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Comment by sveme | Hacker News Reader

I'm wondering how my company would react if I declined any further traveling to the US on business trips. I hated the experience at the US border controls before, but that goes definitely way beyond anything I would find acceptable.

The cost to the US economy would be way beyond the tiny gains in security, if there would even be any.

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> if there would even be any.

There wouldn't be. There is no good way to verify someone has access to any given social media account. If you just say you don't have an account how do they prove you wrong. Hand 'em your phone with a clean browser history and no apps installed, then start using your real equipment later.

On the flip side the first time a journal is "randomly" selected and is forced to give up password this policy will come under extreme scrutiny and lots of people will be yelling.

> Hand 'em your phone with a clean browser history and no apps installed, then start using your real equipment later.

Sure fire way to end up being turned away at the border.

Are they going to turn back everyone with a new or clean phone?

Are they going to turn back everyone who refuses to give social media logins, and everyone who claims not to have a social media account?

The article and quotes in it make it sound like they will turn away people who refuse. The article and my earlier post included not having accounts in the grey area that makes this look unenforceable.

I took 30 seconds to come up with my of ways to defeat this. Clearly it is a stupid rule and in my opinion a cheap attempt to garner votes by politicians looking for high visibility low impact things they can do. I say low impact because someone dumb enough to support this isn't smart enough to see all the negatives it can have as well, for the person seeking votes the negatives here are low impact.

No, but they're going to turn away anyone who thinks they're going to outsmart a guy with nothing to do but make your day more difficult by wiping their phone and claiming they don't use social media or email.

If you claim to not use social media, have a top of the range movie device and/or high powered portable computer, both completely clean with no signs of use, and a smug "I don't use social media" response, you're only going to make your trip more painful, and risk getting turned away.

That is why this rule is going to hurt the US more than help it. It comes with a real cost, but that cost is hard to measure. That one traveler that is turned away, won't pay for a hotel, any food, or any tourism. That will cost jobs in the long run.

The terrorist arriving will have time to carefully craft fake accounts not related to his real ones.

This is just more reason to think the rule is stop and clearly a political move to strengthen the xenophobic base.

They might if the find the "real equipment" undeclared in your bag.

Someone looking to smuggle something in have a plethora of options, like the mail.

Or buying a local burner phone and putting apps and contacts on that from the web.

Or putting a hidden partition on the phone TrueCrypt style.

Or spending 5 minutes thinking about the problem and taking some action.

All the terror attacks involving foreign nationals here in the US involved months of time. Presuming this is a real rule and not a piece of political showmanship this rule wouldn't have stopped any attack. Presuming this is a piece of political showmanship and not a rule, it can be quietly ignored and used to attract votes from xenophobes.

With iOS, just backup your device before travel. Reset. Configure it with basic, but real, accounts. Say an email address you don't use much, some photos (real, but not all of them), maybe your full music catalog so you've got options on the flight. A handful of useful apps (like your airline, hotel, a couple chat clients). Once entered, reset and restore from backup. I imagine a very similar solution would work for Android.

EDIT: Meant this for the GP.

That sounds like a lot of work for something you shouldn't have to do. Are people going to have to do this with their business phones and laptops? This whole situation just seems all so ridiculous and prohibitive.

Certainly it's ridiculous. Just offering an alternative to entering with a blank slate device, or a device with all your information on it.

I'd rather leave my device behind than go through the hassle of setting up that sort of breadcrumb trail. Even more effective.

Or no phone at all. I don't believe they have been made compulsory, so far.

They don't need a good way of verification to hassle and throw you out for it. (And many people have social media accounts that are quite well-connected to their identity)

Each time I visiting US I hate waiting in a long queue for a pass check.

They will find someone who will. Right?

Or not.

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