A whole public discussion about a stranger giving me ex extended pat down? I’m not that vein.
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Did you get a drink and dinner?
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If exploding kittens are outlawed, only outlaws can make kittens explode…
I have that game myself, complete with the box that meows when it’s opened. I’ll have to keep this in mind for any future plane trips, though I’d most likely still bring it out of sheer bloody-mindedness if nothing else.
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It sounds like this is becoming more and more common for US citizens. We’re now starting to experience the kind of bullshit foreigners visiting the US have been going through for a while. I’m probably like a lot of folks and not only hadn’t realized how bad this is gotten, but also how little recourse US citizens have at the border. I highly recommend this recent replay of a 2014 episode of On the Media, which tells some stories of border crossing of US citizens and how crazy its become. What this guy went through is by no means unique. It sounds like this is becoming more and more common for US citizens. We’re now starting to experience the kind of bullshit foreigners visiting the US have been going through for a while. I’m probably like a lot of folks and not only hadn’t realized how bad this is gotten, but also how little recourse US citizens have at the border. I highly recommend this recent replay of a 2014 episode of On the Media, which tells some stories of border crossing of US citizens and how crazy its become. What this guy went through is by no means unique. http://www.wnyc.org/story/what-we-know-about-border
The Bill of Rights really doesn’t seem to apply, apparently, until you get past Homeland Security.
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It appears that you hit ‘Ctrl V’ twice; just fyi.
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Only one way to find out: give him a cat scan.
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I am sure that this will trigger the “so someone thinks they are a real smartass” treatment, and of course they confiscate the phone.
There is a don’t plan ahead version, just have a trusted friend (or random app) set a pin, that you don’t learn until you are past border control. What can they actually say when you honestly never knew the PIN?
The usual answer is the electronic equivalent of Peseach dishes, a set of traveling hardware. I would just use one of the phones hanging around from your last upgrade, and buy it a disposa sim, so no worries about foreign data roaming charges.
For laptops, this sure sounds like a chromebook is the right answer, with any actual data sitting on a server on the far end of a vpn.
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“I don’t believe you; now bend over and cough”.
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Like I said, the smartass treatment…
(Tho I assumed that the smartass protocol would take the form of 72 hours in an under heated room, possibly with a Bieber soundtrack for good measure)
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From the article:
travelers are not legally required to unlock their devices, although agents can detain them for significant periods of time if they do not. “In each incident that I’ve seen, the subjects have been shown a Blue Paper that says CBP has legal authority to search phones at the border, which gives them the impression that they’re obligated to unlock the phone, which isn’t true,” Hassan Shibly, chief executive director of CAIR Florida, told The Verge. “They’re not obligated to unlock the phone.”
Nevertheless, Bikkannavar was not allowed to leave until he gave CBP his PIN. The officer insisted that CBP had the authority to search the phone. The document given to Bikkannavar listed a series of consequences for failure to offer information that would allow CBP to copy the contents of the device. “I didn’t really want to explore all those consequences,” he says. “It mentioned detention and seizure.” Ultimately, he agreed to hand over the phone and PIN. The officer left with the device and didn’t return for another 30 minutes.
The guy was kind of between a rock and a hard place, having been led to believe that if he didn’t unlock the phone, CBP would just seize it and hold it and let him go. In other words, he was being forced to violate NASA protocols no matter what he did. He definitely should not be fired for that.
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I suspect the dumb thing works for me only because I am a white woman. It feels sleazy to do, anti-feminist, but self preservation is what it feels like.
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[quote=“Grey_Devil, post:22, topic:94971, full:true”]
[quote=“AcerPlatanoides, post:16, topic:94971”]
I can always hope they’ve got their act together these days […] [/quote]
I know people working on a satellite project right now, in co-operation with NASA. Those guys don’t encrypt their mail. At all. They are even actively discouraged to do so by their institution’s administration. And by “discouraged”, I mean: not allowed. Forbidden. Point blank.
Their institution is literally running a cert authority, and their administation does not allow them to use S/MIME. I am not talking GPG here, that’s totally off bounds.
Whenever I hear somebody blabbering about “cybersecurity”, I think of this and shrug.
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That’s pretty illuminating. I’m not entirely sure why they’d be so opposed to encryption, a problem with their leadership or if it’s just bureaucratic BS being forced on them by Congress. Mixture of both?
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To clarify: that’s not an US institution. They are just in a cooperation with NASA. But their NASA counterparts don’t encrypt, either, as far as I was able to learn.
As far as the story went, their admin says they can’t encrypt their communication because it belongs to the employer and must be stored (legibly) for the case of audits, and whatnot.
On the other hand, the same institution says, on their webpages, that they are “able to communicate with certificate-based S/MIME encryption”. And as I said: their IT department runs a cert auth. My contacts reaction to that: "Yeah, that’s another branch. We’re a different unit. We just build satellites. "
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I think that’s a different matter from having to unlock your phone. there is plenty of information on his government owned phone -other- than encrypted information, with which he was entrusted personally.
It’s the whole agency vs. individual aspect that has me bothered. The CPB should have established protocol for sensitive protected information on government phones. Whether he had to unlock his phone, or not, should have been known, by CBP, the day he or anyone in any agency is issued a device.
Haven’t heard of this happening with a CIA agent or city Police Chief, have you? Do they get seized bodily, held from home, if they don’t turn over their phones?
When did CBP become the arbiter of what information NASA can keep secret?
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Well if any contractors or related groups that are working for/with NASA aren’t safe guarding data properly it may be an indication of a larger systemic problem. As i mentioned before, NASA has a decades long history of poor practices.
Granted a lot of the stuff they work on is public knowledge, and is funded by the public. But still, encrypt your shit.
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Our customs and border control have gone off the rails. No edict, piece of paper, ruling, or otherwise has the power to remove or nullify your constitutional protections. Nothing can be taken from you without due process.
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Have you been asleep? This has been literally, 
legally , true for over a decade now.
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Has it come to this? Is the US the new China? Truly we have crossed over into some unnamed hellscape.
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One problem with that procedure, the most recent round of customs detentions, those detained were not permitted to call anyone, and were denied access to legal counsel.
Yes the customs info page says you can request a superior, but that only helps if the request is honored. I am sure that they would ignore a claim that a call had to be made to NASA security before you can comply with any such request.
These are people who hassled the former prime minister of Norway, who’s DIPLOMATIC Passport had a stamp from a visit to one of the countries on the list. A holder of such a passport can’t be asked to open their luggage, nevermind unlock a phone, etc…
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