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Comment by detritus | Hacker News Reader

Wasn't this also A Thing not that long ago with people flying to America?

Yes, TSA can ask you to unlock your phone and automatically grabs data from it, on iOS you can get around the automatic grab by pair locking your device: https://arkadiyt.com/2019/10/07/pair-locking-your-iphone-wit...

EFF also have a nice guide called "Digital Privacy at the U.S. Border" (PDF): https://www.eff.org/files/2018/01/11/digital-privacy-border-...

I’ve never once been asked to unlock my phone at a TSA checkpoint. How common is this?

Happened to my wife’s close friend as she crossed the border. They found years-old texts between her and her ex-bf joking about marrying for a green card and she was denied entry into the US and given a 10 year ban for immigration fraud even tho she had been living there under H1B (which was close to expiring) and had to fly back to her home country with just the clothes in her suitcase. Her sister who was a citizen had to sell all her things for her. It was a disaster.

To be clear this is about going through customs as you enter the country through an airport, not domestic flights. I’m not sure if that organization falls under tsa or not.

Common enough for the EFF to have an article about it.

The EFF article never mentions the TSA once.

https://www.eff.org/issues/travel-screening

Given that the only TSA reference in that article also mentions the Bush administration, I would hope there is more up to date information now. I wonder why EFF has not updated a top level issue page in so long.

The article may not mention the TSA by names but if you were in doubt about the entities that you could encounter at the US border then probably the article wasn't meant for you anyway.

Maybe the parent poster means US Customs and Border protection? That’s different from the TSA which could potentially search you leaving the country, or on internal flights.

Fair enough, for travelers the distinction is useful so let's spell it out: TSA: the guys that mess around in your luggage, make you throw away your water so you can buy new bottles at 5x the price as well as your nailclippers. CBP: the guys that check your passport and possibly your fingerprint, take your picture and invade your privacy as much as they feel like.

Both of these can be found at US airports with international flights(and most countries have equivalents). Going on an international trip you will encounter both, for a domestic flight you will only deal with the TSA.

The EFF article is aimed exclusively at people crossing the border so it about the CBP, not about the TSA. If you never leave the USA or never travel to it then you will encounter none of this.

Happened to me.

Went to secondary to get more information on my trip, then just routinely searched my bags and electric devices. I was allowed into the country after they got more information.

Uhh... you’re a sample size of one?

Nah, he’s a US citizen that understands the TSA is the entity that handles security for flight boarding, and has no relationship with ICE handling security at the border. Some other people in this thread seem to be okay conflating the two, but I’m not sure that’s very helpful —- everyone knows that border controls for all countries are massively more strict that controls for domestic travel.

>on iOS you can get around the automatic grab by pair locking your device

Not really? In the same guide it says

>If you later want to remove this restriction you can Remove -> Profiles... in Configurator, analogous to step 15.

Basically, you're just hoping that the minimum wage employee at the TSA doesn't know about removing the profile.

Isn't that a step that has to take place on the paired laptop?

Earlier the article says

> This setting controls when someone can remove the profile from within the phone itself. If it’s left as the default value of “Always” then anyone with access to your unlocked phone could remove the pair lock (which would defeat the entire purpose). You can either set it to Never to never allow removing the profile, or With Authorization and set a password to allow removing the profile with the given password (this might be useful to remove the pairing restriction if you do lose access to your laptop).

That step can't be performed from a computer that's not already trusted by the iOS device. I.e., it can only be the one it's pair-locked to.

I wouldn't be surprised - their ESTA form has a mandatory question which requires applicants to list all their social media accounts.

Which by itself is a pretty good reason to never travel to the USA.

You think this is unique?

Maybe not unique but it is definitely not ubiquitous - plenty of countries that let you visit without that bs.

Does that matter? It's disgusting.

It kind of does when you are using it as a silly “whataboutism”.

You mean like you did? Agreed, that's silly.

Maybe this is different from country to country but when I open the ESA Website it says that this is an optional question that might become mandatory in the future.

Looks like it was optional until 2020, then became compulsory.

https://usaestaonline.com/esta-social-media-question

I went through ESTA last winter and it was optional.

I think at the moment there is the soft problem of delays in results or potential rejection for unknown reasons. You also don't have to tell them who you're staying with either but a rejection can be pretty devastating so there is a strong incentive to give more than what is explicitly required. It was clear such encroachments on civil liberates were coming so I've never done anything on my social accounts that would upset the establishment, so even in my own case it has had a chilling effect.

If my memory serves me right, it was mandatory to mention the first address I went to, but social media was clearly marked as optional. I put GitHub, it worked fine.

My point is that it’s unknown if not stating it would impact the application so people would err on the side of caution and compliance.

Throwaway account, but this is very much like the "member of the Nazi party" question: of no practical value (border guards don't know the entire Nazi membership archive by heart, of course) unless they need to throw the book at you for some other perceived slight (i.e. involved in some political protest that is not an actual crime? HE LIED ON ENTRY FORM, IMMEDIATE EXPULSION!).

So if you don't plan to commit crimes or otherwise confront the authorities, you can leave that blank, or use throwaways. Just don't give your real info, because they will use it to analyse you for real.

A few years ago I ordered some items from a small online shop located in an east-of-central European country. A few days before I received the package I noticed that one of the recent searches on my linkedin account was from someone in that country's customs office. Not sure if they were bored and curious or working through their customs protocol.

The fact that you asked rather than shared a link or something, combined with the fact that most of the replies seem to not even comprehend the differences between the TSA and CBP/ICE makes me suspect this is a bunch of bs.

I'm not American and haven't been there in 38 years and I'm not a cyborg plugged into the internet with infinite, instant recall, but a cursory Google informs me that I'm not entirely delusional (/or a foreign agent spreading misinformation), as this was indeed a cause of concern about 8 years ago:

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/foreign-travelers-soc...

Whether it was actual policy or not, I'll leave to you to work out.

As for the format of my response, I was genuinely not 100% sure, so felt it respectful to post thusly. Does that satisfy your needless suspicion?

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