My advice, take a burner phone to the airport (and elsewhere?), and since devices are subject to warrantless search anywhere and everywhere, via exceptions to the fourth amendment [1] (the constitution seems designed to be bent or outright ignored), keep your data at home and encrypted. The "cloud" is a government data supermarket.
For example.
> While the Fourth Amendment is the foundation, federal and state laws can add layers of complexity. For example, the Patriot Act expanded the government's ability to conduct surveillance and searches, particularly in national security cases, sometimes with a lower burden of proof than traditional criminal investigations.
MUCH lower.
Of course, with great effort and moderate expense, you could setup a burner phone with access to many of your same accounts and resources, but the more features you add to the burner phone, the more it begins to look like the device you're leaving "safe" at home.
I'm traveling overseas tomorrow and my partner and I will both be taking our phones with us as we do every day in our home country.
"Okay can you login to your email for me? If not I'm going to have to keep you here until you do."
If I need a cell phone, laptop, etc., then I will buy or rent something cheap at the destination.
I got into the habit while traveling back and forth the mainland China as it was our corporate policy (and we never brought any electronics back, either).
Then when I tried to log in to my Gmail account at my destination, it flagged it as a suspicious login attempt and wouldn't let me in without entering a code they texted to my American phone number, which meant I was locked out of my email for the duration of the trip.
Plus travel day realities often require your phone and accounts - plane tickets, Uber/Lyft, hotel reservations or updates from Airbnb with check-in instructions, door codes, etc.
It's a tremendous challenge and hassle for any regular person. We really just need to push back on the government overreach. It's tragic that half of the Trump voters proclaim to be "small government" and "Don't tread on me" but then tolerate things like this. There's certainly a bipartisan group of people opposed that are large enough to effect change if we work together.
Or go satellite which in someplaces is a major crime.
I would use the same sim-card in the burner phone. Any attack by the government that they can do with your real sim card can also be done through phone number spoofing.
For email, use unique emails (things like booking+youremail@...) for reservations/bookings/tickets and have those forwarded to a second email account that you want to use during the trip. It is already good privacy hygiene to use unique emails for all types of registrations, and you will have more control when services eventually have a leak.
This is so trivially easy to bypass. If you're a service selling email addresses, just strip off the booking+ part and you have the "real" email address.
All my sign-up email addresses are via a catch-all email, so I can just give a service "thisservice@mydomain.com", or "thatservice@mydomain.com", so I there is no single "real" email address, and I get to track who exactly is selling my email address. So far I haven't had problems with anyone spamming "anything@mydomain.com".
Remember, when ultra-partisans, of most political ideologies, demand rights and freedoms, there's almost always an implied "for me and mine" in there. Exceptions to this are extraordinarily rare, even more so nowadays.
Let's be real. Those people don't travel. They've never left the country, and most have likely never left their state, or even their hometown. I know a person like this - they refuse to fly on a plane to go anywhere because they are not allowed to bring their gun on the plane - they are a real "don't tread on me" 2nd amendment/NRA type. And they will never vote for anyone but a Republican no matter how bad things get.
Not that it really matters, with the current Supreme Court being what it is, but still...
It's one of those weird things in the US constitution which allow for congress to create new federal courts which don't ultimately fall under the jurisdiction of the regular federal courts.
Not great, but I think that’s what’s being specifically adjudicated here.
They still cannot deny an US citizen entry if you decline to unlock your phone, though they may confiscate your device. I don’t know if they would then be allowed to do deeper forensics without a warrant.
on an iPhone, DFU-flash (using apple configurator) reads NO state from the phone and overwrites ALL state. Nowhere for rootkit to live. If you are worried, do that.
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
This effectively means border patrol can do whatever they want in areas that do not involve a border crossing and involve citizens just living their normal lives
In other words... whom (or what) was perceived to have pissed in the CBP officer's Wheaties this morning? We'll never know what grudges he holds to make his decision.
(look at FLORIDA, the entire state!)
* https://www.wired.com/2008/10/aclu-assails-10/
* https://www.aclu.org/documents/know-your-rights-100-mile-bor...
* https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/HTML/R46601...
There dosent appear to be any import/export controls on the current internet is there?
If they say import export control gives them the right to search citizens maybe they should be aware of this giant gapping hole that the internet created 30+ years ago?
>“The border-search exception is grounded in the recognized right of the sovereign to control, subject to substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution, who and what may enter the country.” Id. at 620. Because “[t]he Government’s interest in preventing the entry of unwanted persons and effects is at its zenith at the international border,” United States v. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149, 152 (2004), “searches made at the border, pursuant to the long-standing right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border,” Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 616.
https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/OPN/24-960_complete_o...
> Immigration Officers, without a warrant, may "within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States...board and search for non-citizens in any vessel within the territorial waters of the United States and any railcar, aircraft, conveyance, or vehicle. 8 CFR 287 (a)(1) defines reasonable distance as 100 air miles from the border.
from https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
> Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population, over 213 million people, reside within the region that CBP considers falling within the 100-mile border zone, according to the 2020 census. Most of the 10 largest cities in the U.S., such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, fall in this region. Some states, like Florida, lie entirely within this border band so their entire populations are impacted.
Apart from that, an airport is a comparatively small area of land that is magnitudes easier to monitor than a border that only exists as a thousands of miles long line on the map, therefore the 100 miles rule should not be applied. And everyone getting off an international flight in the USA has already been searched multiple times.
I mean, that could have been just one person's attempt to justify them operating outside their legal authority. Or it could have been what they were told to say, meaning it was somewhat more official policy (or at least official smokescreen du jour). At any rate, it has been claimed, at least once, not in court but to the press.
“Today’s decision leaves Americans’ most sensitive information open to search at the border without any suspicion at all,”
I think this is just an extension of a general we, as government officials protecting American freedoms, can do what we want and will justify it later if we have to policy.
It should probably be noted that this specific case led to a conviction of an actual crime (Bank fraud and money laundering).
That's pretty much irrelevant to the discussion. Of course a lot more crimes would get prosecuted if we lived in a total police state.
People did not think this policy through fully. =3
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/345/206/
> (c) Although a lawfully resident alien may not captiously be deprived of his constitutional rights to due process, the alien in this case is an entrant alien or "assimilated to that status" for constitutional purposes.
And another gem from the same case that is recently all the more relevant:
> Nothing in the Constitution requires admission or sufferance of aliens hostile to our scheme of government.
Meaning they can seize all your stuff and deport you if you criticize the government. Also, immigration lawyers are part of the Executive branch.