NASA has a history of discarding computer components and drives with loads of data on them. They’ve also re-written or taped over old data and footage, improperly stored reels and components. They’re not the best barometer to go off of for best practices.
I can always hope they’ve got their act together these days, but this guy DID unlock his phone so…
I can’t tell you if you agree or disagree that this mans job was quite potentially on the line.
Best comments from the Verge story site -
“I remember those Trump supporters who said the Sanders was a ‘commie’, they have no idea”
“[T]hey are ignorant morons who can’t even define communist, let alone democratic socialist. Then, to top it off, they vote for someone who is an ACTUAL Russian lap dog. It couldn’t get any more comically ironic”
It could and it might, tho…
I’m on the fence about it myself. Knowing the superficial details provided here i don’t think the phone should ever be unlocked. The ok to do so needed to come from someone above him, if he unlocks it without permission i’d say his credibility to hold confidential information is damaged.
Should he be fired for unlocking the phone? I can’t pass judgement on that. It’d highly depend on his overall history with the company and work ethic.
Is the lack of such a protocol evidence of incompetence on the part of the border agency?
I’m less interested in if NASA should punish employes who violate secrecy. That seems pretty absolute (not up for debate) unless there is an exception written into the protocol. Whether he is fired by NASA is a different matter, and not terribly interesting to me. But, placing him in that situation, where the right hand is basically slapping the left hand around… is that good? Is that competent? Is that constitutional?
Competent? No, that’s very clear. Especially since he had all the documentation to show he had proper federal and security clearances.
Constitutional? Hmmm. Not a question i can competently answer. As a citizen i think it does violate his rights, which should supersede the fact that he works for the government. But if one agency requests another to make a disclosure or unlock a device i don’t know enough about the law as to how that should go down.
It would be great if one agency had asked another one in this case.
This is a story because they didn’t. An agency demanded from a citizen, at penalty of being refused entry to his own country, and that strikes me as quite different from one agency asking another.
That’s why i made the distinction of the situation of a person vs agency. If one wanted to make the argument in the moment of keeping the guy in a room that the request is coming from the TSA, then why shouldn’t NASA comply? I don’t know the particulars to make a proper rebuttal. But i’d say making that call is above my paygrade, talk to someone higher up in NASA and refuse to cooperate -shrug-
i wonder what happens if one were to snap the phone in half while entering the password?
So… what are they doing with phones once they’ve been unlocked? Hooking them up to a computer with laughable levels of government agency budget security, perhaps?
If only there were some way to take advantage of that…
Or, for a pleasing burning smell, combine an Android interface with the tech from a USB Killer…
This is actually an interesting idea. Have a device detect when an unauthorized party is trying to access data and fry it via USB. Maybe follow it up with wiping the device’s own data or encrypting it as a counter measure.
They issued him a new phone and number.
If you were a Chinese or Russian intelligence agency, wouldn’t it be enticing and easy to turn some Customs agents and have them scrape data from incoming electronics? Not just for national security, but for corporate espionage as well.
Well, I feel safer.
Just put your phone in a Cryptex. If they try to force their way in the acid will eat the phone. Everybody wins…even Dan Brown.
That’s why i made the distinction of the situation of a person vs agency.
indeed, and I took you up on it. Thanks for the setup!
We’re clearly in agreement this whole thing was dumb. I think it’s that he was put in a position and held incommunicado, so I’m not sure that his being able to talk to his superiors, or even that USCBP talking to NASA was an option. It should be, yes, agreed. (fwiw It wasn’t the TSA that did this, This was CBP operating at an incoming border).
I also think he will not be judged harshly for having been put in this absurd situation. He did his best.
CBP Interfering with the right of a citizen to enter the country is not to be done lightly, and this is absolutely a power grab and a diminishment of our rights. Secure government owned devices are not what is new here.
Not in my experience (Boston Logan, where I fly into the US a couple of times a year). You get off and go through immigration with only your carry-on bags, then go to baggage claim, then go through customs/the USDA checkpoint. While the official border might be the latter, in practice I have never been asked questions there but have been questioned at immigration.
Thats what I said happened, yes.
You go through customs with your baggage, so checking your device isn’t a viable response to this new practice, as was suggested in the comment I was replying to.
After customs, you’re here. Before customs, you’re still in transit. I’m not a lawyer, but that is more or less accurate, no?
Could possibly slow them down by cutting the USB data lines. I seem to recall a couple phones that I disassembled had simple “ribbon” cables connecting the USB connector to the circuit board – could get a back-up new cable for occasions where you really needed a wired connection.
