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Comment by amiga386 | Hacker News Reader

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_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.

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At some point I am pretty sure carrying an empty or no phone will be considered suspect and warrant being refused at the border.

That doesn't make any sense because one can always fill it with valid-looking garbage noise.

It starts making sense once you consider that those type of measures are not intended to be secure, but to bully the 95% who won't/can't defend themselves. Security Theater at it's finest.

But there is just no evidence of any bullying of anyone with a newly set up empty phone.

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.

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.

When you see them after weigh stations or agricultural inspection checkpoints, they are positioned to intercept runners.

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.

> 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...

* https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone

Remember:

1. Why did you pull me over?

2. Am I being detained or am I free to go?

(If detained) 3. I plead the 5th.

4. Shut the fsck up

5. Continue to shut the fsck up but otherwise comply with lawful demands.

6. If you need to deny a request to search, clearly state that you do not consent to a search. Don't answer yes/no to the question because they might try to weasel word you.

7. Fight your battles in the court later with a lawyer if they do something wrong. Arguing on the street rarely works in your favor.

I always found this 2/3rds statistic hard to believe but it counts all coastlines as a border zone [0].

As a Canadian, I'm more concerned with the vast percentage of us who live within 100 miles of the US border.

[0] https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone

As a Michigander within 80 miles of several border crossings, I don't think you need to worry. I've never heard of border patrol doing anything weird up here in 50 years. Canada is just not a big concern.

Apparently it’s a bigger concern than Mexico these days. Something about Fentanyl I heard, presumably Trump is unhappy that Canada imports many times more fentanyl than it sends back or something about as insane..

As a Michigander in Grand Rapids... You're not up to date. ICE considers the beach of any international waterway (according to them, all of the Great Lakes including Lake Michigan, ACLU disagrees) a "border crossing", so the entire state is in warrantless border zone.

https://www.aclumich.org/en/cases/all-michigan-warrantless-b...

https://www.aclumich.org/sites/default/files/field_documents...

They've made I-213 arrests as far inland as Grand Rapids and even Mount Pleasant, which is about as far from the lakes as you can get.

Records do show that only 1.5% of cases involve people with "Light" skin tone, so if you're white you're unlikely to be affected directly by this. It's not about Canada.

Why are you worried about it as long as you're on Canadian soil?

Annexation threats from Trump?

For annexation threats the 100 mile line is irrelevant.

The only thing to be concerned about is cost of living increases.

Have you been asleep for the past two months?

Canada does not have the 100 mile constitution exclusion zone that the US has. It only exists at the border itself. This is something the RCMP regularly complains about.

I have also heard some people claim that the 100 mile zone also applies around ANY international airport, but I have no idea if that's true. That would certainly close the rest of the land gap though, as not many people live more than 100 miles away from an airport.

Not sure, but I think that applies to any 'port of entry', too. So every international airport deep within the country.

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