highway over a couple hundred miles. They were acting like Highway Patrol how they were positioned in the median after bridges or hidden in the trees. Never seen their vehicles before. Extremely disconcerting.
- wombatpm 2y ago
  I just heard a recruiting add for the CBP on several podcasts. Plenty of opportunities with signing bonus. I guess they need more jackbooted thugs.
- clown_strike 2y ago
  When you see them after weigh stations or agricultural inspection checkpoints, they are positioned to intercept runners.
  - Tostino 2y ago
    I don't think it was that. I generally pay attention to those and don't remember it being near a weigh station for any of them (it was only one car at a time, and was spread out over a couple hundred miles that I saw them). I haven't seen any other CBP agents on the rest of my trip so far after I got out of FL up to NJ.

anonzzzies 2y ago

Outside the EU, I have a travel kit which has a cheap Android phone and cheap Android tablet. Both have convincing stuff on it, but in reality, everything goes via my personal vpn/ssh vnc for which I carry the keys well hidden. I have 'nothing to hide' but free speech is not what Elon thinks it means (in many countries), including now, the US. I don't want to be arrested for something I said 10 years ago which was now mined, or hallucinated, by Palantir AI scanning my phone.

markx2 2y ago
If you want very well hidden, get a writable NFC chip implanted. You write the data to it, delete the phone app which did that write, and once you are through, re-install the phone app and read your data. Last time I went through the TSA scatter scanners and wand waving theatre the 3 implants I had were not detected.
- tazjin 2y ago
  I remember watching this Keanu Reeves movie.
- ratatoskrt 2y ago
  That's somehow feels even more dystopian than what the current US administration is doing.
  - markx2 2y ago
    My day to day for that chip is for PINs. I know my bank account PIN, and it's linked through Apple Pay. My other cards - credit x2, building society I have no clue. Those PINs are stored and given I'm never out without my phone I always have access to the numbers. I was constantly stopped and quizzed by the TSA to the point I would wipe my macbook and phone before travelling. Using the NFC chips that had all the details I needed made sense.
XorNot 2y ago
One of the Libre phone providers needs a decent story surrounding blanking and restoring the phone with minimal fuss. What you should be able to do is wipe it, then pull down the backup image and get it back exactly the way it was. Which you just...can't do AFAIK.

amiga386 2y ago

Also, the USA is not alone in doing trumped-up bullshit to visitors. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65314605 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65314605 The French authorities did not like what a French publisher published about them. So they asked Britain to fuck about with one of the publisher's employees who was going to visit a book fair in London. They arrested the employee on terrorism charges, because they demanded to search his phone when he arrived in the UK, and he refused -- that's a crime, because the UK is a shit nation with evil laws. That should not be a crime.

wkat4242 2y ago
> Also, the USA is not alone in doing trumped-up bullshit I see what you did there :D But yeah. Other countries do it too and they should be called out. The government at that time in the UK was the Tories though and they aren't really all that different from the Project 2025/Heritage Foundation guys. Also very conservative.
- amiga386 2y ago
  I'm afraid to say this is bipartisan. The law the Frenchman was charged under - the Terrorism Act 2000 - was passed by Labour. Both Labour and the Tories are rather authoritarian. However, on left-rightness, both Labour and the Tories are to the left of the US Democrats, who are themselves left of the US Republicans. The specific issue of it being made illegal to not reveal your passwords/keys caused an enormous outrage in the UK, but the Labour government passed it anyway. Activists sent Jack Straw, the home secretary at the time, encrypted files on disk, and said that because the files are now in his possession, they want to demand he decrypt them, and because he definitely cannot - he never knew the password - he should go to jail for two years under his proposed law. Jack Straw's response to this was not "I see, what a stupid law, let me get rid of it". His response was to write into the law "this law doesn't apply to government ministers"
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Ah I didn't know :( I see more conservative (anti-LGBTIQ+ in particular) talking points from tories though. The UK is also on my list of "never travel to" countries anyway, it has been since Brexit and the xenophobic sentiments that empowered. Really the "taking back control" was really a euphemism for "less black faces on our streets". At least it seemed that way when I spoke to some of the more outspoken Brexit proponents in my circle. They turned totally rabiate anti-immigrant. All people that were decent before, by the way. Obviously I will never go to the US again either. Though nobody has asked me to go there. I did get asked by work to go to some Google thing in London and I refused for that reason which was totally ok.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

[dead]

ekianjo 2y ago

It was never safe to travel to the US with your phone since the Patriot Act was in action, since they made it possible to search all your electronics and decide to refuse you entry for any reason. It's safer to come with a phone that's completely empty of private information, and re-image it remotely once reaching your destination.

ghaff 2y ago
If I felt that way, I'd probably conclude that I just didn't need to travel with a phone.

xoa 2y ago

No, but while the situation in the US is (relative to our own history and the Constitution) very bad, in this particular instance there is nothing particularly special. It's equally "unsafe" to travel to any country on the planet "with your phone" where that means "your phone as you would go about your day-to-day life with". In many cases far more so since you could face far worse then deportation, but if nothing else every country gets to keep non-citizens out at will and even citizens can still potentially have stuff confiscated for long periods with irksome requirements to get it back, even if they themselves cannot be barred from return under any circumstances. Of course, traveling is also a higher risk time anyway in terms of having your phone stolen or lost. So it's definitely not a bad idea regardless to consider workarounds. Used phones drop in value very fast for example while still being extremely powerful and useful given how the pace of improvements in smartphones has leveled off heavily in the last 5 years. Like an iPhone 12 or 13 Pro are still fully supported, likely will be for another 2-4 years, and still solid devices. Both can be readily found at this point for $250-400, something like 1/3 the price of a current gen. Depreciation in price is very fast vs depreciation in relative performance or features. So simply flat out having a phone for travel and not putting anything on it sensitive is an option, and then if something happens it can be abandoned with less concern. Alternatively in some cases one could erase their main phone, set it up for travel, and then restore via VPN after crossing borders. This is more trouble then ideally it should be, and depends on either having a high bandwidth connection at your destination or some other workaround (mailing yourself a hard drive for example), but can let you stick to one main device. But I'm glad it's getting more attention even from those who typically haven't thought about it. I hope it spurs demand for better technology answers as well. The more convenient privacy and security are the more adoption and the better for all of us.

ghaff 2y ago
Exactly. One of the big tech companies, maybe Google, had employees travel with essentially a "burner" Chromebook to certain countries. At some point, the answer is to revert to pre-electronics travel--or just not travel. Or just decide that the individual risk is pretty minimal compared to all the other things that can happen if you leave your home.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Hizonner 2y ago

It has not safe to cross any international border with your phone, at least if you haven't wiped it, and it hasn't been for ages. Which isn't to say that it hasn't gotten a lot worse in the US recently.

coolThingsFirst 2y ago
yeah but what if it's PIN protected. they'd force you to unlock your phone?
- riskyingo 2y ago
  yes, you will be asked to unlock it
  - Majromax 2y ago
    > yes, you will be asked to unlock it To elaborate, per the CBP (https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-search-electronic-devices https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-searc...), if you refuse to unlock your phone or other electronic device it may be confiscated. If you are a non-citizen, they can also use that refusal as evidence that you are not 'entitled to enter the United States.' In theory that alone is not sufficient to result in denied entry, but in practice it seems that border guards have a great deal of subjective leeway about things. If you are a US citizen, they cannot deny you entry at the border. However, the device might still be confiscated.

coolThingsFirst 2y ago

idk what happened to the world 2020 onwards, things are becoming bleak everywhere.

ozmodiar 2y ago
Power keeps consolidating and the only people who want to do anything about it are those that want to speed it up.
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  If that's comforting, in EU it doesn't go any better.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

I would take a brand new phone, with crowned King Trump as a background, browser history full of Tucker Carlson, and Horst Wessel for a ringtone. Then I'd fly through customs. In fact, I often cross borders into/out of totalitarian countries. I usually uninstall all messengers, Firefox, financial and security apps and use Shreddit to wipe the free space. Then I restore everything after crossing the border. My laptop has a large movie file which is really a VeraCrypt volume where all the programs and data sit.

BLKNSLVR 2y ago
First paragraph: old school hacker bona fides on show. I like it.
- timacles 2y ago
  This is truly the way. If we are to beat them we need to play their game, blending in 99% of the time and then subverting them at the most prime opportunities. USA #1!
OutOfHere 2y ago
It's best to stay neutral because political parties can change. You don't want the next party to classify you as a troublemaker either when they get their hands on the historical dataset.

chris_engel 2y ago

Not that I am planning to travel to the US at any point but the first thing that came to my mind was: why not just sending the phone by parcel, fly without it and pick it up later on? Even tough I find it embarassing that such hacks are necessary in the first place.

lifestyleguru 2y ago
International shipments, not to mention transcontinental, are expensive and unreliable enough. Then you have to manage receiving international package at the hotel or in some temporary housing....

bvan 2y ago

It’s a sure way to kill tourism.

OutOfHere 2y ago
Most tourists have zero awareness of it.

apexalpha 2y ago

Our company prohibits it explicitly to bring any work electronics to the US. You get a burner and leave it there

xqcgrek2 2y ago

[flagged]

raydev 2y ago

This shouldn't be flagged. The article is informative and is about rights/privacy related to software/hardware everyone carries.

dang 2y ago
Users flagged it. I've turned the flags off now, but it's easy enough to understand why HN readers would be flagging an article like this: there have been a bunch of other major recent threads on the same topic cluster. Avoiding repetition, and especially the deadly duo of repetition/indignation, is a core principle to keeping the site interesting.

more_corn 2y ago