Encourage everyone you know to do similar, or whatever they're comfortable with. Make being a trouble-maker a badge of honor.
If you don't fight somehow, you are accepting it.
If they threaten to seize my phone, I'll let them. I have plenty of spares and can afford a new one if it comes down to it.
Of course, many people don't have the means to make this a practical approach.
True for police, but less clear for border crossings.
http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/02/16/border-agent-unloc...
> They don't even need a warrant. It's clear the government does not need a warrant to search the phone based on a constitutional law, a set of cases called the Border Search Exceptions.
For fingerprint authentication, I believe it's been established that they can hold you until you cooperate.
For passwords, they can't. "The second question is, can they detain you until you hand over your passcode? They probably have some power to detain you for a little bit — maybe for an hour or two — not forever. They can't hold at the border and say, ‘Alright, you're living here until you hand over your passcode.’"
Then the question is whether they can follow up with some sort of punishment after the fact if you continue to refuse. According to that article, it hasn't been established yet, but I'm confident that it would come out in my favor, and furthermore that they would think similarly and not even try it.
If they confiscate your device I'm not sure how long they can keep it off the top of my head, but I would operate under the assumption that you're not getting it back. There are legal remedies for this sort of warrantless seizure, but I'm guessing that there's a mechanism through which they could charge the phone itself with a crime in order to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, a'la asset forfeiture.
don't do this if you are an immigrant, please.
Edit: I'd love to discuss this more with all of you, but I've been told by HN moderation that I am a negative force on this website and discussions like these are why. I hope some day there'll be a place we can talk about this kind of thing civilly, but it's not here and it's not today, unfortunately.
I've never had my phone searched, but if they tried, I'd say, "Good luck cracking my password. Can I go now?"
I don't think this is an "evil action" to begin with.
If you don't think it's an evil action, then why are you phrasing it as "I still believe they're trying to do the right thing"? I interpret that as "I think they're doing the wrong thing, but I don't mind because they think it's the right thing." If it's not evil then why not defend the action on its own merits, rather than appealing to the fundamental goodness of the organization?
The idea that trying to do the right thing can justify something is specious nonsense.
If it were a brand new phone, I might think harder about it - but we really need to stand up to crap like this.
That they are trying to do the right thing doesn't really excuse doing bad things. Lots of evil is carried out by people that think they are trying to do the right thing.
If you accept these premises, it's clear that constraint must be applied from outside of the LEOs themselves. The typical answer to how, is through legislation and oversight. If you don't believe that is being performed effectively, there is a pretty compelling argument for action to improve the system.
Historically speaking, "They were trying to do the right thing" is a poor excuse for any number of pretty horrible results.
"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
How much liberty from unreasonable search and seizure do we have to endure for the infinitesimal possibility that some good will come from these searches, you know, just like all the good that comes of TSA searches (I know for a fact I've taken pocket knives and multitools and hammers through airport security on multiple occasions).
Yes, you can argue that, legally, at the border, there are different standards for reasonability and a requirement thereof. But I'd like to hear a cogent argument for why that is, and how that plays into the need for such a thing.