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Yep, police can simply ask anyone for their passwords and if you don't give it up they can put you in jail. I won't be visiting. Despite many flaws, the US has
by Cider9986 5mo ago
Yep, police can simply ask anyone for their passwords and if you don't give it up they can put you in jail.
I won't be visiting. Despite many flaws, the US has some damn good rights for its citizens compared to the rest of the world.
- lukan 5mo agoYet swatting, making police kick in the doors and shoot the dogs of someone who was victim of anonymous slander, isn't really a thing here in europe compared to the US.
- SpectreHat 5mo agoThe user you replied to was talking about UK, not Europe.
- Cider9986 5mo agoMy first two sentences were about the UK. The third was general.
- dom96 5mo agoThe UK is a part of Europe.
- exe34 5mo agoGeographically, that's quite the zinger. Legally, no. Different laws.
- cassianoleal 5mo agoEurope has many many different jurisdictions. Even if you take the European Union alone and ignore all the other European countries, the EU only legislates over a subset of things for member countries.
- exe34 5mo agoMuch less the UK.
- cassianoleal 5mo agoI'm not sure how much less it is than, say, Bosnia, Serbia, Belarus, Kosovo...
- trumpdong 5mo agoThe EU has no sovereignty, countries (like Hungary and Germany) can openly disobey it and the worst they can do is kick them out of the EU
- cassianoleal 5mo ago> the worst they can do is kick them out of the EU As opposed to what? Armed invasion?
- trumpdong 5mo agoYes. The EU has no army, no legal sovereignty within each country, etc. It's an alliance of countries NOT a single federal government. The individual countries remain in charge of themselves and the alliance is supposed to be structured in a way that only paases things the countries actually want.
- cassianoleal 5mo agoSo you think it would be better if the EU started a war with a member state that failed to uphold the union's laws?
- lukan 5mo agoWhy would he or she think that? Your questions are close to strawman arguments in my perception.
- graemep 5mo agoThe US has a good constitution but worse policing.
- exe34 5mo agoWhat good is a piece of paper? I have nice toilet paper. It doesn't make me safer when visiting the US.
- graemep 5mo agoThe entire point of a constitution is that, unlike toilet paper, it can be enforced by the courts.
- sph 5mo agoThe very politicized US courts that collude with and are completely in the pocket of whomever's running the country? More developed countries have a clear separation between the judiciary and the executive powers.
- sofixa 5mo agoIn theory, unless the supreme court is bought and paid for and decrees things like "immunity for official business".
- exe34 5mo agoAnd which one are the courts enforcing at the moment in the US? Pretti? Good?
- trumpdong 5mo agoCan be, or is? Courts can enforce my toilet paper too.
- ben_w 5mo agoTrying to imagine how, and the only thing I can think of is that technically you can write a contract on anything? And possibly a cheque, too, because a the cheques in a chequebook are just a standardised IOU form with exactly the same legal weight as if it was done by hand? (Vague memory that someone used this to avoid paying a bill, because refusing a cheque when offered counted as discharging the debt it represents (if I have the right terminology), and as cheques could be written on anything they chose to write it on a car that physically would not fit through the door).
- Aldipower 5mo agoIs this satire?
- manarth 5mo ago[flagged]
- colinb 5mo agoI think it’s true that declining to hand over a password in a criminal investigation is itself a criminal act in the UK. That said, I don’t know how often this actually occurs. As an outsider, it seems to me (big talk on the Internet! Amazeballs) that UK laws are written to be illiberal and gradually watered down to an acceptable degree. I think that happened with RIPA and later with the whole nazi saluting dog mess. Whether they can survive the rise of free speech double talkers like Farage remains to be seen. But the Blair/Brown years made it clear that even supposedly intelligent middle of the road leadership is capable of imposing surprisingly illiberal legislation. I don’t much care for the Tories but I don’t think they have much interest in my personal life.
- NoboruWataya 5mo agoReminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI
- Arch-TK 5mo agoNo, just the UK. I actually think it might be worse. You need to be able to hand over encryption keys too. Claiming to not know them is also not allowed, whether you actually know them or not. I am reasonably convinced that if you wipe the key slots on an encrypted drive but leave encrypted blocks around, they might be able to argue that you are obligates to store all the block keys for such an occasion. So using any kind of multi-tier encryption in the UK might be a massive liability unless you permanently store all the material required to derive any key that is used to encrypt anything. This also probably has impact on TLS now that I think about it. Now, real world criminal cases are likely to proceed differently than how they proceed in the mind of a programmer interpreting the law as a program. But, I am not too convinced such a farcical thing wouldn't happen, the UK government and police have engaged in much dumber things. Now that I think about it, storing randomness on a disk could probably be used to incriminate you in case that disk was seized. Since the police wouldn't be able to tell if it wasn't encrypted data.
- paulgdp 5mo ago> Yep, police can simply ask anyone for their passwords and if you don't give it up they can put you in jail. This is precisely the reason why I don't want to visit the US at the moment. The USA immigration officers can ask me to forfeit my phone's password and look at all my photos, documents, messages, call logs etc, WITHOUT SUSPICION. Some of that data can even stay on their servers for decades, and who knows if it ends up on a CIA/NSA server. Of course, I can always refuse, but non-cooperation with CBP means immediate denial of entry and risks of lifelong headaches with future immigration checks.
- shevy-java 5mo agoIndeed, but the UK is in many ways words. At the least in the USA, often the constitution is upheld (give or take); in the UK you often don't even have such fundamental rights. The UK at present fits more to Russia than, e. g. European countries.
- gizajob 5mo agoYou’re tripping m8.
- josephg 5mo ago> At the least in the USA, often the constitution is upheld Some of ICE’s detainees may have different opinions on that point. The UK may endow her citizens with fewer rights. But I have a lot more trust in British due process. British civil servants seem much less … capricious than Americans. I was almost denied entry to Hawaii once because I told the CBP agent I didn’t have any cash on me. (My money is in a bank account, obviously). He went on a big rant about how expensive Hawaii is. I think he was worried I’d end up homeless. (Even though my visit to hang out with my then employer.) Over the years I’ve heard so many stories from other Australian friends about wild and unfortunate encounters with US police and officials. By comparison, the British government seems far more civilised. If something happened while visiting the UK, I have much more confidence that everything would be resolved in a fair and reasonable manner.
- 5mo ago
- exe34 5mo ago> the US has some damn good rights for its citizens Unless you turn up to a protest against the ICEtapo, with a holstered gun. Then you can be murdered and called a domestic terrorist. As a brown visitor to the US.... Well I won't be one. They can ask for access to my entire digital life without the slightest suspicion of any crimes.
- poirot2 5mo agoAmericans perception of themselves always baffles me. You have police brutality regularly, ICE raids shooting protestors and deporting people (inc those with the right to be there) to El Salvador, people who write critical articles of Israel denied visas, servicemen dying in the Middle East, your president openly stealing from your government via slush funds and his sons, and so little accountability that the only people facing consequences for Epstein are in Britain. Your news is owned by oligarchs who openly buy it to divide you and push their agenda not yours, your views barely matter as your politics is bought and paid for, your elections are rigged by gerrymandering so few incumbents ever lose. Then call yourself a democracy. Absolute Mickey Mouse country singing itself propaganda about building the future whilst having a healthcare system that lets people die regularly for being too poor. Not exactly freedom if you’re dead is it? Then they come to London and realise it’s just a much cleaner, safer, nicer looking city than anywhere in the US and has more culture, food and diversity than all but a few American cities. But have to justify going back to a chicken coop country where they grind out the prime of their lives, get no maternity pay, and like 10 days of holiday.
- expedition32 5mo agoI am an atheist and any country were a leader claims their country to be Christian is a no go for me. Is the separation of church and state a joke to Americans? It was pretty funny because right next to Trump they had a man/woman in a Easter bunny suit.
- microtonal 5mo agoI am also an atheist. Our country has christian prime ministers in the past. It was not a problem, because virtually all the christians that are left in our country (the majority of people are atheists of agnostics these days) believe in a separation of church and state. It is not about christianity. Authoritarian and populist leaders will always coopt/corrupt whatever is convenient for them. Christianity, socialism, capitalism, whatever works to rally a substantial portion of the population.
- abc123abc123 5mo agoTo be consistent, you must also not go to hindu, moslem or any other countries. Out of curiousity, which countries remain on your list?
- bborud 5mo agoYou are aware of the fact that you essentially have no rights at border crossings, right? Even if you are a US citizen entering the US. This is why many companies have procedures for when employees visit certain countries, including the US. For instance that you are not allowed to bring your personal phone, your personal and work laptop or any medium that can hold sensitive or proprietary information.
- seviu 5mo agoNot sure if related but this is my story. I am Spanish. When leaving SF back to Europe from a Google IO, after control, waiting to scan my luggage, an officer stood besides me and started speaking in Spanish besides me. The first minute my brain didn’t register because though Spanish is my mother tongue, I guess it was not ready for that. The police officer started to get irritated. Eventually my brain switched, I had a chat with him and he left. I was totally freaked out the rest of the time, till the moment I boarded. Only then I realized how frail our rights are when you are abroad.
- rafram 5mo agoThis seems very innocuous? Almost a third of Californians speak Spanish natively.
- Cider9986 5mo agoThey can delay you until they confirm you're a US citizen, but they can't prevent you from reentering.
- trumpdong 5mo agoIsn't it exactly the same in the US right now?
- mattmaroon 5mo agoNo.
- wakaru44 5mo agoPretty much. But ~95% of US citizens don't seem to be even aware. I'm guessing due to a mix of ignorance and copium.
- epolanski 5mo agoA friend of mine visiting the US as a tourist with family was expected by immigration to provide lots of digital information and full access to every device at JFK. They were held for more than 4 hours at the airport. But, to counter balance, I had multiple other friends traveling to the US (both on work visas and tourist ones) and it was smooth sailing. In any case, the story of my first friend is what made me cancel my US trip last summer and go to Japan instead.
- andrepd 5mo ago> Despite many flaws, the US has some damn good rights for its citizens The absolute gall of saying this, on this point in in particular, with all that has happened over the past 1.5 years in the US... Gobsmacked
- gizajob 5mo agoIncluding the right to randomly get shot in school.
- guax 5mo agoJust to clarify this piece of misinformation. The police can ask for your passwords. You're not required to give them anything until they apply for a Section 49 notice of RIPA. Which they must get from a Judge. It seems to be recommended to refuse giving them the password before that notice is issued and seek a lawyer before complying. If the judge agrees with them, you have to comply.
- Revisional_Sin 5mo agoThe password can only be compelled via a judge. A policeman can't demand it on whim.
- matthewmacleod 5mo agoThis is not true – the police cannot "simply ask anyone for their passwords", and your oversimplification has resulted in this becoming a lie. I would really strongly recommend that you educate yourself first – by doing this, you contribute to the misinformation that is currently making much of the world an unpleasant place to be.
- red_admiral 5mo agoThere are a lot of media reports that if ICE don't like your face, they can be a bit ... cavalier ... about citizen's rights.
- solumunus 5mo agoI’m sorry but your citizens are treated far worse by authorities than UK citizens and it’s not even close.
- red_admiral 5mo agoThey can detain you and ask for an order from a judge: https://reeds.co.uk/insights/i-give-police-phone-pin/ https://reeds.co.uk/insights/i-give-police-phone-pin/ and then you still have the right to consult a lawyer first. I presume any journalist or competent protest organiser in the UK knows the details better than me, but they can't just stop you on the sidewalk (UK: pavement) and ask you to hand over your PIN on the spot. I think the "put you in jail" thing is a misunderstanding of the general "police can detain someone suspected of a crime" principle, but then they still need to get a judge to approve them holding you longer than a few* days. (*) The rules are slightly different for terrorism suspects.
- drywipes 5mo agoYeah they can ask for passwords but I've seen so many people work around this by pretending they forgot. Because at that point what are they going to do.