Well, okay, but it’s always nice to have a phone with your boarding passes and other such documents. Not to mention needing to let everybody know that you’re carrying a phone with a different number.
Again, if the concern is invasion of privacy.
Rolling back to factory can be cracked. Your phone’s data is uploaded. If it’s an old phone and clean, it can get sent to a forensics lab because it looks, you know, odd.
If I were really paranoid, I’d do it like this.
Before leaving, I’d take the reset phone and connect it to my home wifi. I’d use Airalo or a similar service to download and install an eSIM with US service. Then I’d pop out my SIM card and slip it between the pages of a paperback book. On landing, I activate the eSIM so I have data. Then, going through the border, I can show a phone that has (a) connectivity but (b) nothing else on it. (It’s true that a factory reset phone can be forensically investigated, but if we get to the point that they’re seizing it for further investigation simply because they want to, then we’re well into a world of fully unchained fascism, and there’s nothing to be done.) Then, after getting through the border, I re-insert the SIM and install and activate Whatsapp; it’s associated with the phone number, but doesn’t need it to work after activation, it just needs data. Then I reconfigure the phone to use the eSIM (and local data) exclusively, and rely on Whatsapp for communication. I can also download and sign into any app I like, using local data.
This is already what I basically do when I travel outside the EU. Data roaming charges are extortionate, so I use Airalo to get a local virtual SIM and I simply forego voice calls and SMS on my original number for the duration of the trip. Nearly everything on a modern smartphone relies on data anyway, so this is not a meaningful loss of function.
The only wrinkle for the US version of this is that I’m starting with a different clean (ish) phone, and I install what I need after I get through customs. And in the event they take the “suspicious” phone away, I still have the SIM card which I can pop into another newly acquired device.
The issue now is the consequences. In the past, unless you actual have evidence of criminal activity on your phone, by far the most likely thing to happen is some inconvenience. The worst thing for a US citizen is probably having your devices confiscated, and ending up in a US jail until things get sorted out.
Now, you could find yourself on a one way flight to Rwanda [1]. This is absolutely where this regime wants to go with this. Deport their enemies, foreign and domestic. Again, the vast majority of cases are going to be nothing more than an inconvenience, but some are going to be a 60 Minutes segment that never airs, because CBS had their broadcast license pulled.
A modern IOS or Android phone should be completely encrypted, and when reset the encryption key is wiped. If anyone can crack the encrypted data without the key, that is a power worth far more than harassing people at the airport, and I’m sure is very closely guarded by intelligence agencies. That would be a vulnerability in the implementation of the encryption algorithm (or maybe the wiping software), not simply a way to bypass a lock screen.
Much of the data is uploaded. Some companies are far more willing to hand data over to the government than others, but assume that anything that a corporation has clear text access to, the government also has access to.
One of the biggest reasons to use a burner phone is that you don’t know what new software may be on it when it is handed back after inspection. Use a burner for your boarding pass and in flight entertainment. Get a clean phone at your destination, discard it before leaving, and use the burner for the trip home.
You could use the burner for your whole trip, just don’t use it to access anything the government might care about. That probably means financial stuff is fine. If they want your bank account, they can just take it. Stay away from the subversive message boards, though.
though I’d love to visit of my own free will sometime ↩︎
And yes I can imagine this administration using information obtained by TSA in this manner in that way.
But, again, are there any cases yet of that specific thing happening? (Rather than deciding who they want to target and just pretending they have cause.
This level of paranoia is reasonable for a green card holder or even a legal immigrant in this fascist time, if there could be even anything that might be activist related on a device. Scary and upsetting that such isn’t able to be completely dismissed as unrealistic.
But suggesting that it is reasonable for the average person like me is still not a place my mind accepts.
That’s inaccurate, Canada has processes and the rule of law, America does not. Canada might search your phone and if they find something, then initiate a legal proceeding; American officials might send you to a foreign gulag without due process even when a judge orders them not to.
They have shown they are willing to skip due process. Your respectable looking white guy privilege will probably protect you, but without due process they can make up any lie they want, or none at all, about why you’ve been taken. It isn’t paranoia if they really are out to get you.
There was the one US citizen who is a lawyer and wouldn’t let them see his phone because it contained privileged information. I think he got to spend some time away from his family before getting it sorted out.
Is there anything on your phone that would violate your patients’ privacy (or HIPAA) if the government got to see it? At a minimum, I’d recommend deleting any app that gives you access to patient information before traveling, even though any such app would hopefully require authentication each time you use it.
That still doesn’t change the possibility of installation of new software to track everything you do going forward.
Frankly, I hope all of them. Competitors, too.
I have been profiled going back to the 90s. I guess I look “like the type”.
At least they never sent me to the gulag.
Here’s a rational, yet still scary, look at the issue from The Atlantic (gift link):
… Since his [Trump’s] return to power, accounts of travelers’ ordeals have routinely made the news.
In March, a German-born New Hampshire resident arriving at Boston’s Logan Airport was arrested and jailed, and now faces deportation, over a years-old marijuana charge. A Canadian woman detained at a Southern California border crossing spent nearly two weeks in a grim Immigration and Customs Enforcement lockup. A green-card holder from Ireland who has lived in the United States for 40 years was taken into custody last month at San Francisco International Airport because of drug convictions that had been expunged from her record, her family says. She is still in ICE custody and faces deportation.
Trump-administration officials insist that law-abiding travelers have nothing to fear and that news coverage of these incidents is overblown and incomplete. CBP says that its searches of electronic devices have not significantly increased. Officers do not detain travelers randomly, it says, and instead question or arrest people based on “derogatory” information that may be too sensitive to disclose publicly.
Nevertheless, the fears are real and, travel consultants and immigration lawyers told me, pervasive. They say their clients—foreign citizens residing abroad, green-card holders living in the United States, and even some U.S. citizens—are worried that their interaction with the blue-uniformed CBP officers stationed at airports and border crossings will end badly.
…
Under U.S. law, CBP has broad authority to confiscate and conduct warrantless searches on the devices of any traveler, regardless of citizenship. In an emailed statement from CBP, a spokesperson, Hilton Beckham, said that claims that CBP is searching more electronic media are false and that the device checks are necessary.
…
My bold.
“…question or arrest people based on ‘derogatory’ information that may be too sensitive to disclose publicly…”
WTF is that supposed to mean??
Things are different now. Is it worth taking a chance that you’ll be okay? What are the consequences if you’re wrong?
Long-ish article. Worth reading.
Of course going down that path they don’t need to see in my stinking phone. They can just decide I look funny and make stuff up. Or arrest with no reason given why. Depriving myself of my phone won’t help from that.
And no there is no HIPPA protected data on my phone and access to it via the cloud requires two factor authentication.
Again I get some paranoia. But thinking that they will force me to sign into my Epic app and look at patient data unless I delete my app? There is enough real to be upset and scared about without having to imagine shit.
I will read the Atlantic article later, but nothing in that blurb convinces me otherwise.
Yes, if they want to arrest you because you look wrong, the phone doesn’t matter. They can make up an excuse. Similarly, if they already know they want you, and showing up at immigration saves them the trip to your house, again the phone doesn’t matter.
The fear is obviously that looking at your phone reveals information they didn’t otherwise have. This is neither unfounded nor paranoid, but has so far only been applied to non-citizens. Freedom of speech (and other rights) apply to everyone, not just citizens, so they’re already on pretty shaky constitutional grounds (according to my headcanon) for deporting non-citizens for things they say.
Got to check the Epic app to see who you’re prescribing leuprorelin to.
How about this: completely turn your phone off. Stick it in a bag. Not your pocket.
Don’t say “oh, but my boarding pass”. Get a paper one.
I assume that’s still a choice.
Surely you can read that paperback long enough to get boarded.
What is wrong with people? This is not that hard.
Plus, maybe don’t take pix or talk about your criminal behavior. That is just stupid.
I’m pretty sure they can make you turn on and unlock your phone.
And even if they can’t, they can use the fact that you turned off your phone as suspicious behavior and detain you anyway.
Omg. Run the battery down the day before.
Or, or…don’t carry the damn thing if you have real concerns.
That’s the recommendation being discussed. And the concern is that behavior does not need to be criminal to be potentially acted upon by current powers that be.
In that Atlantic article - yes an immigration lawyer may have information about clients that can be harvested. Yes any non citizen could potentially be targeted. But also from that article is the lack of evidence that such actions by TSA are happening any more frequently.
Some people are concerned even without having engaged in criminal behavior. Someone upthread, for instance, mentioned a lawyer with privileged information on their phone.
Really no need to be insulting to make your point, Beck.
Bless you, but I’m sorry to say that not everything has a chicken-fried, down-home, easy answer dearie.
In today’s climate, is it prudent to predict the future by what procedures were followed in the past?
It is prudent to expect in the present was we have evidence of is or is not happening in the present.