Australian man says border force made him hand over phone passcode

It's shocking how much censorship we have these days in the world. "For our safety", except it's not, it's for the reduction of freedom since freedom is noise and noise in 0.001% of cases can generate unsafety.

What happens if one has no Google or social media accounts (although I have an Android phone, I have neither—I've never set up an account on the phone)?

It seems to me these days if one doesn't have any such accounts one's likely to be singled out as being suspect or suspicious.

This. It's super painful and time-confusing restoring all apps ... even with proper backups.

You always have a choice. You can choose not to go. If someone asks you to go you can say no. If they don’t take no for an answer then you can lie to them. Just say you can’t get an ESTA, there are many innocuous reasons such as visiting Cuba.

It’s true that Five Eyes countries are in general not very welcoming but the US is certainly the most unpleasant to enter.

this has not happened to me yet, but as a non-US citizen with a green card, if USBP told me "give us the code or you're not admitted" the next time i try to enter US, i'm gonna give them the code

Then what’s the actual reason you wipe your phone?

for you or anyone reading this, let me enlighten you. when you are dealing with border police there are a few things that you will come to understand. in practice, these border police answer to absolutely no one. there is no oversight and there are no consequences for them treating you poorly -- in practice. for future commenters please read the following words: "IN PRACTICE." the idea that you would tell them that you feel vulnerable about such and such and they would be understanding about it literally makes me laugh. they couldnt care less about the way you feel or whether or not you are at risk for leaks, theft, humiliation or any other bad outcome. you are less than human to them. this is what its like when there is almost literally zero accountability. if they pull you aside, they have already decided that you are guilty. sometimes they might search you and let you go but they also will just decide that they dont like the look of you and that you arent going to get in. once they pull you aside they can search you, interrogate you, hold you, whatever they want. the idea of there being some human element to this interaction is completely laughable.

pretty much every country runs one of these stockyard style mini police states on their borders now. and everyone puts up with it because of "terrorists." meanwhile, literally millions of undocumented people have streamed over the southern border of the US in recent years and how many terror attacks has that resulted in? well ill be damned, zero! so it turns out when the border police tear up your stuff, treat you like human shit and cost you thousands of dollars in hotel and other reservations because they decided they just didnt like the look of you -- it was literally all for nothing! besides the sadistic pleasure that the border police take in hurting people of course. isnt life just so funny like that? hee hee!

most people dont know because the vast majority of people are never pulled aside. but if 80% of people had the experience of being pulled aside, the same one that people have now, even if they all made it through to their destination... the border police would essentially be abolished back to their pre-9/11 status. its gotten completely out of control.

canada is the worst offender when it comes to this. one time they pulled me aside and one by one i literally explained or swatted down every single one of the officers objections. they werent used to someone who was already familiar with how things work. she tries to pull out a paper and pen and ask me all of my destinations to prove that i couldn't afford the trip. and half way through my meticulous and articulate explanation of my plans and stops it became very obvious that i could afford the trip and the clip board kind of melted away off to the side and she chose something else to nit pick me on. ive had canadian border police literally bark at me, sneering, eyebrows slanted at 45 degrees like i was looking at a cartoon character. they really treat you like you arent even human.

edit: if you give a phone call to the canadian border police, i forget the acronym, the first thing you hear is an automated message that swearing and verbal abuse will not be tolerated. IE they have tons of people who make angry phone calls to them after being put through their sadistic border process. how can they not realize that if they dont want people to be mad, they should treat people like human beings. thats the thing, they way they treat you is completely unnecessary. its not like being rude will foil the terrorist.

> Buying a burner phone is one of the most common pieces of advice you'll see for traveling internationally

Purchasing a burner phone, as the article describes, and carrying a wiped personal device are generally seen quite differently.

They can technically ask for your included access as well.

How do you login to iCloud without any second factor available?

Well yea, but many big players do that: Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Duo, Okta, etc.

You use 1Password as your authenticator as well? Doesn't that make it not multi-factor if it contains both your password and authentication?

Australia is a special case as it does not have a national-level bill of rights [1]. There are various cases that enshrine aspects of human rights as Australia is party to many UN human rights agreements, but there is no central easy document people can go back to like the US constitution or the German Grundgesetz. That allows for easy overreach that has to, time and time again, be pushed back by courts and then enshrined in new laws. For example, age discrimination is unconstitutional in some countries but is only illegal in Australia since the Age Discrimination Act 2004. So Australia needs piecemeal laws for every civil rights issue.

[1] https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parliament/how-parliament-...

How convenient, then the border force can just ask you to kindly hand over your iCloud password.

Major airports process 100,000 passengers per day. One-in-a-thousand occurrences happen hundreds of times per week.

I don't imagine a person travelling without a phone would raise any eyebrows.

Just load it up with an emergency contact, your airline and flight details, the address and number of your (or any plausible) hotel, and that's it. If questioned, you can explain that you don't want to suffer the theft of private information, so you just travel without any. Do try avoid implying that they're the thieves you're most concerned about if you value your time.

You need to travel without your laptop too, which is (for me, at least) much more trouble to replace at the destination. I tend to just carry a Chromebook or a fresh OS install with nothing private kept locally. It's a bit more awkward to get stuff done while I'm away (especially on the plane), but I can mostly use remote resources if I have to.

If we just look at traveling, not really, only the English speaking ones and partially Russia, for now. No one will ask you for your passwords when going to China or the North Korea.

Bricking or wiping isn't a good option because it makes it obvious what you did. One of the properties you want from a duress passcode is to convince the attacker (the border force in this case) you gave them what they want. Convincing fake data is hard to generate and easy to spot. Another alternative is for the duress passcode to unlock a subset of data and apps. This lets them see real but uninteresting data like contacts or family photos while keeping your personal documents (business, legal, medical, financial, keychain, or otherwise sensitive) private.

Yes I was shocked that the lady behind the podium stated “now look here” as if it is totally normal. They’ve clearly been instructed to do this. And it makes it all the more alarming that this power is vested in the government. They can abuse this ability to introduce new dystopian things in many other settings that are more consequential.