We all read about the attempts to charge a US Citizen for destruction of evidence for using the distress pin on his GOS phone. So what is safe to do if you know you will be traveling internationally? Are people getting a burner phone and leaving their normal phone at home? What’s to stop you from saying you dont have a phone if you are stopped at a border crossing?
Yeah, and call it my middle class white American audacity but I’d be willing to go toe to toe with them on that BS for quite some time. I’d be focused on keeping control and being the most pristine accuser in a civil rights lawsuit that there ever was.
I’m read up enough on US Borders and customs policy to know them confiscating and hooking up my phone to a laptop to try to crack my password is a different thing than manipulating me into volunteering my pin. That’s what they’re trying to do, pressure people into “voluntarily” giving their pin, which gets the cops off the hook for following their protocol for conducting searches within their more restrictive rules for cracking into a device. Same as letting them in the front door of my house, if a person “voluntarily” lets cops into their house when the cops apply pressure, the homeowner has allowed them out of all the rules and oversight that come with getting a warrant.
I think you’re right, it is important for people to know their rights, but also understand that these people are making it up as they go.
In the activist example, they claimed they had evidence he had child pornography. Do they even have to find anything real to fuck up your day if they want to?
Here’s an important point from the activist distress code case: CBP had a plan to target him for this treatment in advance before he showed up at the border checkpoint that day. The airlines send them passenger manifests 72 hours in advance.
100% of the time, if they take you to the little room, start asking you questions, and want to look through your phone, they already believe you’re guilty of something specific.
If that happens to you, you need to understand that you have already been the “target” of an investigation. There is nothing you can do or say in that room that will convince them otherwise. The best thing you can do is shut the hell up, do as little as possible, and don’t make their case for them.
And don’t believe anything they’re telling you either. The cops can lie to you, but you can’t lie to the cops. It’s a crime.