Feds searching passenger cell phones at SFO | Hacker News Reader

Feds searching passenger cell phones at SFO

blog.sfgate.com

178 pointsstochastician155 comments

> 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).

Maybe 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).

Perhaps. But stuff has gotten pretty nutty recently...

My 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_Uni...

Though I agree with your points for the most part, let's not forget that the president does have real power to directly affect policy in this country, as well as shape key parts of government, as we are all being constantly reminded of lately.

But let's also step back and recognize that "the president" has always been at least the president himself and his adminstration. Of course the network expands from there and the key employees that you mention in important companies include individuals capable of weilding considerable 'asymmetric' power.

Lately, I can't help but think of Cigarette Smoking Man.

You might enjoy this piece which takes your point much further: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/08/sarah-p...

While Obama is no saint there has been a very strong ramp-up this year alone.

What used to be miserable is now terrifying for some.

A strong ramp-up takes time to plan and implement. Especially in a large organization such as the TSA or U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Unless the ramp-up isn't actually planned or policy oriented. It could very well be simply related to feelings among agents that they're allowed to do more.

I will grant that ramp down takes immense work, considering the head of CBP hired by Obama last year to reform the organization resigned after the Border Patrol Union went after him.

Give me a break. It doesn't require a Manhattan Project to ask more people to unlock their phones. The spin you're putting on this thing is stealing angular momentum from the whole goddamn galaxy.

This could be (and likely was) as simple as a phone call from the powers that be, demanding that "you do this NOW or else". You do know that such things do happen in hierarchies, don't you?

It's not like the TSA has publicly visible and strict guidelines they are held to. All it takes is the word to spread through the DMZ.

Not true. The muslim ban for example, was uncoordinated and unclear at first - with lots of TSA confusion.

An indicator that planning took backseat to "decisiveness".

Unfortunately the "upping" part of the ramp is only an illusion.

There is only one ramp, and this ramp has been going upwards since the Patriot Act of 2001. And it will keep going up, no matter who is in office.

I disagree with the "whoever is in office part". I believe there are several contenders for the 2020 election that would ramp down.

It was supposed toramp down under Obama. It didn't. The man was a fraud. Who in 2020 won't be the new boss, same as the old boss?

That's what people said when Obama was first running.

If we have to rely on the next guy, then don't you think this reveals a fundamental flaw in our system?

Imagine if you're designing a system, and you notice that a hacker has exploited some issue and is causing damage, do you really tell people complaining about the exploit as "Not all our customers are going to exploit this issue, the next guy who accesses our system would definitely not use this exploit.

You don't see an architectural problem here?

America is a democratic nation, this is a choice not an exploit. It's a feature not a bug.

America is not a democratic nation (that's like saying all bugs were written by the programmer so all bugs are features). Democracy was tried in Greece and even Romans didn't use it.

The sheer fact that we have a constitution to limit the powers of the democratically elected govt means that we applied a patch on democracy from beginning itself.

If relying on the goodness of the govt were a feature, then we wouldn't need a constitution (which technically isn't even a patch but rather a unit test supplied with the system, which in itself can be modified).

A republic is basically democracy with a few extra steps added: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

Yeah you're not getting the point here. I am trying to show you problem with your thinking about the system, and you think as if I don't know enough to make an ignorant point when it doesn't even look like you read my comment fully.

Until we disregard the DNC/RNC and their theatre democracy (they admitted in court they have control of rigging the primaries), eliminate billion dollar campaigns, there will never be an honest candidate without strings attached.

So you're saying that if Hillary Clinton was elected she would have instituted a Muslim ban?

Would she have repealed the "Patriot" act? That was the point of GPs comment, that the Patriot act was the reason for a trend that has been consistently increasing since 2001 and the war on terror.

I don't actually mind targeted cellphone checking at borders, but mindlessly ramping it up is a very bad sign.

Not being a jerk, but why do you not mind? I don't break any laws and I mind enormously.

I assume there are probably a 1,000 people that cross the US border a year where there is a very compelling case to check a phone. The same argument does not work for 10,000,000 people. So, I assume when you ramp up the people your adding have a much lower threshold than the old group.

Further there is a long history of random inspections as people cross borders without a warrants meaning it's simply doing the same things with different means. Basically, border security is one of the core functions of government and the expectation of privacy is minimal.

Or put another way, if you are going to open 1,000 laptops a year then I assume that getting a warrant would not be difficult. If you want to open 100,000,000 laptops a year then your not acting on any kind of evidence just going fishing. But, that kind of fishing tends to be ineffective and expensive both directly and by discouraging people from visiting the US.

PS: The same argument exists in other areas. Having 100 H-Bombs on ICBMs is a very powerful threat. Having 10,000 H-Bombs on ICBMs is just more expense without really changing the threat. You increase the risk of bad things happening, spend ~100x the money and gain what exactly?

Yes! If they do not know what you are looking for, they shouldnt be looking.

Maybe you don't mind about this specific invasion of privacy, but you should be extremely mindful of setting a precedent for future laws. When does it end? What will they be forcing you to do in the next couple of years? What will our children have to endure?

At borders is a huge limitation. The government can pat you down at a border as a normal procedure, it's like entering a prison. Historically, flying was something of an exception because it started as something rich people did and governments tend to treat them very differently.

Consider what happened to people that showed up at Ellis island. Some people would be forced to strip, take a shower, and undergo medical examinations. Remember, this was published as perfectly reasonable things that confirm to social norms. Further 1-2% of people where deported often due to physical deformities. https://books.google.com/books?id=OyL6JatN5KwC&pg=PA129&lpg=...

PS: I don't mean we should go back to a system like this, just crossing borders is very meaningfully different than sitting at home or driving down the street.

Traveling internationally isn't uncommon and is becoming more commonplace with advances in air travel. I'd rather not be subjected to an invasion of privacy while on vacation.

I think that's a common sentiment. Sadly the argument is often in terms of would you subject others (terrorists, drug dealers, etc) to this treatment.

> At borders is a huge limitation.

In the United States, border zones are any areas up to 100 miles inland from a land border or coast. The majority of US population and cities are in border zones and the border rules apply to them:

https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

Like most parts of the law the details are very complex. So, in fact there is a huge difference from being within 100 miles of a border and having just crossed one at an airport.

Or to quote your link: Border Patrol, nevertheless, cannot pull anyone over without "reasonable suspicion" of an immigration violation or crime (reasonable suspicion is more than just a "hunch").

Grounds to search someone for contraband isn't grounds to read their correspondence. US citizens didn't re-enter the country through Ellis Island.

Sure, but as I said details matter.

Suppose police kill 1 person per month across the US. That's would not be a huge red flag for me, but if police killed 10,000 people per month across the US that's grounds for a revolution. The ground between A and B can be vast, so saying X happens on it's own is less important than the context.

All I am saying is that a 3x annual increase in X can be a bad sign even if the old and new rates are justified because the trend on it's own is concerning.

That argument is very different from the one I responded to.

I think the worrisome thing here is that there isn't any restriction or regulation around what people should be looking for at the airport on someone's phone slash what are the markers for why they should be scrutinized. Even with regulation, this kind of power gets abused. Just look at cops in the US. Even though there are rules around when a cop is allowed to search someone's vehicle, cops often find ways around it to do so and get away with it, because it's often a cop's word against a regular citizen's word (and to get anything changed, it's often a long, drawn out and expensive legal battle.)

Ah yes, again with the "democrats are no different than republicans" trope. The exact kind of wrongheaded and ignorant belief from the left that delivered Trump into the executive branch in the first place.

Yes, Obama was not perfect on civil liberties, but there has absolutely been an uptick in these kind of instances since Trump took over. Obama had no Muslim ban. And in general, Trump has given more delegated authority to CBP/DHS and other departments.

Maybe try to put things into perspective? We will never get 100% "pure" politicians and if the left keep staying home or voting for people like Jill Stein, then Republicans will continue to dominate.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-border-patrol-wa...

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/02/21/dhs-removes-obamas...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/us/ice-immigrant-deportat...

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/17_0220...

My favorite are the people who shilled for Jill stein all campaign, saying democrats are no different than republicans - then blamed democrats for republicans stripping the ahca, saying they should have stopped them. Rania Khalek is a prime example of this type of non ironic hot take.

Just as with children, who started it isn't particularly relevant. What is most important is that the person running things now is responsible for it.

Last year, Obama was responsible for it. This year, right on through to the end of his presidency, Trump is responsible for it.

SEO marketing content originally from 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-956...

> 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.

I 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.

I 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.

Off-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

In the US, only 2-3 (USAA, HSBC, First Tech Federal Credit Union): https://twofactorauth.org/#banking

I was thinking more of brokerages. E.g. Charles Schwab, E*Trade, Fidelity, and Interactive Brokers use non-SMS 2FA.

https://twofactorauth.org/#investing

Also, non-SMS 2FA on your email helps secure anything that uses emailed password recovery. Same if you use a hosted password manager.

I like to be as paranoid as possible as well, but I feel like if the three letter agencies had already solved breaking SSL and they had already figured out how to break into the secure enclave on a modern, up to date device then that news would have been leaked by someone.

Maybe I underestimate those three letter agencies, but I simply don't think they are that good. Even the stuff we've seen leaked already has been interesting but nothing that groundbreaking really, just better organized versions of tools that hackers have already had for a while. As far as I'm concerned the government seems to be mostly in the business of buying exploits from other people and then using them as long as they can, and they seem lacking in the ability to create new exploits themselves that are dramatically better than what is already on the market. So I don't really believe that they have super powered levels of access.

But its still best to have multiple layers of security which is why I have a 1Password vault in addition to the pin code to unlock, further limiting what access you have to things on my phone even assuming you can bypass the Apple security mechanisms. And full disk encryption on my laptop, with some extra sensitive things like SSH keys and private keys for SSL certs stored in a secondary encrypted disk volume as well.

Can't be too careful, but generally speaking I feel pretty confident that even with physical access they'd have a hard time accessing any data unless I gave them the info they needed to access it.

Apple/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.

Have 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.

This is a cool idea, but it would also give them a way to tell that they're looking at the duress account.

How so? Presumably there would be nothing in the UI to indicate that it's recording anything, and the data would be stored outside of the restricted container.

Perhaps not an easy way, but any data transmission from your phone is detectable with external sensors.

Surreptitious audio recording is a felony in Massachusetts (and possibly other states).

There'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

Though it certainly might land you in jail anyway. There's any number of trumped up reasons to haul an uncooperative person off.

I 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?

I don't think your examples prove this isn't Trump-related.

Why would it be necessary to prove that? Even the article asserts that this is a continuing trend that predates this administration.

Why 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?

ACLU 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.

I 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.

More 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.

We are in a dystopia, it's just far more boring and disjointed than what we read about.

Dystopia is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed?

eventually consistent dystopias as a service

Brilliant. Also known as globalism.

Everyone is in one bubble or another.

You 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.

Life 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.

Compared 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.

> 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

So I presume you are doing fine living in today's dystopia.

Given his username, I'd say he's found a way to cope.

Even if you had polio, most people find a way to still find joy in life after coming to grips with the disease. We had a president who had polio.

Stephen Hawking's debilitating illness doesn't stop him. He still finds joy in life and has a happy, successful marriage in addition to being the world's preeminent physicist.

This may sound weird, but I kind of dreamed of living in a dystopia. I read of a lot of Gibson and Stephenson as a kid. Utopias like heaven frankly sounds kind of boring...no challenges or struggles to overcome or face.

A utopia doesn't mean there are no struggles. If you want to be a great guitar player or a master carpenter, you don't magically get those abilities.

If I could afford to be retired today, I could easily fill the rest of my days working on things that I want to work on. I'd love to learn more about cooking, learn another language, take up carpentry, learn how to ride a trials bike, get stronger, learn to play an instrument, work towards a degree in mathematics, volunteer in my community, get my amateur radio license, travel with my wife, work on my marksmanship skills, learn watchmaking, build electronics projects, join a bowling league, and on and on. I'm very fortunate in that I love my job, but it does take up most of my time.

To provide something of a counterpoint, asbestosis is a disease from the modern society, filled with opportunity. So is being run down by a car, hit by an air-to-ground missile, or blinded by a laser.

It's not quite so one-sided as it might at first appear.

I think that kind of comparison is just silly.

The 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)

The 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.

I'm gong to have to think on this...

The dystopia is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.

[after William Gibson...]

Prepare 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.

> Make being a trouble-maker a badge of honor.

don't do this if you are an immigrant, please.

On the other hand, being jealous of your rights is almost a requirement for citizenship :)

I love that line. Thanks.

Honestly, 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.

The 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?"

Brave words typed onto an Internet forum.

I don't think this is an "evil action" to begin with.

What's "brave" about it? I'm a programmer making a good salary, and all I have to lose is my phone. I can buy another one if they decide to threaten me with seizure.

If you don't think it's an evil action, then why are you phrasing it as "I still believe they're trying to do the right thing"? I interpret that as "I think they're doing the wrong thing, but I don't mind because they think it's the right thing." If it's not evil then why not defend the action on its own merits, rather than appealing to the fundamental goodness of the organization?

Because it's perceived as evil, and I didn't want to litigate that and be a force of negativity on HN.

Thinking it is appropriate to search phones is at least a solid argument. People might loudly disagree or downvote, but it's a coherent opinion.

The idea that trying to do the right thing can justify something is specious nonsense.

It's specious nonsense to try to do the right thing? You can't possibly mean that, right?

It's specious nonsense to justify things by saying they are trying to do the right thing.

When I read the article, my first thought that I'd let them keep the phone. Mine is quite old and I've been debating buying a new one since it is giving me trouble. Something like that would just be good excuse to get a new one.

If it were a brand new phone, I might think harder about it - but we really need to stand up to crap like this.

And I do. I fail to see any kind of "good" that this could fall under.

It's entirely possible to believe that law enforcement are a net good and also that they do lots of things that they shouldn't.

That they are trying to do the right thing doesn't really excuse doing bad things. Lots of evil is carried out by people that think they are trying to do the right thing.

It's a continuum, and everyone has their favorite setting on the dial based on their values and experience. Fortunately, we have the Bill of Rights to say where the max setting is in the US, but, unfortunately, I think they've taken it to 11.

I thought that too, but a series of Supreme Court ruling disagrees with me.

parts aren't the whole, and it's completely justifiable to say "you might be doing this for the right reasons but this particular action is wrong". distrust in a process isn't distrust of the entire agency.

You can be a bit more nuanced than that without being anti-LEO. I believe law enforcement organization are almost essentially incapable of self-regulating their tendency to accumulate additional powers. I also believe there are clear benefits to limiting these powers.

If you accept these premises, it's clear that constraint must be applied from outside of the LEOs themselves. The typical answer to how, is through legislation and oversight. If you don't believe that is being performed effectively, there is a pretty compelling argument for action to improve the system.

Historically speaking, "They were trying to do the right thing" is a poor excuse for any number of pretty horrible results.

That is supposed to be true, but it's difficult to grant this level of trust when they don't trust the public. There is no transparency in this process, and there's no agreement on whether it's even legal. It's normal for people to reduce their level of trust in others who initiate a trust reduction arbitrarily. Of course the individual alone knows whether they are trust worthy, so the instance they're treated with suspicion, they know whether it's misplaced, and it goes directly to competency and motive, and the mere questioning of why the searches are happening means trust has been reduced.

I don't care if they believe they're a force for good or not. They're still being shitty, and they should be shat on.

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Then tell people why you think so. What real value do you think is achieved by allowing CBP to arbitrarily poke around cell phones being brought into the country that are not at all hidden?

How much liberty from unreasonable search and seizure do we have to endure for the infinitesimal possibility that some good will come from these searches, you know, just like all the good that comes of TSA searches (I know for a fact I've taken pocket knives and multitools and hammers through airport security on multiple occasions).

Yes, you can argue that, legally, at the border, there are different standards for reasonability and a requirement thereof. But I'd like to hear a cogent argument for why that is, and how that plays into the need for such a thing.

I always turn my phone off before going through customs. This temporarily disables fingerprint unlocking and requires my password instead. My understanding is that it is legally possible to compel you to unlock your phone with a fingerprint, but not possible to compel you to provide your password.

If they threaten to seize my phone, I'll let them. I have plenty of spares and can afford a new one if it comes down to it.

Of course, many people don't have the means to make this a practical approach.

> My understanding is that it is legally possible to compel you to unlock your phone with a fingerprint, but not possible to compel you to provide your password.

True for police, but less clear for border crossings.

http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/02/16/border-agent-unloc...

> They don't even need a warrant. It's clear the government does not need a warrant to search the phone based on a constitutional law, a set of cases called the Border Search Exceptions.

The fact that they don't need a warrant is irrelevant when there are technological measures which require your cooperation to make it happen. The question is, what happens if you don't cooperate?

For fingerprint authentication, I believe it's been established that they can hold you until you cooperate.

For passwords, they can't. "The second question is, can they detain you until you hand over your passcode? They probably have some power to detain you for a little bit — maybe for an hour or two — not forever. They can't hold at the border and say, ‘Alright, you're living here until you hand over your passcode.’"

Then the question is whether they can follow up with some sort of punishment after the fact if you continue to refuse. According to that article, it hasn't been established yet, but I'm confident that it would come out in my favor, and furthermore that they would think similarly and not even try it.

As far as I can figure, if your phone is powered off and requires a passcode to run, the only thing they can do is confiscate your device. They cannot bar a US citizen from entry into the country - even if you have no passport or identification, they can only fine you for entering without it.

If they confiscate your device I'm not sure how long they can keep it off the top of my head, but I would operate under the assumption that you're not getting it back. There are legal remedies for this sort of warrantless seizure, but I'm guessing that there's a mechanism through which they could charge the phone itself with a crime in order to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, a'la asset forfeiture.

Right, that's my understanding as well. I'd lose the device but retain my freedom and (whatever shreds remain of) privacy, which is an acceptable tradeoff to me given the relatively low odds of this happening.

You can remotely wipe most phones today, no?

which requires the phone to connect to the internet, which i doubt the TSA/DHS/CBP will let happen after confiscating your phone

The Fourth Amendment is interpreted quite differently in border zones; the side of the Government is generally weighed significantly heavier "because terrorism".

They can have my iPhone. I can get another and restore from iCloud. Good luck to them to do anything useful with it. Sure I might have to wait for a bit but they have to let me in.

you have to give your fingerprint in order to pass US immigration, surely the correct answer is "I have already given you the password" .... and then let them figure out how to extract it from their system and apply it to your phone ....

Border Guards generally have (or act like they have) tremendous leeway to detain, confiscate, and harass. Sometimes you'll heard the border (and 100 miles inland from it) as a Constitution free zone.

Indeed, but as far as I know it does not go so far as to allow them to hold me until I give up my password. They can hold me temporarily, and they can confiscate my phone, but that's it.

I 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...

It's fear mongering that has normal citizens agreeing with overly aggressive "enforcement", and forgetting about what rights are.

This 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.

Does 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.

As 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...

See, 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. :(

Just buy a burner when you travel overseas. Chances are your home carrier would gouge you anyway.

The 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.

Can we have private airports, cooperatively owned and operated, and ban governments from them???

Go home Elon Musk, you're drunk.

Is 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.

And 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.

Even 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?

We wrote a guide about this:

https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017

However, the news is not necessarily that encouraging.

I 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.

Not that I agree, but Canada has been doing it for years: https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/public-safety-and-l...

All 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.

This 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.

I 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.

Assuming 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?

I wonder if you can just stuff phone in carry-on and claim to have lost it.

Given that they can search your carry-on, that seems unwise.

Why claim anything? Don't mention you have one on your body (because you don't).

I 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.

Unfortunately not; lying to a federal employee carrying out their duties is a crime (Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code).

Maybe 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.

What 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?

They can find it later. How long does it take to copy the entire contents of a phone and hand it back to you?

Ah, I misread the article as they had to search in their presence.

I heard on the radio today that in Feb there were 2000 instances of the phone search which is appalling.

With 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...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veto#United_States

POTUS 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.

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.

> With all due respect, I think your grasp of American politics is quite weak.

Personal swipes, which this is, aren't allowed in HN comments.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317152 and marked it off-topic.

The 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.

It really says a lot when a gov't is afraid of information.

Apparently not. According to this, they cannot force you to unlock your phone: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/business/border-enforceme...

If they're searching information, they really need to be putting multi-minute delays on all cross-border internet communications while they search the content.

More 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)

the cellphone comes into the country through the airport, but the information on the cellphone has no such physical barriers.

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