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Homeland Security Border Agents Can Seize Your Phone (cnn.com)
Slashdot reader v3rgEz writes: A Wall Street Journal reporter has shared her experienced of having her phones forcefully taken at the border -- and how the Department of Homeland Security insists that your right to privacy does not exist when re-entering the United States. Indeed, she's not alone: Documents previously released under FOIA show that the DHS has a long-standing policy of warrantless (and even motiveless) seizures at the border, essentially removing any traveler's right to privacy.
"The female officer returned 30 minutes later and said I was free to go," according to the Journal's reporter, adding. "I have no idea why they wanted my phones..."
"The female officer returned 30 minutes later and said I was free to go," according to the Journal's reporter, adding. "I have no idea why they wanted my phones..."
Keep your phone encrypted and always power it off when crossing the border. They can seize your phone but can't compel you to decrypt it.
Agents can operate within a 100 mile zone of the border. (Most of the country)
https://www.aclu.org/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”
Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
Get a burner phone for use while you are there.
then they'll want to take your brain just in case it contains an idea for a terrorist plot. Better not watch any action movies on the flight just in case it gives you wrong ideas.
Big Bro' is watching you.
https://reason.com/blog/2016/0...
http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/2...
The DHS is free to deny entry into the US. They can't seize your phone as such but they do have the right to deny entry if you don't allow them to seize your phone. Bend over or go back. Your choice.
"I have no idea why they wanted my phones..."
They didn't want the phones, they wanted to exercise power over you. They're low paid, in shitty jobs and hated for it. Acts like this are about all they can look forwards to.
One of the Snowden leaks revealed that when you hand over your phone at 5-eyes embassies and borders, they use the opportunity to install software bugs on the phone. I imagine its the same at the USA border.
DHS seems to be ignoring the Jae Shik Kim case, where they seized his laptop at the border and cloned it to go fishing. He sued and the court blocked it.
But I don't think gathering *visible* evidence was the game here, since she's a journalist. More likely it would be the NSA bugging route.
.
The Constitution in the 100-Mile Border Zone
What good would having the phone do, unless it's unlocked? Can they require you to use touch ID, enter your passcode, or tell them your passcode?
They can fondle people's privates at will, compel old nannies to undress, publicly embarrass ladies with sex toys. I'd say at this point it is reasonable to assume the can do anything they please. Which includes seizing your phone/laptop/socks.
IANAL but my understanding is when you're at the border you're in a legally grey no-man's land between the two countries. You haven't been admitted to the USA, therefore the laws of the USA technically don't apply. But neither do the laws of the country you have left.
I heard it once said (and this was pre 9-11) the border guards could take your car apart and leave it in pieces on the side of the road, then tell you "have a nice day" and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
stay home and buy from china.
I seem to remember this was introduced in the aftermath of 9/11 and am surprised that people have widely forgotten about it. Luckily that 100-miles-from-the-border applies within the U.S., I was in southern BC recently and probably less than 5 miles from the U.S.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Yeah? Alright, then.
https://reason.com/blog/2016/0...
http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/2...
Yes, she was able to keep her phones. Sometimes the DYKWIA superpower can be used for good, not evil.
And they wonder why people shoot cops. Go figure.
One thing the summary doesn't mention is that the reporter who was detained is probably non-white: her name is Maria Abi-Habib and she covers the middle east for the Wall Street Journal. In the Facebook post, she says she goes by Maria Theresa. She's apparently non-muslim, but probably looks close enough to a middle easterner that racial profiling kicked in.
The DHS has made it abundantly clear for years now that nobody should fly with anything that they can't afford to lose. Ship your phone and other critical things ahead via parcel service. If you must have a phone during your trip, get a burner just for that purpose.
A journalist (of the WSJ no less) has no idea what is going on in their country? That's what was the most surprising to me. I mean, I knew about the 100-mile border rule and I am neither a journalist, nor a US citizen. I thought the US journalists are in on it with the government by not drawing attention to the slowly eroding US constitutional rights, but in this case it is not some conspiracy, the journalist is an idiot. Where idiot here is also used in the original meaning from the ancient greek (no unicode to list it here) which was referred to people who were not interested in the affairs of the State.
If a journalist whose job is to know stuff exactly like this, is surprised to find something like that out, what hope do the people in the US realize that they have let them take away their rights one by one?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Use burner phones, seems to work for the terries.
The stories at the top on /. weren't stories I'd already read somewhere else
Just say no thanks https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
No, they'd just bug her SIM card, and it would grab all her contacts the next time she switches on the phone.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/02/gopherset_nsa_e.html
(TS//SI//REL) GOPHERSET is a software implant for GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) subscriber identity module (SIM) cards. This implant pulls Phonebook, SMS, and call log information from a target handset and exfiltrates it to a user-defined phone number via short message service (SMS).
(TS//SI//REL) Modern SIM cards (Phase 2+) have an application program interface known as the SIM Toolkit (STK). The STK has a suite of proactive commands that allow the SIM card to issue commands and make requests to the handset. GOPHERSET uses STK commands to retrieve the requested information and to exfiltrate data via SMS. After the GOPHERSET file is compiled, the program is loaded onto the SIM card using either a Universal Serial Bus (USB) smartcard reader or via over-the-air provisioning. In both cases, keys to the card may be required to install the application depending on the service provider's security configuration.
************
The SIM card keys keys they stole 2 billion of them from Gemalto, the SIM card manufacturer, by hacking their network and tracking their employees. If it's a USA phone, they would just ask AT&T or Sprint to give them the SIM card key, US telcos have immunity for helping the NSA, regardless of the laws.
When she complains that "she doesn't fit the profile" but she's a journalist traveling from the middle east?
Sorry, something doesn't smell right with her story. I suspect there was some reason border agents detained and hassled her, though I do believe they regularly overstep their bounds in other cases.
That said, the powers our border agents and TSA have are truly frightening, nonetheless. I live in the 100 mile zone where agents could storm my house and seize all of my electronic devices "just because". They don't use this power, except in exceptional cases, but when the dam breaks and they start doing this, it will become more commonplace until they start doing it on behalf of corporations to protect "intellectual property" and use it to censor journalists.
Nope, try again, A US Citizen has an absolute right to re-enter the US. Lyttle v US, Fikre v FBI, and other cases uphold this. They can detain you, they can make life difficult, but if you're a US citizen, they *cannot* send you back.
And the government has a right to search your person and your property as part of a U.S. Customs inspection. Its been that way since the founding days of our republic. There is no right to privacy in your person and property when crossing the border. You may be able to cross but your property will not if Customs want to search it. The only argument one may be able to make is that the TSA agent was not "deputized" and an ICE agent.
Article quote:
The policy was set in 2013 when DHS reviewed its own powers and concluded that its agents were clear to search at will.
"Imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits," it wrote.
Wow... "Police work is too hard so we will skip that and jail those we feel are guilty."
These are the types of idiots who run the US defense system. Game over. If they aren't smart enough to understand what is totally wrong with that, I doubt how effective their protection is. I guess its racketeering protection...
I guess the US has just been getting lucky.. We just haven't had enough people hate is... Yet.
Same goes for your computers and any hard drives or usb sticks.
I bring a cheap chrome book to check email, browse the web, etc. My chrome book is much cheaper than an iPad. I don't need to bring my dev laptop if that's all I'm going to do with it. When traveling on business internationally I bring my older dev laptop, its slower but if lost its not that much of a loss.
I do Android development so a Samsung a generation or two behind is always available since I have those for testing and if lost they are easily replaced. Just need a local SIM card upon arrival.
Do divulge the details ... you clear have something more to tell here :)
Exactly this. In this era of a complete disregard for the 4th amendment ...
I agree there is disregard for the 4th amendment but this is NOT the case to argue that. US Customs has *always* been allowed to search your person and property at a border crossing since the founding days of our republic. What may be arguable in this case is that a TSA agent did the search not a Customs agent. Of course "deputizing" TSA as customs agents would close that loophole.
Is there any government on earth that does not have the right to search the person and property of an international traveler when they cross the border? Note "international traveler", within the EU you are no longer an international traveler, but when originally entering the EU from outside you were.
And by at the border I am referring to at the border, not 100 miles inside. That is a different situation IMO.
What I find most troubling about this is that they demanded her phone, but then backed down when she insisted on getting WSJ lawyers involved. That implies that they were attempting to do something by intimidation that they were aware they had no legal right to force her to do. Is anyone else bothered by law enforcement using this tactic? I've heard of other cases, i.e. stopping people on the street and tellling them, "You need to show me what's in your bag" Well, according to the Fourth Amendment, no I don't, but probably most people assume law enforcement understands the law better than they do. Fact is, citizens are required to abide by thousands of laws, and ignorance is not an excuse. But if law enforcement doesn't apply the laws correctly, they can always claim ignorance of the law. Not really a reciprocal balance of rights, is it?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This has been in effect since the patriot act was imposed on us.
We have no constitutional rights within 100 miles of any border like the article states.
But hey you all can keep your heads in the sand and imagine we still live in the land of the free.
Keep your data secured online on your own server. You have access to your data anywhere, but if they seize item X (tablet, phone), they get the basic configuration for that device. My data is on my server, they don't have access. They need the password to get into the remote server (darn, I fergit), and also there is no default IP address pointing them to any given server. So somewhere out on the interweb, behind a password, is something that they may or may not be interested in. Thanks for playing, come again.
The US government doesn't want us going to this crazy country, and get some tourist and travel economy going.
So we'll travel elsewhere.
Don't travel to US.
aaaaaaa
Home of the DHS.
You can't handle the truth.
When you leave the country and intend to return, do NOT take with you any computerized device which has on it any confidential or irreplaceable information. This includes phones, tablets, laptops. If you just cannot live without these devices while out of the country, buy and take with you ones which you do not care about losing. I know, I know, how are you going to amuse yourself without your phone. You could try reading a printed book.
Was she rather good looking? Females have their phones "looked at" far more often than men. The TSA is not the only one "collecting"!
But the truth is that despite our noisy minority, the majority of people are for this, and they actually want more. He who shall not be named will be putting up guard towers to satisfy the raging mob. Things are getting darker, not lighter. The feeble resistance will not be noticed.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
How is this even news, border agents have been doing this for years. https://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/08/01/0958242/dhs-allowed-to-take-laptops-indefinitely
The policies cover 'any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,' including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover 'all papers and other written documentation,' including books, pamphlets and 'written materials commonly referred to as "pocket trash..."'
They were looking for nude selfies.
I guarantee it.
Quit shitposting. This is the law in every country in the world. You don't have a right to import anything into any country.
Did anybody RTFA? Her phones were NOT seized!
In the last two decades, real freedoms have evaporated and no one is doing anything about it.
Why is no one fighting for this egregious breach of personal freedoms?
Why is this not on the political agenda?
Message your elected representative and tell them to restore the freedoms we once had.
*** Don't be dull.***
I can't read the story.
uBlock Origin has prevented the following page from loading:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php...)
How many phones did she have? 2-3 is one thing. 50 is another thing entirely.
Anybody who actually lived here could tell you it was shitty long become Obama got in the white house.
The three options are:
Convert enough of the populace to care to step up to be voted into office, then repeal these unjust laws.
Start over with a new government displacing the current American one.
Go somewhere else and start over, whether replacing an existing government, or finding somewhere no government currently wants and squatting there until you're strong enough to defend it by force.
From shouting these facts to the mundane masses that constitute most of american society. They don't care. As a result the majority is oppressing the minority with no method for the minority to reclaim an equal physical stake of the country to seperate out into (the real purpose of the civil war for anybody who paid attention.)
As a result of this, we are at the whim of our government, same as the UK, Germans and dozens of other countries including probably your own. Once countries gain property they will never give it up short of international condemnation with economically negative implications or armed rebellion.
Most 'little people' rarely leave the USA. Overseas vacations are expensive. Not enough money for that.
You can get them to not check too much if you're not in a hurry and willing to chat. Most of them, especially at night are just bored by the lack of activity and need *ANYTHING* to keep their minds and bodies active. My particular case was talking about the job and giving me details on where to apply if I was interested :) The two big concerns at that particular station were reckless driving and people smuggling (and occasionally really dangerous combinations of the two.)
That said: This was 10 years ago, which is enough time that the culture may have changed for the worst.
Because the TSA agent 'feared for her life'
I have had equipment of mine swab-tested for residues of drugs or explosives on many borders, but that always happened quite openly, in my presence, and of course without any need to switch on or operate the device. The application of some swab strip is definitely nothing requiring to take your device to somewhere beyond your sight, it's a matter of seconds.
By paying people better and treating them with respect? Kinda like we do with police, military and fire departments?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
https://youtu.be/3BgM206n3Ww
where nations exist to protect what's inside from what's outside, nations have ALWAYS asserted the right to search anybody and their stuff when they cross national borders.
Encryption has always been seen AND USED as a weapon. In WWII all sides used encryption and the Americans succeeded in sinking the Imperial Japanese fleet largely because they cracked the Japanese military encryption. The Allies succeeded in Europe with alarge assist from cracking the enigma encryption. Encryption has been used by spies intent of defending their own nations and undermining other nations for as long as humans could read and write.
We all love encryption for our personal stuff. We all have stuff we just do not want others snooping through, and we have stuff like banking that we really need to keep secret for our own personal protection, but that does notin any way reduce the needs of governments to do their most-basic function: defend their populations from outside risks. There is no easy compromise here. Governments are like doctors; they feel the need to look at stuff that polite people do not normally want to look at, but their need is generally for the good. Unfortunately there are perv doctors who have other interests just as there are government employees and even agencies with other interests. What really does not help is that governments have been caught lying about their snooping and that makes it harder for them to be trusted.
Those who pretend that people are lunatics to be worried about government snooping and spying are being idiots - people do have legitimate reasons to encrypt and have personal, family, and business secrets. Those on the other side who pretend that governments have no right and no need to snoop and that anybody should be able to cross any border with encrypted stuff that goes uninspected are also delusional. The very same encrypted device that hides your bank account info, your contact lists, your medical records, and your playlists can also be used by the guy next to you in line at customs who is carrying the plans to coordinate a sarin gas attack, or a mass-shooting, or a suicide bombing.
That is a horse and pony show they are used to keep people in.
as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murat_Kurnaz
The First Congress obviously considered border searches reasonable because they authorized searching every room and every item of a ship for contraband. They (or a significant overlap) also wrote the Fourth Amendment, prohibiting "unreasonable" search and seizure. Thus under an originalist view and a traditional view, there is a very low expectation of privacy at the border, and Fourth Amendment rights are very small there.
They are not quite nonexistent. For example, I believe there was a case a little while ago saying that if they wanted to do a destructive search of your vehicle, they needed reasonable suspicion. RS is a very, very low standard, but it is a standard.
There is a more legitimate dispute about searching the contents of electronic devices. (Because it is more intrusive, since they can contain massive amounts of information about your life.) But regarding the border search exception generally, GP is correct that there has always been a strong border search exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement. And since the rise of modern warfare, there's really been no legitimate argument against that. (Nations have an existential interest in controlling the movement of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.)
Real lawyers write in C++
I mentioned this a few years ago and will mention it again. This is how to legitimately say that you can't decrypt your files, even though actually you can. If your laptop is seized and they want you to decrypt the TrueCrypt drive for them, do the following. (Yes, I know TrueCrypt is no longer supported; assume you're using the next-to-last version before they pulled it from the market.)
Agent: "What's this encrypted drive?"
You: "It's for work. It's confidential."
Agent: "Well, decrypt it, please. What's the password?"
You: "It's not just a password, it needs a keyfile."
Agent: "Well, type in the name of the keyfile."
You: "The keyfile's not on this computer. It's on a USB stick."
Agent: "Well, where's the USB stick?"
You: "I'm on vacation, so I didn't bring it with me." (Or, on a business trip: "I'm not working on that project at the moment, so I didn't bring it.")
And everything you say may even be true. So they can still seize your laptop, but good luck to them decrypting it.
However, the secret is this: the keyfile is actually a simple file that you can reproduce from memory. For example, on the actual USB stick, if you choose to actually make one, might be a 1 MB file with random data called "JohnSmith.key"; and also another file called "keyfile.ref", which contains the text "/mnt/media/usb/JohnSmith.key" (or "E:\JohnSmith.key" if more appropriate for your operating system). The secret is that the second file, the tiny one seeming to contain a string that points to the 1MB of gibberish, is itself the keyfile. You might even choose to keep this small file on your laptop drive itself.
In summary, two elements allow this scheme to work: your knowledge of which file is actually the key file, and the plausible denial of your possession of this file because it's supposed to be on detachable storage which you don't have with you.
Maybe if they see that they can't force you to supply a password, they won't "keep in you jail for a while."
Please help refine this by pointing out shortcomings of this scheme.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Wishful thinking.
Those days have passed and things are being run differently now.
Treat it like a third world military checkpoint where those you are facing have both sticky fingers and power of life and death over you with little consequence to themselves and it won't be all that far from reality.
If you don't want someone to see it or can't afford to lose the device it is on don't take it.
Do you really want to be locked up for so long that the business trip is meaningless, or even get deported, or the non-zero risk of being injured while being detained just to show how tough you are to a guard?
There is a long list of people being locked up for no reason, stuff being stolen and various other problems so the "it won't happen to me" factor reduces drastically once you go around deliberately acting in a way they see as suspicious.
Fucking sweet!
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
It's worth repeating ad nauseam: when traveling abroad, always use a new clean phone, i.e. another phone with a new SIM card that is not linked to your Google and other accounts... It's not just the US that seizes or snoops on phones at its borders, foreign countries do so as well. Basically, once they got hold of your phone and take it out of your sight for a couple of minutes, you never know if it hasn't been copied, and bugged. And when you're back home, always assume the phone has been physically tampered with, and make sure to throw it away (or sell it e.g. on eBay to some poor unsuspecting buyer, fair warning would be nice though). Sorry, but that's the way it is.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Maybe if they see that they can't force you to supply a password, they won't "keep in you jail for a while."
Please help refine this by pointing out shortcomings of this scheme.
You overestimate the stupidity of law enforcement. No one will believe you have data that you can not access or can not get access to.
You underestimate the patience of law enforcement. If they get to the point where they feel the need to compel you to divulge your encryption key, they'll get a court order. The current record for detention for refusing to comply with a court order is 14 years. Most people don't hold out that long. They start getting worried that their boss will fire them, or at least stop paying them, after a month or two. If you legitimately can't decrypt the data they want, then the court order is as good as a life sentence ("Life" sentences average about 8 years served).
The shortcomings is that the encryption is visible to the average guard and unnecessarily raises eyebrows.
How about this (on Android)? You install two operating system images on the phone, say, two instances of CyanogenMod, one encrypted, and the other non-encrypted, and you setup the boot loader TWRP so that it usually boots the unencrypted one. So, if the unsuspecting guard boots the phone, he'll be able to login and see a perfectly regular OS. But if YOU want to access your confidential files, you reboot the phone into TWRP with the usual key combo, and then you boot into the encrypted instance of the OS. Added bonus: you modify TWRP so that it doesn't even display that encrypted OS in the list of available bootable partitions.
Shortcomings: forensics will show that there is an encrypted partition on the phone... if they ghosted it. But if it is just the guard booting up the phone and nosing around a little bit, you're pretty safe.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Get an android with a removable memory card. Save all your important stuff to the card, and remove it and store it in your luggage, and use full phone encryption.
Because people want their legalized MJ.
never leave any apps on your button bar. ever.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This is a wise move. Best thing to do is buy a clean rental phone in a safe city/country in the region you're going to, and never use it for anything important. Never use public wi-fi. Never use "secure" wi-fi at any hotel, the Chinese and Russians and Saudis and Israelis will root it. Never leave any electronics out of sight. Ever.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --