No one should have to travel in fear
medium.com
medium.com
If it was a legitimate search with real public security purpose, there is no excuse for letting him go without completing the search.
If it was not a legitimate search with real public purpose, there is no excuse for the threats or retaliation.
Irrespective of the legitimacy of the search, the behavior here is unjustifiable.
* It was a legitimate search wrt information available at the time, and then more/better information became available, and it was no longer legitimate. (Assuming a certain definition of "legitimate".)
* It was a legitimate search, and cloning and/or compromising the devices took time.
(Just devil's advocate, for intellectual curiosity, not disagreeing with public interest concern.)
> CBP officers searched Dr. Gal’s wallet and all his luggage, and asked questions about everything they found. When they discovered Dr. Gal’s Apple-issued electronic devices, the officers first asked Dr. Gal to pull up his itinerary on his mobile phone, and then to hand the unlocked device over to CBP. Dr. Gal responded that he would email them the itinerary, but that he would need to speak with a lawyer and his employer before giving CBP officers full access to his mobile phone.
...
> Moreover, there was no reason for any CBP officers—TTRT or otherwise—to detain and interrogate Dr. Gal or his devices. Notably, CBP officers did not confiscate and retain Dr. Gal’s devices, which they were authorized to do under the Directive and presumably would have done if they truly felt that they possessed a basis for detaining Dr. Gal or keeping his devices. See Directive, § 5.3.3. Instead, CBP officers proceeded to demand that Dr. Gal provide immediate, unlimited access to his devices.
I've written my reps and the president, I call about once a month, but it has no measurable effect. Smarter people than me have done audits on TSA and published them in famous newspapers to show how useless they are. There's people fighting against CBP locking up asylum seekers but it still happens.
Dunno what to do. Partner and I are considering abandoning the USA.
[0] https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/artic...
Global Entry paid for itself the first time I used it when I made a connection after going through customs that I definitely would have missed if I had to wait in the regular line.
TSA is ostensibly about security on airplanes (or more realistically "security theatre"), and are not law enforcement. You primarily deal with them before getting on an airplane in the US, for nearly all commercial flights (both international and domestic).
CBP are law enforcement officers in the customs (contraband, taxes, etc) and immigration (passport control, visas) domains operating at the border. If you're traveling by plane, you primarily deal with them after you disembark from an international flight.
Any thoughts about where you'd move? Some places in the world are better, but it feels like our whole civilization is trending in this bad direction.
Scandinavia is being tossed around as an option, pending further research on each nation, but generally I've been quite inspired by hackers I've met from there and I haven't seen shockingly dystopian news out of the region in a while.
Taiwan is on the shortlist mostly because the government is so preoccupied with dancing a knifeblade with the PRC that the citizens have plenty of room to pass extremely liberal policy. Internet fast as hell and the healthcare system is pretty nice as well. Plus, it's crazy cheap.
We're always open to suggestions. New Zealand is something we're looking at but are conflicted about.
Norway is on the same track: https://www.ibtimes.com/norways-biggest-bank-calls-country-s...
Additionally, the extradition scheme with Julian Assange (lure him to Sweden, who will deport to the USA) and laws like IPRED (which forced the creation of IPredator.se VPN) are sketchy at best.
Co-liability for debts in many European contries is also a very questionable practice, from what I gather there isn't the same kind of credit system, leaving few un-collateralized debts, and roomates can be held liable for debts they didn't incur, co-sign for or otherwise agree to. Makes you really want to think hard about who you split a flat with!
Regulators have been very clear recently that accepting cash is mandatory in retail.
Cash is part of national emergency preparedness.
BTW: last year we received an official flyer with recommendations to keep iodine tablets, fresh water and canned food available.
This reminds me of something Abigail Disney, an heiress to the Disney family fortune, was quoted as saying in an article recently posted to HN. She said that she wished she could pass a law against private jets, "because they enable you to get around a certain reality. You don't have to go through an airport terminal, you don't have to interact, you don't have to be patient, you don't have to be uncomfortable. These are the things that remind us we're human."[1][2]
Getting better treatment because you have more power, wealth, or connections is a huge reason for the world being as shitty as it is today.
If the rich and powerful had to go through the same hassles and be treated like the rest of do, things would change for the better mighty quick.
This sort of maltreatment has been commonly perpetrated against foreigners and certain targeted minorities for decades, and mostly no one outside those groups gives a shit (or not enough to do anything about it). But when someone from your own demographic is affected, suddenly people start to take notice, and if someone rich and powerful gets affected it makes the front page.
This reminds me of Martin Niemoller's famous "First they came for the socialists" poem[3], and of how during the 80's some Senator got caught up in a scandal that started because his cellular calls were intercepted by radio, and pretty quickly after that Congress passed laws that forbid commercially available radios from being able to tune in on cellular frequencies or be easily modified to allow them to do so.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19524325
[2] - https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/abigail-disney-has-more-money...
[3] - https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...
So, US government should pass a law - applying to all US citizens - because it will help a billionaire heiress feel more human. Riiight.
> Getting better treatment because you have more power, wealth, or connections
I have no power, no connections and no wealth, if you don't count $100 GlobalEntry registration costed me. It saved me countless hours in lines, while I am exhausted from 10+ hour flight. If you call me "rich and powerful" because of that, I'd have no choice but to laugh and marvel at how little is required, apparently, to become part of the Illuminati.
>One of the more extreme government abuses of the post-9/11 era targets U.S. citizens re-entering their own country, and it has received far too little attention. With no oversight or legal framework whatsoever, the Department of Homeland Security routinely singles out individuals who are suspected of no crimes, detains them and questions them at the airport, often for hours, when they return to the U.S. after an international trip, and then copies and even seizes their electronic devices (laptops, cameras, cellphones) and other papers (notebooks, journals, credit card receipts), forever storing their contents in government files. No search warrant is needed for any of this. No oversight exists. And there are no apparent constraints on what the U.S. Government can do with regard to whom it decides to target or why.
https://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_de...
Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker whose story was told in the above link faced several dozen of these incidents between the Bush and the Obama years.
Interestingly, Edward Snowden learned who Poitras was from this series of stories, and Poitras' experiences with repeated searches and seizures led to her learning enough about encryption so that when Snowden decided to contact the press and become a whistleblower, Poitras was the first journalist he attempted to contact who knew enough to be able to exchange encryption keys and communicate with him directly.
As a green card holder with my whole life being here, I can be denied entry for whatever reason. This makes it pretty much impossible for me to maintain my rights and refuse to cooperate in any way.
I did it once back in 2008 for a flight from Costa Rica to Switzerland via Miami and was caught completely by surprise that, unlike every other airport in the world I have been prior, Miami (US in general?) did not have a separate transit area, and that I had to go trough the whole customs and migration circus for a 3 hour layover.
Which is a shame there parts of the US I'd love to see but not at the price of entry.
Government laws always will overturn any agreement you had with an employers or some other person or organization.
Security theater or not, if a country is being an asshole in foreign affairs, or at least is at war with someone, be sure your rights most probably will be violated if you decide to have an interaction with such government employees.
For 200+ pieces of 'marketing mail' they're only paying ~19c per letter. [0]
[0] https://www.themailshark.com/resources/blog/bulk-mail-postag...
If this happened in China or for instance Venezuela there is instant global outrage about 'freedom' and yet every time the exact same thing happens in the UK or the US the outrage is quickly replaced by legalese and apologism. Surely if people cared so much about any of these values they would severely push back when it happens in their own backyard but we rarely see that, just more demonizing others which quickly loses meaning and becomes complicit in the descent to a quasi police state.
Many who make sweeping statement about 'democracy' and 'freedom' seem to be severely disconnected from things on the ground as those those who use these 'freedoms' in any serious way in terms of actual activism or critical journalism however slight end up on some kind of list and singled out for harassment. [1]
[1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/25/the-tsas-role-as-jou...
Those require a court order in general unlike a typical police search... unless CBP has leeway there too in which case it is a monster.
- Under Martinez-Fuerte, CBP can briefly question anyone at a checkpoint within 100 miles of the US border to ascertain their citizenship. The only privilege over usual reasonable suspicion / probable cause searches is to ascertain citizenship (so searching your glove compartment or your pockets isn't granted).
- There's a border search exception _passing through the border_, which allows for CBP to search you & your possessions, with _no_ requirement for reasonable suspicion nor a warrant.
- Under Cotterman, the border search exception does _not_ extend to forensic examination of your devices. The agents need reasonable suspicion or a warrant or consent.
Expect more! Your possessions can't be searched without probable cause / consent / warrant unless you're passing through the border
"Show me what you have concealed in your pockets" vs. "Show me what you have concealed in your devices" -- aren't these two commands legally equivalent?
I think it is also legally relevant to put a passcode on your phone.
This is different from fingerprints, which can be compelled with a warrant
So if you have sufficiently sensitive data, protect it with something you know, not something you have
I think most people have a higher expectation of privacy for their data than their belongings outside their home.
And the Supreme Court agrees - Riley v. California:
> Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be carried on an arrestee’s per- son. Notably, modern cell phones have an immense storage capacity. Before cell phones, a search of a person was limited by physical reali- ties and generally constituted only a narrow intrusion on privacy. But cell phones can store millions of pages of text, thousands of pic- tures, or hundreds of videos. This has several interrelated privacy consequences. First, a cell phone collects in one place many distinct types of information that reveal much more in combination than any isolated record. Second, the phone’s capacity allows even just one type of information to convey far more than previously possible. Third, data on the phone can date back for years. In addition, an el- ement of pervasiveness characterizes cell phones but not physical records. A decade ago officers might have occasionally stumbled across a highly personal item such as a diary, but today many of the more than 90% of American adults who own cell phones keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives.
The Justice dept refutes the part about 18 USC 111. A forcible act must be involved, not passive resistance: https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1565-for...
His employer is Apple. I was always worried about this same scenario when traveling with an Apple-owned laptop..
> I asked the agents if I could speak to my employer or an attorney before unlocking my devices. This request seemed to aggravate the customs officers. They informed me that I had no right to speak to an attorney at the border despite being a U.S. citizen, and threatened me that failure to immediately comply with their demand is a violation of federal criminal code 18 USC 111.
How is this policy supposed to work? Seems like it would a huge pain point for any sort of travel.
Most employees have some sort of approval to do this.
Does Apple not have a policy for this? I would suggest asking them.
I asked my employer when I joined (even though my job had absolutely zero international travel). They had a simple policy: Always comply with law enforcement in whatever country you're in: If they want me to enter my laptop password, my company directs me to cooperate.
It would be scary if Apple does not have a policy on this.
1. Comply with legal government requests (in any country; there's also a pre-approval form for international travel with a corporate laptop, and a list of countries that they will not let you take your corporate laptop to at all).
2. If you are a US citizen, the US must let you back in even if you don't consent to a search, though they can seize your devices in the process.
The "legal" qualifier on #1 means I'd want access to a lawyer, which they denied....
(For what it's worth, I helped my family move cross-country by car in summer 2016; we passed a "border" checkpoint in New Mexico or so, on I-10 relatively far from the border, where they stopped each car, asked us if we were citizens, and let us go on our way when I answered yes. That seems like a much more "standard" experience than what's here.)
Part of it is denial of a lawyer. As I understand it, you might not have a right to deny the search, but you should still have access to counsel, because the point of legal representation is that they can tell you exactly what rights you do / don't have.
Part of it is an apparent government focus on Mozilla. Andreas Gal hasn't been at Mozilla for about four years, but that's what they asked him about. And there was the visa denial for Daniel Stenberg (author of curl) when heading to the Mozilla all-hands: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/07/28/administrative-purgat...
And finally, part of it is that it shouldn't be common. It's a good reason for individuals and companies to leave America.
You can consent to the search, but you don't need to. If you refuse consent and they lack probable cause, the evidence would be suppressed.
For more details: https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/immigrants-right...
He then tried to get us to say we had personal use amounts of drugs on us and he was only looking for massive amounts of narcotics(the "amount cartels have" according to him).
I was with a friend who was not a US citizen but is here legally on a work visa, they took his documents and left me alone while the dog ran through the truck.
And to be honest, do you really think I'm going to put up a fight when I haven't seen a shower in days and have a 7hr drive ahead of me?
We obviously fit a profile of sorts because the first words out of his mouth when we pulled up were to pull to the side because his dog indicated on us and he needed to search our car.
Again - nothing distinct about being near the border for that.
As you said, it's not objective whether the dog legitimately signaled. But IIUC you have limited ability to demonstrate that. (anyone know of cases around this?)
In other words:
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution clearly states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated unless a dog barks."
It’s important for people to know that such behavior is not the norm among civilized countries.
Although police at the borders don't have to have any reasonable suspicion for searches, racial profiling, secret watch lists and targeted intimidation are a likely consequent of an unfettered military-industrial complex that long since ceased to do more than security theater and carry water for the corporate elites. So it should come with zero surprise that such an empire's law enforcement acts with impunity however it pleases and only ensures to "serve and protect" the rich elites' and their property, effectively creating a socioeconomic apartheid of gated communities and post-apocalyptic anarchist favelas, both in terms of geography and public discrimination, that tears a society apart into a failed, third-world, backwards country.
If overly broad legislation is being abused against the spirit and intention of it, then the court needs to step in to legally to rule that this cannot be done, so long as such finding is in line with the constitution.
IIRC, if you're a citizen, they have the power to seize your devices (and anything else you have, for that matter) and temporarily delay/detain you, but not to force you to unlock anything. They can't deny you entry.
If you're not a citizen, then they can deny you entry. So you might have to choose to unlock your devices for them to return home to the US or avoid having your travel plans ruined.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/privacy-borders...
I think that's only true for noncitizens, they're required to let citizens in. Sorry, I think I was in the middle of updating my post as you replied.
https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/know-your-r...
U.S. Citizens: You only have to answer questions establishing your identity and citizenship (in addition to customs-related questions). Refusal to answer other questions may cause delay, but officials may not deny you entry into the U.S. if you have established your identity and citizenship.
Or in the case for a lot of workers on visas in the valley: Lose your job. They deny entry, put you on a blacklist that guarantees the same treatment every time you try to re-enter. You either comply or you are effectively banned from the country.
The latter sounds more like thuggery than rule of law.
The US media is a joke, they drump up fear without holding anyone in govt accountable, and the people are stupid, no one cares about this kind of thing, they'd rather believe the usual nonsense about 'keeping us safe'.
The irony (and borderline hypocrisy) of a "privacy advocate" who have a Global Entry card.
?????
You never need your global entry card at airport customs because your flight information is encoded to your passport, which the machine scans.
Was that supposed to be punishment? Why did he even have it? Does the Global Entry number still work and automatically give you TSA Pre on the new tickets you purchase?
instead of assuming can we get an answer? OP? ACLU? The author mentioned he has taken flights since then, he should be able to answer if he still gets TSA Pre, nobody's asked yet
its just as likely that they literally only took the card from him.
A better question would be why someone technically knowledgeable would be carrying a laptop through airline security at all. As soon as it's out of your hands, you have to assume it's been blown, security-wise. Far better to just buy a burner Chromebook at your destination.
In any case, just because you usually get your laptop handed right back, it doesn't follow that you always will. If it matters to you, buy that burner.
1. I can expect that there's a chance that my laptop will be taken from me (and perhaps returned modified or perhaps taken permanently) while still not being okay with that. It's one thing to expect a right to be violated; it's another thing to give up.
2. It's not unreasonable to travel with a laptop while expecting a small chance that it's taken, in which case you'll buy a new one and restore from backup, instead of buying a burner every time.
2. If you truly believe your laptop is clean and encryption sufficiently uncrackable, go ahead. I don't think I'm that smart, myself.
I would have been seriously surprised if CBP cared about who donated to Democratic candidates — but then, the IRS under Mr. Obama did attack Republican groups, with very few negative consequences for the culprits, as did the Milwaukee DA. I really hope that bad precedent has not led to further bad behaviour. The rule of law is important, no matter who you are, and abusing the coercive power of the State for political ends moves us one step closer to the unthinkable.
Which doesn't, I think, directly disagree with what I wrote.
Notably, the page also indicates that in October 2017 President Trump's administration admitted the previous administration's wrongdoing and settled the ongoing cases. Of course, it's in their interest to admit that Mr. Obama's administration had done wrong regardless.