I’ve been debating where to put this, since fundamentally, I’m mostly interested in the factual background of this story. So I might’ve gone GQ, but given the topic, I think political discussion is probably inevitable (and just for the record, I have no objections if the thread develops in that direction).
The background is this story by The Guardian:
The gist of it is, as I understand it, that the French research minister has made a public statement that a French scientist aiming to enter the US to attend a conference was stopped from doing so and then expelled, due to “exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy”.
Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any details on those opinions, just a somewhat vague reference to an FBI investigation whose charges were dropped, however. This seems to allege that there presumably wasn’t any actual actionable content obtained (e.g. plans of terrorism or the like). So the picture seems to be that you can be denied entry to the US based upon your opinion of the Trump administration.
But are we really already at that point? Is there another take here? For one, how did they actually obtain the phone messages—are you just required to hand over your devices for inspection?
Coming hot on the news that my own government has updated its travel recommendations for the US in the wake of the detainment of several German citizens upon crossing the border, I don’t regret my decision not to attend this year’s March Meeting of the American Physical Society—however, several of my colleagues are there at the moment, so there’s a bit of a personal interest here, too.
Yes, we are at the point of petty harassment of people questioning policy or expressing critical sentiment about Donald Trump or his functionaries, and yes, you are absolutely required to give Customs and Border Patrol officials access to your personal electronic devices for ‘inspection’. There is a massive amount of frustration and outright anger in the scientific and medical research communities over what this regime has done not only to science funding but to directly attack critical research including climate science, infectious disease, public health, et cetera, to the extent that scientists—a demographic not really inclined to group public action—engaged in organized mass protests.
I’m kind of shocked at the number of Americans still in firm denial that we are in the midst of an authoritarian takeover with such clear parallels to previous despotic and fascist regimes that no student of history can ignore it (and many prominent historians of authoritarianism and civil wars such as Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Heather Cox-Richardson, et cetera are openly calling this out). People outside of the American sphere can be excused for being more confused about this seemingly abrupt change of face, although the reality is that the underpinnings of this have been in place for decades and the United States has never really been consistent about actually supporting the high minded ideals it likes to promote when the ‘national interest’ (often corporate interests) are at stake.
According to Stranger’s Customs and Border Patrol link, in 2024, “less than 0.01 percent of arriving international travelers encountered by CBP at a port of entry had their electronic devices searched.”
But with relatively little effort, this civil-liberties violation could become more routine (for citizens and non-citizens alike) and cause a widespread chilling effect. Moreover, it’s not hard to imagine the authorities using AI to connect social-media accounts to individuals in advance and then, at the border, confronting the individual who has had the gall to take issue with the administration online. (Facebook post on Tesla vandalism? That might amount to support for domestic terrorism.)
Anecdotally, this is making a lot of waves over here. On social media I’m seeing a lot of academics, journalists, writers, artists, business professionals etc. that I follow are by their own account now seriously reconsidering travel to America for work or leisure. The risk may be small but the hazard is more than serious enough to make the game not worth the candle.
Thanks. I have been in a near-constantly horrified state in between pauses of merciful dissociation when regarding the developments in the US, so perhaps I shouldn’t be as shocked at that as I am, and I find it difficult to articulate why this seems such a crass red line to cross. Perhaps it’s the invasion of privacy mixed with the blatant thought policing of somebody who is virtually without agency regarding US politics, coupled with the disregard for the fact that really the chief harm done by this is domestic. It’s the perfect trifecta of malign, jingoistic, and moronic. I keep hoping my fears to be shown misguided or paranoid or conspiratorial, instead they seem to be exceeded turn by turn.
Recently, like in the past few days, so it might have been in a discussion about this situation, I read some advice that while traveling (to the US), it’s wise to leave your phone at home and pick up a burner for the trip, and for the same reason you’ll see that advice given to people going to a protest. Use it for voice calls and/or general texting. Don’t log into social media with it etc etc etc. That way if the authorities get access to it, you know there’s nothing of interest to them on it. A few phone calls to family, maybe some ‘we just landed’ texts, but they’re not going to find a “trump is dumb” tweet that you made three years ago.
Also, from those discussions, turn off biometrics (face ID/fingerprint) and just use a PIN. It’s much harder for them to get you to give up your PIN than for them to just hold the phone in front of your face.
I don’t use social media, aside from this message board, but what about just deleting the Facebook/Instagram/Twitter apps from the phone prior to traveling? If the apps aren’t there, the authorities can’t see what you’ve been saying.
I know what you mean. A week or two ago, a longtime friend who shares my liberal views made a post on Facebook inviting people of all polical view to talk about what was going on. One woman kept insistng that we were all wrong- Trump was a great Preisdent. Elon Musk was slashing waste and saving us money! I asked for any evidence of this. She posted a biased article about USAID in Haiti. I quoted the sentence where the author admitted he was basing his conclusion on almost no data, so he hadn’t proven USAID failed in Haiti and had no data about any other country. Eventually, she came back with three posts she claimed were evidence proving her right. They were screen shots of Musk’s posts on X talking about what programs he had cut and how much money he had saved the government.
Big Brother is here. People love him.
The future is a boot crushing the face of humanity forever.
Apalling. What is the consequence from this?
If you can avoid it, do not travel to the USA.
If you have to go there, use a burner phone. If possible one with no smart features, something like a ten year old Nokia. Act like you would when going to Russia or mainland China. Don’t copy your contacts to that phone. If you have to make a call, dial the number you will have written on paper by hand. Use a simple code for the numbers written by hand: switch 3s and 8s, for instance, and 1s and 7s, and 2s and 5s or something you can easily remember.
This is going to get much worse before it gets better, if it gets better at all. Patience and resignation are useful christian virtues.
And this is annoying - since when is a program “failing” considered proof of fraud? These programs are trying to solve problems that have been around for years, decades, centuries. They’re difficult problems. We should expect some of the attempts to fix them to fail. It would be surprising if some didn’t fail.
Hell, if USAID was going around claiming that every program they’ve ever run was an unqualified success, that would be the fraud! No way would every program succeed.
The woman in question seems to have no crititcal thinking skills. I thought it best just to point out that even the author of the article she provided admitted that his claim was not supported by data.
If failed projects was a reason to end government agencies, the Department of Defense would be a lot smaller. Why should the DoD get a pass on failure?
To be fair, the fact in the second part of your sentence is not something introduced by the current administration. Prominent advocates of privacy and personal freedom have been warning about and protesting against border searches of electronic devices for at least 25 years. Now many are finally learning why it was a bad idea to have ignored them for so long.
Border guards (not just in the USA but in many other countries) can and sometimes do ask for your social media accounts. It doesn’t matter if the apps aren’t installed on your phone, or if you’ve deleted the sites from your laptop’s browser history; anything you’ve posted publically remains visible. And for material you’ve posted privately, the guards can ask for your login credentials. If you refuse to give any of this information, or claim that you don’t have the credentials on hand, or that you don’t use social media at all, and the guards deem this to be suspicious, they can simply refuse you entry.
I have travelled to some pretty authoritarian states and have had my electronic devices taken and searched, sometimes in front of me. Even in North Korea they didn’t demand my passwords (though they did require me to log in myself and help them navigate my filesystem) and they didn’t seem to be specifically looking for documents or online posts indicating that I had criticized their government.
This is why I’ve never used the fingerprint ID feature or face recognition - only a PIN. It seems foolish to allow that sort of method, even if you’re not worried about law enforcement trying to get access.
For that matter, I also hate modern car security. I don’t want the goddam car unlocking itself when I walk up to it. Or unlocking when I touch the door handle. I make the effort to turn that nonsense off whenever possible.
I didn’t intend to imply that it was, and you are correct that these deprecations of personal liberty and security are not new actions imposed by Trump; they are a long slide toward incipient authoritarianism that has been going on at least since the post-September 11, 2001 attacks and the kneejerk response that included the US PATRIOT Act and various attendant exchanges of civil liberties for the appearance of safety (and arguably long before then).
In some jurisdictions, you can be legally compelled to disclose your PIN, password, or decryption keys. (This is the case in the UK, for example, and while border services or police need to get a judge to sign off on the request, they can always detain you until they’ve done so.) Failure to comply with such a request can result in criminal charges.