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Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

Everyone proposing clever technical solutions. Burner phones and encrypted cloud data etc... you are solving the wrong problem. Instead of engineering a way for the few people who care deeply to avoid this at great effort, engineer a way for this to not be legal. Write your congressperson, donate time and money to political parties, make privacy at the border for ALL (not just citizens) a priority in every election.

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> Everyone proposing clever technical solutions. Burner phones and encrypted cloud data etc... you are solving the wrong problem.

Yes, and this is why I will happily pay airlines more to transfer in another country that is not America (e.g. Canada, Mexico). It sucks because it makes travel more expensive, but US airports are not traveler friendly (they could start by having international transfer zones so you don't have to do security again) and the TSA is a bloody nightmare.

I also avoid travel to the US. There are plenty of interesting travel destinations which are not America you can visit.

For Americans impacted by this, absolutely please write your representatives and ask they tone down this madness. For the rest of the world, if you can avoid traveling to the US, do so. Vote with your wallet and pick somewhere else.

Canada also requires your password at the border. Recently one guy even faced 1 year in prison for refusing. At least in the US you don't face prison time. New Zealand asks as well.

> Canada also requires your password at the border. Recently one guy even faced 1 year in prison for refusing.

That can't be true; at least, there must be a hell of a lot more to it.

Why would Canada want to pay provide prison space for a foreign national who's committed such mundane a crime as non-cooperation, and without ill-affect on any Canadian citizens?

If you're a foreigner, Canada will just detain you and deport you.

But a Canadian citizen they will arrest and charge with obstruction of their job.

Is job obstruction illegal in Canada?

It's specifically illegal to obstruct the work of customs officers, and it's what they were charging someone with who refused to give up his phone password. That guy ended up pleading out the day before his trial.

>mundane a crime as non-cooperation, and without ill-affect on any Canadian citizens?

They already have laws that criminalise even possession of certain pornographics drawings or stories. Make no mistakes, Canada is not a free country and has no problem with imprisonment for victimless crime.

1 year was the maximum he could have been sentenced to. You're right, that the judge would probably picked a lesser sentence. In this case, he took a guilty plea deal for a $500 fine. In this case he wasn't a foreign national, but a Canadian citizen. I'm not sure if Canada will charge people who aren't citizens.

http://www.canada-usblog.com/2016/08/16/the-waiting-game-we-...

He was a Canadian.

This is not exactly true.

* Canadian' border can ask you for your local passwords.

* You can refuse - at which point, if you are Canadian/PR, you are allowed to enter the country but your device is confiscated and sent to Ottawa for further examination.

* They can NOT ask for online passwords (like your dropbox account for example). THAT SAID, if you give them your local password, and you are logged in to Dropbox, it's fair game.

Furthermore, this has not been through the Supreme Court to set precedence.

Then why was Alain Philippon arrested and charged with a crime?

http://www.canada-usblog.com/2016/08/16/the-waiting-game-we-...

because he refused to hand over the local passwords for his devices.

I am not saying what the CBSA did was legal (as the case was dropped), but not handing over local passwords is considered "obstruction of the officer's job" by the CBSA (for which he was charged).

So I'm assuming that if they did want to charge you, they could.

But you said "You can refuse". His case proves that's not true.

And his case wasn't dropped. He plead guilty.

Not true about Canada. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13665021

And the Kiwi's might ask, but only to find out if you are violating quarantine regulations.

It's undecided about Canada. There is a law that could say it's punishable by a year in prison, but the law is from thirty years ago and hasn't been tried in this situation. The CBSA says that you can be arrested for failing to divulge a password though, and for now it is their opinion that matters.

If you read the link you will see that the CBSA policy is not to attempt to arrest people for this, due to the uncertainty.

https://bccla.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CBSA-FOI-Docs.p...

Except they actually arrested a guy and were take him to trial before he plead out at the last minute. It's undecided in Canada but the current reality is that if you refuse, expect to be charged.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/guilty-plea-ends-ca...

And if you read the link, that is from an almost two year old bulletin and begins with "until further instruction." I don't know what the exact FOI requests were, so all you can be certain of is "their policy under the Harper government was..."

It is a meaningless tautology to say the policy is only the policy until it is changed. If you can find further information, such as more recent FOI requests, that would be useful.

There is no reason to believe that CBSA under Trudeau would have dumber policies than under Harper, I fact the opposite.

That comment does not disprove mine. The guy did face up to 1 year in prison. He took a guilty plea instead of trying his luck in trial.

As for New Zealand:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

Her name is Miss Torrent! ROTFL

It probably wouldn't have survived a charter challenge... But he accepted a $500 fine that saved years of legal battles, and the CBSA doesn't get a precedent set against them.

From what I've read, I'd suggest that the law is unclear at this point. It will probably be decided by the Supreme Court within a decade. But I find the ambiguity frustrating...

Sources to back this up?

Just look at what happened to Alain Phillippon:

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/guilty-plea-ends-ca...

Back in the late 1990s, they did used to have transfer zones. I am not sure why they stopped. US airlines lose some non-trivial amount of money especially from Latin American travelers headed to Europe.

Without exit immigration, none of our airports are configured in a way that makes this workable today. There's nothing stopping someone in transit from just walking out the door.

Some airports are designed in a way to quickly facilitate this if the government ever changed its mind (IAH and LAX TBIT, I believe), but today none of our airports are set up for international sterile zones.

From the perspective of an American departing internationally, this is a bonus since you don't have to wait in line for exit formalities.

You are missing out on Hawaii and Alaska.

Can always visit NWT, or BC.

There is one flight from Latin America to east Asia. Aeromexico flies from Mexico City to Tokyo and Shanghai alternately with their 787s. (ANA is adding a NRT-MEX flight this winter also.)

But there are many, many connecting flights through DFW, Houston, LAX, and SFO. The direct flight costs upwards of $500 more, often a 60% or higher premium. That's the value of avoiding transit through the USA and the visa and CIS procedures involved. (Actually, the first $100 could be the usual price for a direct flight over a connection, but the same $500+ price increment seems to apply to connecting flights.)

Aeromexico is not known for its excellent seats, service, or food (though they're fine as airlines go). It's all about avoiding US officials.

> one flight from Latin America to east Asia

Are the countries on the continent of South America not generally considered a part of Latin America? Because there are other options from Santiago, Sao Paolo, Rio, etc. to Tokyo. Some of the options are on Air Canada, with a stop in Toronto which avoids U.S. airports but presumably not U.S. airspace so there may still be some additional scrutiny at departure.

You don't actually have to go all the way to a South American city, Panama City has Air Canada flights to Tokyo. It looks like the other carriers (Emirates, KLM, Turkish Airlines) have stops in a South American city first. The Air Canada flights aren't much more expensive but the European & Asian-based carriers are much more expensive than the flights with stops in the U.S.

Are the countries on the continent of South America not generally considered a part of Latin America?

Technically, every country in South America is considered a part of Latin America except British Guyana, Suriname, and France. Not including islands like the Malvinas or the ABC islands, of course.

---

I should have specified one single flight. Of course you can fly to Dubai from São Paulo and then to Seoul or to Sydney from Santiago and then on to Peking.

But direct flights are very limited.

In case anyone is confused, the Malvinas are correctly referred to as the Falkland Islands.

> France

French Guiana?

France can be divided into Metropolitan France (the main hexagon of France, along with Corsica), Départements d'outre-mer (including Martinique, Guyana, and others), and Collectivités d'outre-mer (such as Saint Martin). In terms of US geography, the rough equivalents are the continental US, Alaska and Hawaii, and unincorporated territories of the US (like Puerto Rico). If you don't understand the latter term, think of it as a fancy term for colony.

Well, sort of. Looking briefly at many maps of France (in French), the inclusion of the DOMs are relatively rare, in contrast to the inclusion of Alaska and Hawaii on most US maps. Corsica is about as prevalent as Alaska and Hawaii (probably more so), while Guyana and the other DOMs are about as prevalent as Puerto Rico.

I guess I find the phrasing really odd. It seems to imply that there is an independent country named France in Latin America. It would be similarly odd to hear someone refer to the country of the United States in the Caribbean.

I also don't know that excluding French Guiana from "Latin America" is actually correct anyway. French is a romance language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America

The most prestigious university in Latin America is McGill University in Montreal.

Is this your way of saying that the term "Latin America" does not include French-speaking nations? Because the French apparently created the term and it included French Guiana.

French Guiana is the departement (and region) of France that is on the South American continent. It is as much a part of France as e.g. Alaska is of the USA.

As others mentioned, this is plain wrong. I live in Uruguay and the best routes to Asia are from Santiago de Chile with LATAM, no need to go to the U.S.

If you mean direct flights to Tokyo, yes there are no Santiago to Tokyo flights.

On the one hand I agree with you, but on the other hand, not enough Americans even experience what it can be like to go through border control as a citizen.* Even for those who do care, chances are that's not going to be a priority compared to other issues.

*I've written before about my experiences having to go through border control after booking last minute trips. I've been living overseas for over 10 years now, and twice I've had to do this twice now - dealing with a glorified mall cop on a power trip when you're trying to get home to see your mother before she dies is a perfect way to make you despise everything about border control.

This!

Also, clever technical solutions won't help when not having any data is seen as suspicious.

Like, you cannot tell them "I don't know my passowrds. They are in a password safe, and I do not have access right now". When the law says you have to hand over your passwords, "I don't know them right now" is probably not a valid excuse anyway.

what about the old My-dog-ate-my-sim-card-routine aka ditching your 2fa token ... like i really don';t know because I denied myself access:

"...Then, before you cross the border, make sure you don’t have the SIM card that allows you—or customs officials—to receive that text message, essentially denying yourself the ability to cooperate with agents even if you wanted to. Zdziarski suggests mailing yourself the SIM card, or destroying it and then recovering the accounts with backup codes"

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/guide-getting-past-customs-dig...

Then you will quite possibly be denied access simply because they cannot harvest your social media profiles for profiling.

Kennywinker's comment is right that technological cleverness won't help much here. Carry no devices, and you are suspicious and/or non-cooperative (unless you are over the age of sixty). Carry devices with no data, and you are suspicious and/or non-cooperative. Carry devices with carefully prepared fake profiles and datasets and you might pass muster… or be regarded as suspicious, non-cooperative, and/or actively resisting (if the border agent judging you suspects he is seeing fake data).

I wonder how they are trained to react to people without social media accounts.

> Then you will quite possibly be denied access simply because they cannot harvest your social media profiles for profiling.

Not just because they can't. Because you specifically took steps to prevent them from doing it.

> Because you specifically took steps to prevent them from doing it.

... or I'm travelling with my local SIM to avoid roaming charges?

That only works if you've already been to the US and have a local SIM card.

Also — you left your home country SIM at home because you don't care about the roaming charges back home getting to/returning from the airport?

> you left your home country SIM at home because you don't care about the roaming charges back home getting to/returning from the airport?

Because I don't want to lose it. This is exactly how I've travelled before hearing that this 'handover your passwords' existed.

No roaming charges because it's not being used - I can live without a very functional phone between the WiFi at the airport in my home country, and home.

(Actually, right now I don't even carry the dumbphone that has my SIM it. I'm content with WiFi.)

Do you have any basis for your last point?

I legitimately don't know many of my passwords, there's no legal obligation to know them, and the law generally cant compel you to do impossible things (eg, tell them something you don't know).

They can subpoena my password safe, just like any other file on my computer, and possibly require I unlock it (this is disputed), but I don't see any reason they can demand I reproduce the contents of the safe that I don't know.

While there's no legal obligation to know them, there's no legal obligation for you to be let through the border - for non-citizens crossing USA border, the explicit legal presumption(starting from [1]) is that you're not fulfilling the conditions of the visa and you have to convince the immigration officer that you are entitled to entry. If they want to check certain information that is not available for you (no matter if the reason is good or not) and they are not convinced otherwise that you don't have any risks, then there's no "beyond reasonable doubt" like in criminal proceedings - if they are not convinced that you're not going to e.g. work in USA, then they have not only the right, but a duty to deny you entry.

[1] (b) Every alien 10/ (other than a nonimmigrant described in subparagraph (L) or (V) of section 101(a)(15), and other than a nonimmigrant described in any provision of section 101(a)(15)(H)(i) except subclause (b1) of such section) shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for a visa, and the immigration officers, at the time of application for admission, that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant status under section 101(a)(15) .

If you say you can't remember your password, they can't force you to remember, but they can tell you to go home.

When you're a foreigner attempting to enter the USA, they can simply deny you entry for failing to do what they want. US CBP has the authority to make arbitrary decisions not to admit foreigners, and CBP faces almost no scrutiny.

Most other countries give their border guards similar authority with respect to foreigners not entitled to enter by some treaty (e.g. EU).

First, IANAL, and I am not an expert for the situation in the US. So you're probably right.

But in the UK, you can go to jail for not disclosing your cryptographic keys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...

Here is a story of a person who went to jail for not disclosing his keys: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/?page=1 He said he kept silent "because of principle", but I guess he might also have gone to jail if he told them "I don't remember" - Officers would not believe him anyway.

The prosecution has to show that you know the keys to convict you under that law.

Even in the UK the two situations are different. In the cases you cited, not surrendering passwords is considered to be contempt of court. At a border, you might be denied entry, which is bad, but that's it.

The law only exists to the extent that it is enforced. If customs says "give us your passwords or you're not coming through" and you don't have a lawyer handy, then "give us your passwords or you're not coming through" is now the law (until a judge overturns it and possibly charges the officer for breaking another law).

If you can call a lawyer and don't mind waiting several hours, you can challenge it. However most people don't have a lawyer and don't know what to do and are afraid of the officers.

And also, noncitizens do not have a right to contact a lawyer when they are detained at an airport.

If you call a lawyer in such a situation, they'll tell you that Customs has 100% discretion to admit or deny non-citizens and there is no such thing as "challenging" it.

And for people who are not US citizens, the solution is pretty simple too: Don't travel to the US.

This. If travel is avoidable or exchangeable for another destination, just don't go to the states.

As a EU citizen that visited Iran last year I'm no longer eligible for ESTA (visaless entry) and that - combined with these horrific border control policies - honestly made the threshold for me to visit so high, I'll probably never visit again.

> As a EU citizen that visited Iran last year I'm no longer eligible for ESTA (visaless entry) and that - combined with these horrific border control policies - honestly made the threshold for me to visit so high, I'll probably never visit again.

-My work takes me to most places where there are - or suspected to be - hydrocarbons to be found. When visiting Iran a couple of years ago, the immigration officer leafed through my passport and burst out laughing halfway through.

Obviously, I got somewhat concerned - but upon looking up and seeing my worried face, he handed me my passport back and with a chuckle suggested that if he could offer a bit of professional advice, it was that my passport read like an appplication to go to Guantanamo - and I had better get a new one before attempting to visit the US again... (Prior to Iran, I'd been to places like Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Indonesia and Uzbekistan.)

I might be forced to in the fall. There's a conference within my industry held in San Fransisco in the fall. There really is no substitute elsewhere within a reasonable timeframe. I plan to have no devices with me on the flight. I'll buy a cheap Android and a burner SIM. Before flying home I'll toss the phone.

"Give me liberty or give me death" has been subverted into "Give me security and I'll give you my freedom".

It's all up to you. But I personally chose not to go to US conferences because of the TSA.

The risk of being jailed is real: If you chuckle while they ask questions then lose your temper because he's not happy and you lack sleep; If you have a false name on Facebook (Are you lying about your identity to any US company?); If you know the wrong person; If you've watched underage porn (knowing that even with above-age porn, you don't have any of the actors' ID card to prove it); If a person claims you've harassed her at the conference... Many reasons for your life to become miserable.

The idea of risking jail and sponsoring these rules against aliens far outweighs the advantage of going to a conference, at least for me.

Surprise: This year, the main conference in my domain, is organized in Vienna (CH) instead of SF!

Yeah, the U.S. throws people in jail because women claim they were harassed at conferences all the time. The risk is real!

In USA harassment doesn't have to be proven for action to be taken. Look at the former GitHub and FoxNews CEOs, or Adria Richard's targets at PyCon, or Douglas Crockford at Nodevember: Nothing was ever reviewed by a judge, it's all just claims. 5 cases from the top of my mind. 2 other ones in personal acquaintances.

> Vienna (CH)

Er, are you referring to Vienna (AT)?

Lucky you. My favourite conferences are held in Amsterdam and London. I much prefer those to US ones of course.

Or just don't bring any electronic devices with you on the travel.

That's likely to be a red flag and used against you. Remember, as a non-US citizen, border guards don't have to prove you're guilty of anything. Any suspicion, no matter how trivial or unreasonable, and you have to be able to convincingly prove your own innocence. No electronic devices will probably simply result in them asking for the passwords to your accounts on Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.

Then all bets are off, i guess.

How am i suppose to prove i have no Facebook account? I really do not have a Facebook account. :)

If they're really interested, they'll probably just Google you. Or use something they purchased for tens of millions of dollars, that simply performs a Google search. If you're an older person, and have no online footprint, they probably wouldn't have stopped you in the first place. If you're young, and have no online footprint, that would be pretty suspicious.

The US isn't the only country that does this. Canada does it too, in fact recently a guy was facing 1 year in jail for not giving up his password. At least you don't face jail time in the US. New Zealand does it as well.

Thats the second time you've posted this. How about pointing at some evidence?

I'm posting multiple times because other people keep posting that the US laws stand out as bad compared to other countries.

If you google canada border password you find this:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/alain-philippon-phone-password-case-p...

Here's a story about New Zealand asking for passwords:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

Buge has written this several times in the last two weeks without supporting evidence.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/alain-philippon-phone-password-case-p...

Don't suppose you want to give more information on your personal experience? When did they last ask for your passwords? Did they give a reason?

not parent, but this was posted elsewhere

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

I can see members of congress agreeing to privacy right at the border for citizens --only a very few would support the same for non-citizens, even Dems. There is no political upside to that position and it serves a very small percentage of Americans, indirectly, so, that's not going to fly.

I assume things like that get easily resolved with international treaties as other countries get retaliatory measures. Eg if Canada set up mandatory cloning of US citizen phones at the border when they try to enter, the tables would turn, so people would start complaining. This is how visa waiver programs came to be, how tax agreements get created etc.

> There is no political upside to that position

In this case you have a gay Canadian man lawfully entering the United States. I think you could find vocal American constituents who care about such people not being profiled, harassed and threatened with violence on the whims of a single person.

Maybe but you'd have to prove a gay man was more likely to be turned back than a straight woman suspected of being involved in sex work. Never the less, their being non-Americans would seriously deflate most Americans' concerns about profiling.

> you'd have to prove...

Fortunately and unfortunately this is not how rallying works. You'd have to convince the right club, event and advocacy group organizers that this would produce turnout, coverage and possibly even results. Note the size of the protests against Donald Trump's recent immigration ban.

On the other hand border agents, DHS, even under Obama pretty much had little critical oversight on how they adjudicated law and were quite immune to public opinion. [what was that Cuban, then boy who was returned to Cuba at Fidel's request despite public opinion?]

I think the political mood has changed. Note that this happened in December (edit: October) yet is finding coverage two months later.

Actually October, according to the article.

You're mostly right.

At some point these experiences may affect tourism, business, and desirable immigration.

But it's probably too distant of an effect to have that much political capital.

It's only distant in that it's near impossible to measure, so it's distant to the perception; otherwise, it's right here, right now.

If not long in the past; I for one decided around 2003 that visiting the US is too spooky a prospect for me. By boat maybe, so that if I get turned back I at least have a bit of a fun time traveling. But then again why not simply go to like a thousand other places where I pretty much know it'll be great and that I'll be treated with respect, with the added bonus of pumping money into an economy that does worthwhile things with it?

Agreed - I should have said 'distant externality'.

I have a trip to the USA coming up soon, I'm now worried that they'll seek passwords to my work devices.

Not as distant as you think. Travel organisations avoid even layovers in the US (in Europe at least) just like they would war zones and North Korea. And some (but definately not all) companies have a wiped devices policy for US bussiness trips.

When it comes to stuff like this the US is graded on a curve. The same incidents under Obama feel like friendly diplomacy might make it better. Now, maybe Europe and places like Canada should just return the favor. A bit like how travel visa's are often a reverse FU. Ever notice how many destinations dont charge tourists visum costs except when you are from the US or another country that would charge them as well?

> Now, maybe Europe and places like Canada should just return the favor. A bit like how travel visa's are often a reverse FU. Ever notice how many destinations dont charge tourists visum costs except when you are from the US or another country that would charge them as well?

I understand your point, but it's rather impractical and more importantly not very politically amenable for countries that benefit from US tourists/visitors and are less paranoid about security to reciprocate for the sake of reciprocating. This is how we end up in a downward diplomatic spiral. I'd much rather prefer (as someone who visits countries that reciprocate and those that don't) to have places like the Schengen Area hold what they see as a moral high ground.

How we'd get change then? I'd normally agree with you, but in this case that's the only thing which would work. At least it should be put on the table when negotiating visa programs with the US.

Yeah, who cares about business, tourism and desirable immigration? None of those things are worth much to the US economy I guess.

(Our family was seriously considering a touring camper holiday to the US in a year or two. Now: no way in hell.)

Unless it causes a very noticeable drop in tourism - not on anecdotal level, but on the level of millions - about 70M tourists visit US yearly, so to make noticeable change, it probably should be like 10M at least - there will be no change. Note that there are literally millions of citizens who don't get a dime from tourists, don't care too much about tourists, but worry a lot about (real or imagined) threat of terrorism. They'd kick out any politician they perceive soft on border security faster than you can say "TSA".

The difference is that just about everyone in the US actually is positively affected by tourists (tax dollars) but not affected by terrorism (very low incidence of terrorism in the US). I'm not sure where the millions of Americans who don't get a dime from tourists exist.

The US is a sufficiently large enough domestic population that it self-generates and self-fulfills most of its tourism market. I was surprised myself when I looked up how lopsided it is. Similar can probably be said of China, EU, and perhaps Africa in a couple decades.

Overseas arrivals to the US is tracked in [1].

Domestic tourism represented 96.7% of the annual market in 2013. [2]

In the context of this thread's discussion of overseas visitors avoiding the US and its knock-on effects upon the US tourism industry, if overseas visitors 100% disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't be a rounding error, but according to these statistics it's definitely not the political-economic club it's made out to be in these discussions. For better or worse, it is up to US citizens to vote in any changes in border control service delivery standards.

For what it's worth, many of the procedures I've heard people complain about have some basis in reasoning lurking in the background. International transits (where you land in a US airport but go onwards to a different country, never once stepping foot onto non-airport soil) requiring a security re-screening is explained in some places [3]. The cost to Americans getting People's Republic of China (PRC) visas traces back to diplomatic tit-for-tat, as PRC citizens visiting the US pay similar fees. Many security industry observers admire Israel's airport security, yet discussions like this thread neglect to mention Israeli border control also demands social network and email credentials, and the US is singled out for adopting an Israeli practice, when just scant few years ago the US agencies were excoriated for being too unenlightened to adopt Israeli practices [4].

Where I see room for improvement is service delivery, and education of citizens might help, while increased focus upon anchoring the mobility of capital to mobility of labor will definitely help. I've had my share of visa issues traveling into Canada as a US citizen, but the staff were unfailingly polite while still being hard-nosed, while I hear of other US citizens getting hassled at the Canadian border. I've had minor snafus in border crossings into Mexico and the PRC as well, and I was treated politely there, too. My attitude in all of these interactions was, "Ah, sorry I made your day harder just now, what can I learn about what I missed with regards to the policy so I don't make the same mistake again, what is the rough, overall process and timeline to fix it this time around, and what is the detailed next action item (who/where/what/how)?" This has never failed to elicit the officer politely, sometimes gladly, assisting me, so maybe this helps others. YMMV, of course.

[1] http://travel.trade.gov/research/monthly/arrivals/index.asp

[2] http://www.eturbonews.com/53328/research-domestic-tourism-si...

[3] https://www.quora.com/Airports-Why-do-you-have-to-go-through...

[4] https://www.quora.com/Is-it-justifiable-for-the-Ben-Gurion-a...

All those things are. The question is, how much do these things affect the above? This has been going on since W Bush on; the Obama and to the present, and as of yet, the impact would seem surmountable, i.e. negated by the majority of people who travel anyway and conduct business anyway.

Your life was not online as much that is changing. Facebook didn't even exist under Bush

True, but I suspect we will see other countries do the same, not as retaliation, but more because they'll want catch up to the US in terms of border security ...and it will become a normal thing except in third world counties too inept or poor or corrupt to care to implement this where the dissidents will be free from hassle, for a while.

The world is going through it isolationist phase so yes it is likely other countries will do the same. Though in the future I am seeing a possibility where governments ask for your social media handles and all that data is trawled using an ai which assess your risk profile according to the needs of the government asking the questions. Instead of all your private data getting into the hands of the government or outside third party it accessed and processed by an AI. Personally I would not mind such an AI scanning my profile data as long as the parameters of the questions are already set and the data is not seen by any humans.

This will have a broad chilling effect. You can't deviate from the norm anymore. I would be worried very much if my fate lies in the hands of an AI where there is neither transparency nor recourse.

You dont have a recourse with immigration officers who can be a racist homophone or have any other hangups to reject your entry to a country. But if its AI it is more likely to look at what is relevant such as are you going to overstay or have nefarious reasons to enter. Nothing to do with your race sexual orientation or religion.

There is already no recourse in the immigration system.

I had a Facebook account before Bush won his second election, in 2004.

How is it distant? I have friends and colleagues who are already thinking about skipping going to he US on business trips for this reason.

On a slightly different note. Can this be used to send people home even if they are not bringing a device? I mean, wouldn't it be suspicious to not bring a computer or phone? And if border police are as arbitrary as people say, why not send people away for not having devices that could be unlocked. It would be suspicious couldn't it?

AI/ML conferences are talking about either avoiding the US, potentially with some livestream for people stuck in the US.

This year's schedule is probably set already, but 2018 may be different.

Completely off topic, but which conferences are that? Any recommendations? I'm looking to go into that field.

There's a lot of conferences that overlap.

The biggest ML conferences are ICML and NIPS. ICLR is a new one focused on deep learning that is also very good, but smaller. AAAI seems to be the big general AI conference, but I haven't really seen much talk about it. KDD seems semi-popular, but not a top-tier conference.

There are also application-specific conferences like ACL & EMNLP for language & CVPR for computer vision.

I'm not an academic, but I went to ICML last year since it was in NYC, and it was definitely worth it.

This wikipedia page has a list of some others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_science_confe...

I can think of plenty of economic reasons to not make other people hate being at your airports (and thus hate visiting your country).

There are many places in the US where a significant part of the economy comes from tourism.

There's also 300M+ people in US. Which means virtually none of these places relies only on international tourism. There should be a huge change in tourism for them to notice enough to actually lobby for political change. And such huge changes, even if they would happen - which is not a given, for each person who have read a horror story about a Canadian turned away at the border there are thousands of people who never heard about it - it would take a long time.

Yes, but we're not Costa Rica. It's not grievous. And business interests aren't supposed to be the measuring stick dictating policy, some argue.

They're attempting to solve the problem that they, as individuals, can solve.

I have no realistic chance of convincing enough of my fellow Americans that the privacy of foreign nationals who wish to enter this country is more important than maintaining the false sense of security we get by violating it to put any pressure on lawmakers or enforcers of policy and get things changed.

What you can do, today, is employ technical measures to prevent the agents at the border from snooping into your private business.

I thought tech people liked hard problems ;)

Please, by all means use whatever technical measures you want at the border. My criticism was of hn commenters armchair quarterbacking, as thought the ability to bypass these checks (at great effort) makes it ok that you have no expectation of privacy.

Tech people like hard tech problems. We notoriously hate hard people problems.

I have mixed feelings on the matter. At an international border, non-citizens shouldn't have an expectation of privacy.

At the same time, this man's private sexual preferences shouldn't be used to evaluate his fitness to enter the country.

Does violating the privacy of travellers routinely actually make you safer?

It most likely does not but what you're overlooking is that it makes some people "feel" safer.

I'm not US citizen. I have no one to contact and no one cares about me. And I will never travel to USA.

It's a beautiful country though. Most people are very friendly and they love foreign accents :)

It is a shame this; as a white Brit, I found that America is already great on the individual level. It's just the institutional and political side that's a mess, as well as the dark side that one doesn't see as a tourist. Unless you run into an obstreperous border guard.

That's funny, that's the same thing that Americans say about Iran.

Indeed. I've been to several countries and in most of them it's the same thing: Nice people, bad politics.

Makes you wonder why the people keep having bad politicians. Maybe it's time they taught themselves that system a little bit better.

Unless they're the "wrong" accents in which case you will face discrimination for it in many places. That being said, the better parts are at or near the top of the global spectrum in terms of discrimination from my experience.

It's not just the US. Canada and New Zealand do it as well.

I just emailed my U.S. Senators, U.S. Congresswoman, New York State Assemblywoman and Senator as well as New York City Councilman. You can find your representatives here [1]. It's a simple email saying this is an issue you care about. Pretend it's a Hacker News comment...

[1] http://act.commoncause.org/site/PageServer?pagename=sunlight...

According to a number of interviews I've heard, e-mails are the least effective means of lobbying congressional representatives.

in-person > phone > lettermail > e-mail

I disagree. Maybe people can influence policy in US, but this will still happen to journalists in China, women in Saudi Arabia, suspected drug users in the Philippines, and tomorrow's persecuted minority in tomorrow's undemocratic regime.

Technical self-defense measures are imperfect partial workarounds but the best we have to offer for people in these situations.

Further, why a political solution won't work is right there: this is not an issue most people face or will care about.

Even if you manage to stop customs agents from demanding access, some other branch of government will do it, even if it's outright illegal for them to do so. Technical solutions are the only ones that will make a dent.

What are you talking about the entire US political system is corrupt by design. Politicians need to beg large corporations for money meaning the corporations own their ass and your fooling yourself if you think your meagre contribution is going to get you heard.

Realistically speaking the US was never a democracy but over the year it's turned more and more into a corporatocracy where the only way to get heard is if you are rich or a corporation.

If the US government was code I would have scrapped it a long time a go and re-written it but then again don't expect anything to change for the better where it matters since all the interest groups are really good a protecting themselves and as log as they have the money anybody else has no say on the matter.

the technical aspect of this issue is a solvable problem.

the social and political aspects of it are not. there's no political traction against this stuff. the border patrol types are too stupid to understand simple and innocent explanations, and treating them as equals is a surefire way to incur their wrath.

the way to make privacy at the border work for everyone is for everyone to conspire to keep the border patrol in the dark. throw them a (fake) bone or a (true at first evidence check) lie, and keep moving on.

> the social and political aspects of it are not.

No, they're at least somewhat solveable. It's true that in the long term, those with power will use it to seek more power. But that would seem to imply that the government cannot be peacefully replaced every few years through voting, or that checks and balances cannot keep authoritarianism in check, and that's at least worked for a while. We just need to re-strengthen those limits and develop new rules to account for the new technology.

Temporary cultural issues and a lack of understanding are surmountable problems. But you're correct that this social and political change is a lot more difficult than encryption software.

Agreed. Technical solutions are a temporary stop gap for those who need to cross the border while the law stands. Or a form of protest, but not a long term solution.

I think it's very naive to think you can solve this through politics. No political party will solve this issue for you. A minority care, an even smaller minority understand.

Thinking you can change a rigged, corrupt system? You've already lost. This is 100% a case where the state needs to be thwarted through technical means.

im sorry but i honestly don't understand how any intelligent person could believe writing a letter compares to a technical solution. do you have any evidence that would support your advice for people facing such significant risks?

Since when has going through proper govt channels ever worked?

A lot of the biggest successes of US civil rights movements have used proper government channels.

For example, women's suffrage was a constitutional amendment.

Or the Civil Rights Act. It didn't by any means fix all the problems in the US, but it represented real progress.

And then there are the thousands and thousands of lawsuits filed by groups like the ACLU.

I think doing both is a good idea. Fight it on both fronts.

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