Yep, police can simply ask anyone for their passwords and if you don't give it up they can put you in jail.
I won't be visiting. Despite many flaws, the US has some damn good rights for its citizens compared to the rest of the world.
I won't be visiting. Despite many flaws, the US has some damn good rights for its citizens compared to the rest of the world.
This is precisely the reason why I don't want to visit the US at the moment.
The USA immigration officers can ask me to forfeit my phone's password and look at all my photos, documents, messages, call logs etc, WITHOUT SUSPICION.
Some of that data can even stay on their servers for decades, and who knows if it ends up on a CIA/NSA server.
Of course, I can always refuse, but non-cooperation with CBP means immediate denial of entry and risks of lifelong headaches with future immigration checks.
Some of ICE’s detainees may have different opinions on that point.
The UK may endow her citizens with fewer rights. But I have a lot more trust in British due process. British civil servants seem much less … capricious than Americans.
I was almost denied entry to Hawaii once because I told the CBP agent I didn’t have any cash on me. (My money is in a bank account, obviously). He went on a big rant about how expensive Hawaii is. I think he was worried I’d end up homeless. (Even though my visit to hang out with my then employer.) Over the years I’ve heard so many stories from other Australian friends about wild and unfortunate encounters with US police and officials.
By comparison, the British government seems far more civilised. If something happened while visiting the UK, I have much more confidence that everything would be resolved in a fair and reasonable manner.
Got subjected to hour long questioning because I only had a little cash on me and told them truthfully that I would travel the country so I didn’t have one place to stay for the entirety of the trip (because I was TRAVELLING).
I since learned that my first mistake was to tell them the truth but alas.
After asking me about every single detail of my life they eventually let me in.
It’s a pity, such a great country being ruined by kleptocrats.
Henry Nowak would disagree.
Only it had no teeth and whatever Stalin or Brezhnev wanted, the KGB would do.
Or freedom of protest... Er ehm, that was three years ago
Well at least no Double jeopardy... until 2003
Right to silence! Oh no not that one either
Shrugs and scratches head
I am not saying the US is better in practice. The bottom line is that authority worshippers will take whatever liberties they can get away with in any system.
Which is not to excuse the errors, but to put it in context: it is a European country… albeit just like Turkey and Azerbaijan.
In the US I'd be worried about being murdered. By police. In cold blood.
That's not going to happen unless you commit a serious crime, in which case it's not arbitrary. I can't think of a single case that's made the news.
Meanwhile across the pond in America you have the nightly news reporting on children and people in cages screaming. People being rounded up for not being white. Little to no due process at all until you've been through 6 rounds of hell.
They are currently a proscribed group, so yes, that is included in the list of things you probably shouldn't do. You're not going to get killed for it though. You're probably not even going to get arrested in most cases.
Whether or not they should be proscribed is a different issue. The best course of action is probably to wait for the courts to decide. Pressure groups damaging military assets probably aren't going to be well received by the public regardless of which cause they're for.
Simply don't chase, harass, attempt to run over, or assault LEOs doing their jobs
Hope that helps.
Why did people suddenly stop talking about body cams after mass adoption. Maybe it didn't show you what you thought it would.
I‘m also careful with what I say online. US CBP tracks what people post online, and has been known to deny entry to people for being critical critical of the current president. I don’t want to risk losing out on future opportunities in the land of the free.
I'll probably just buy a decoy phone for the border.
I will rather choose not to visit the US for the foreseeable time, maybe never again (have been to the US more than 10 times). Freedom of speech is more important than tourist visits to the US. Well and working there was never an option for me, worker protection, universal healthcare, etc. make life much nicer.
Maybe the US will be free enough again in the future, but with its trajectory, I am not betting on it.
They would have to individually steal keys from every OEM, in GraphenOS' case meaning Google. Then they'd have to do the right dance to fake the right stuff to satisfy the Secure Element(TM) and get it to let them use the data encryption keys. Which, by the way, I believe requires forking over a hash that may vary among individual phones; you have to know which version of the appropriate stage you want to fake.
... and you'll excuse me if I'm skeptical of your confident statements about what TLAs do or don't have access to, especially when you start talking about keys that don't exist.
Legally, you can't surrender these devices, access to them or their passwords, as they are company property.
Hard LOL. Doesn't apply at borders. Any country borders.
Edit: ah, because the word is pavement in British English :).
There's a whole complex terminology of footway, cycleway, bridleway, bridle path, footpath, cycle path, and carriageway. Even more fun: It's ever so slightly different in Scotland to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
This is why many companies have procedures for when employees visit certain countries, including the US. For instance that you are not allowed to bring your personal phone, your personal and work laptop or any medium that can hold sensitive or proprietary information.
The first minute my brain didn’t register because though Spanish is my mother tongue, I guess it was not ready for that. The police officer started to get irritated. Eventually my brain switched, I had a chat with him and he left.
I was totally freaked out the rest of the time, till the moment I boarded.
Only then I realized how frail our rights are when you are abroad.
Stop laying down and showing your belly. When are you going to start standing up for yourself?
https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/emergency-savings-r...
The quote:
"At a time of sticky inflation and a softening job market, extra money in the bank can serve as a lifeline for many consumers. Yet just 47% of Americans indicate they have sufficient liquidity or access to funds to cover a $1,000 emergency expense, a Bankrate survey found. This can present challenges when dealing with job losses, medical issues or other problems that could exhaust one’s cash reserves."
So this raises the question for most Americans: file a lawsuit with what money? It also raises the question of whether your rights should depend on your bank balance. Now, we can pretend that anyone can start a successful gofundme to fund their efforts to have their basic rights protected, but you see where this is going?
As for the media: what media outlets? And why would they care unless it is a particularly egregious story or it involves someone famous? Thousands of people have their rights violated every day. Why would the media care about any "nobody"?
No you don't live in 1984 or Soviet Russia. You live in much worse circumstances because back in the Soviet times, the state, fortunately, had limited ability to surveil, track and control you. The capabilities a state gone bad have at their disposal today are much, much more invasive and effective. And the brutality you risk (eg CECOT) is arguably not materially better than getting shipped off to Siberia. At least around 90% of those who were shipped off to Siberia had fixed term sentences.
And perhaps you will never have the opportunity to litigate if you find yourself wronged. What if you die in custody due to a medical emergency that was not taken into account? Thousands die of medical neglect in custody every year in the US. (Look it up. State and federal custody, ICE, prison system etc). This happens to thousands of people every year and nobody cares. Least of all the media. What if you find yourself in CECOT -- effectively isolated from the world and anyone in your personal network that could do something about it? Or in ICE detention where the very best case is that you disappear for days without anyone knowing where you are, and without the ability to contact anyone.
It frightens me that people can find their way to Hacker News yet be so ignorant of the reality the majority of Americans face. How can you not know basic statistical facts? How can you not ask yourself how someone who isn't rich, isn't well connected, doesn't have a strong network of people around them are supposed to defend their basic rights?
Know what you are talking about. Find out what reality is like for other people. Don't blab on about remedies that are purely theoretical for much of the citizenry. Know stuff!
People currently do have ways to fight back, even those with limited resources. That may not be the case forever. But lying down and sighing about how hopeless things are helps nobody, least of all yourself.
That's always true for all regimes at all times so it is a pointless NOOP-argument.
The attitude you communicate is essentially that "the small people" do not matter. It is precisely this attitude that empowered the regressive politicians to make life worse for everyone by weaponizing "the small people".
And if you don't think you're small people: it is just because events haven't gotten around to it yet.
Show some self preservation instinct.
Is this really the case? As far as I understand it, US citizens have an absolute right to enter the country. So they can sit you in a room and ask you questions all afternoon, but eventually they have to let you in.
Unless you turn up to a protest against the ICEtapo, with a holstered gun. Then you can be murdered and called a domestic terrorist.
As a brown visitor to the US.... Well I won't be one. They can ask for access to my entire digital life without the slightest suspicion of any crimes.
I presume any journalist or competent protest organiser in the UK knows the details better than me, but they can't just stop you on the sidewalk (UK: pavement) and ask you to hand over your PIN on the spot.
I think the "put you in jail" thing is a misunderstanding of the general "police can detain someone suspected of a crime" principle, but then they still need to get a judge to approve them holding you longer than a few* days.
(*) The rules are slightly different for terrorism suspects.
Absolute Mickey Mouse country singing itself propaganda about building the future whilst having a healthcare system that lets people die regularly for being too poor. Not exactly freedom if you’re dead is it?
Then they come to London and realise it’s just a much cleaner, safer, nicer looking city than anywhere in the US and has more culture, food and diversity than all but a few American cities. But have to justify going back to a chicken coop country where they grind out the prime of their lives, get no maternity pay, and like 10 days of holiday.
It was pretty funny because right next to Trump they had a man/woman in a Easter bunny suit.
It is not about christianity. Authoritarian and populist leaders will always coopt/corrupt whatever is convenient for them. Christianity, socialism, capitalism, whatever works to rally a substantial portion of the population.
Do immigrants have the same full rights as British citizens?
Would I be willing to re evaluate my visa every X years? Will I be willing to be uprooted if it's denied?
And how will childcare work when my elders are all here?
I think your post was correct as far as the state of the US, but your final paragraph is reductive. It's not always easy for someone to drop everything and uproot their life, even if it's possible
I have lived in European countries all my life (except for ~6 months in Australia) and let's say I'm opinionated, I have never feared that the country I lived in or its authorities would arrest me or harm me otherwise. Of course, there are certain boundaries - you don't threaten someone, etc. But once you cross those lines, you are not interested in free speech anyway, only intimidating people or inciting hate.
They were held for more than 4 hours at the airport.
But, to counter balance, I had multiple other friends traveling to the US (both on work visas and tourist ones) and it was smooth sailing.
In any case, the story of my first friend is what made me cancel my US trip last summer and go to Japan instead.
The police can ask for your passwords. You're not required to give them anything until they apply for a Section 49 notice of RIPA. Which they must get from a Judge.
It seems to be recommended to refuse giving them the password before that notice is issued and seek a lawyer before complying.
If the judge agrees with them, you have to comply.
Even if you take the European Union alone and ignore all the other European countries, the EU only legislates over a subset of things for member countries.
As opposed to what? Armed invasion?
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48423657
I mentioned that Europe is a lot more than the EU, and even within the EU member countries diverge.
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48423908
trumpdong then makes a comment that I interpret as saying the EU doesn't have a lot of power over member states, and saying that the worst which could happen to one of them is to be kicked out of the EU.
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424244
Slightly shocked by the idea that the EU should be doing something worse than expelling a member for not following the Union's rules, I use a _reductio ad absurdum_ and ask if they thought the EU should be harder and actually perform an armed invasion of a member state that didn't follow them.
4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48425100
To my shock, trumpdong literally says "yes".
5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48425487
I, due to the shock described above, decide to question again in more words if that's actually what they mean.
---
Hopefully that responds your question. I see no straw man, but if you still do, please present it.
"ask if they thought the EU should be harder and actually perform an armed invasion of a member state that didn't follow them."
You asked this:
"> the worst they can do is kick them out of the EU
As opposed to what? Armed invasion?"
Where trumpdong reploed with a affirmative "yes". So the worst they can do is kick someone out. No one demanded the EU should do armed invasion.
I don't know why you're taking their pain.
AFAIK, not even that. This topic came up in relation to Hungary (before Orban was gone). What I understood from the discussion is that a country can only be punished by not giving them EU funds, etc.
(Vague memory that someone used this to avoid paying a bill, because refusing a cheque when offered counted as discharging the debt it represents (if I have the right terminology), and as cheques could be written on anything they chose to write it on a car that physically would not fit through the door).
Famously bereft of a written constitution, the closest single document along these lines which the UK had for a long time was ("the") Magna Carta, which basically exists because King John's lords were tired of King John directing the courts that King John personally owned to not hear cases against himself.
But if your point is that some constitutions may as well be toilet paper for how much the people with power care about their contents, then I agree.
The absolute gall of saying this, on this point in in particular, with all that has happened over the past 1.5 years in the US... Gobsmacked
As an outsider, it seems to me (big talk on the Internet! Amazeballs) that UK laws are written to be illiberal and gradually watered down to an acceptable degree. I think that happened with RIPA and later with the whole nazi saluting dog mess. Whether they can survive the rise of free speech double talkers like Farage remains to be seen. But the Blair/Brown years made it clear that even supposedly intelligent middle of the road leadership is capable of imposing surprisingly illiberal legislation. I don’t much care for the Tories but I don’t think they have much interest in my personal life.
I actually think it might be worse.
You need to be able to hand over encryption keys too.
Claiming to not know them is also not allowed, whether you actually know them or not.
I am reasonably convinced that if you wipe the key slots on an encrypted drive but leave encrypted blocks around, they might be able to argue that you are obligates to store all the block keys for such an occasion. So using any kind of multi-tier encryption in the UK might be a massive liability unless you permanently store all the material required to derive any key that is used to encrypt anything.
This also probably has impact on TLS now that I think about it.
Now, real world criminal cases are likely to proceed differently than how they proceed in the mind of a programmer interpreting the law as a program. But, I am not too convinced such a farcical thing wouldn't happen, the UK government and police have engaged in much dumber things.
Now that I think about it, storing randomness on a disk could probably be used to incriminate you in case that disk was seized. Since the police wouldn't be able to tell if it wasn't encrypted data.