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?
Cloud-backup your phone, factory reset it, set it up again with a phone number, a different messenger app to the one you currently use and download your idk, 20 most recent pictures to your galery and set one as your background.
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You will still be able to make phone calls if needed
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You will still be able to send messages on for example Telegram even tho you usually use Signal
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The phone will not look like a burner as it has some personal content on it
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The phone will look personalized and thus less suspicous together with point 3
Edit: You don’t even have to actually set them up or even open them at all, but maybe even download a shopping list, a notes app, two games, all in all it should take like 10 minutes to make your phone look less suspicous as opposed to the other advice to just factory reset it.
Cloud backup not by Google or Apple of course.
Why do that? If they ask you why you have a fully factory reset device with you, just say it’s to keep jackboot thugs like you from being assholes.
Trust me, I would LOVE to insult my way though these assholes, but man, you need to realize noone wants every airport visit to incluse multiple hours wasted in interrogation. Your comment is absolutely useless.
Valid advice. But the fact that you wrote all this out is sad. Sad for this land that used to be the land of the free.
Jup, it’s so sad that it’s happening and most people either don’t even realize it or are too brainwashed to care. In Germany the police is advised to, if they should have your unlocked phone, set up a Whatsapp-Web instance by quickly scanning the QR-code on your phone to monitor you since they can simply intercept the verification PIN SMS. At least on Signal you can set up a PIN to enter whenever you add a new device.
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Just dont go to the US…
i’ve never had a problem going into EU from canada
… or most other places. Nobody ever wanted to even see my phone.
Most questions I’ve been asked ever was the few times I went to the US in the past.
The US immigration officers want to know who picks you up, what you do, ask details about your work, random shit. I had to explain to one details about a wedding I was going to attend. Another wanted to know details about the VR devices I worked with.
Other countries at most ask profession, duration of stay and address in the country. I’ve been to countless countries on every continent except Antarctica. Your mileage may vary of course because discrimination against certain passport holders is real.
I have two phones which is only because I wouldn’t be upset if this phone was stolen or lost or broken unlike my main phone. My travel phone is an older and cheap Google pixel phone on which I installed Graphene. I use it regularly to read books from my local library. I do not bring it with me anywhere other than travel. On this phone I also:
- Do not log into anything other than the library app which uses a random username as the login. No email or anything attached to it beyond my home address.
- Ensure that ADB is NOT enabled.
- Require a pin to unlock the phone. No biometrics alone. Ever.
- Install signal for all communication. Lock it behind a pin that is not my phone unlock pin.
- Any and all files that I create on this device have their exif stripped and are automatically encrypted using automation software then sent to my S3 bucket or home server depending on the nature of the files and their size after I connect to wifi somewhere.
- Transfer my service plan to this device.
- Install apps only from obtanium that are verified to match the hash signatures from the distributor.
- The phones drive is encrypted
- While in line for TSA I turn the phone off to which it will remain until I am at my gate.
I have had issues in the past with TSA and my phone with a “random” search. They requested I unlock my phone. I did not, and requested a warrant and will not speak more than my rights and that I will only speak through legal counsel should they be able to produce a warrant. They searched me and my belongings over the course of a few hours. They can eat my ass.
In addition all of my personal machines including my steam deck and my laptop are also encrypted and secured using FOSS software including Linux as the OS. I have nothing to hide, but I’m also smart enough to not provide them with anything they could twist out of context or use against me.
Wow, that quite a setup !
Rule #1 Don’t travel to the usa
In this case USA is origin.
I assumed so, world wide web though.
I mean, agreed for anyone who has that option. Dont travel there. But in this case if its your starting and ending point that doesn’t address the question at hand. How to do this as safely as possible.
If the usa is your starting point, then stay there.
And if you’re a flight attendant or pilot? Or any other profession that involves international travel?
The usa should be completely boycotted.
Flight staff are obviously a very fringe example that you have chosen while trying to make a point. Even they would not have to deal with that mess, and would not be supporting it, if the rest of the world stopped travelling to the usa.
Decent people = a decent planet.
Flight staff are obviously a very fringe example that you have chosen while trying to make a point
While I respect the sentiment you’re trying to convey, the point I was trying to make is most folks aren’t willing to upend their careers and livelihood for their personal beliefs.
Fathers/Mothers who are required to travel for work aren’t going to drop everything and starve their families all for a protest.
No one is forced to travel to the usa. If the usa were boycotted as it needs to be, no employer would be sending staff there, and no staff can be sent there is everyone refuses.
People need to stop making excuses
“all for a protest” …protesting the evil empire seems kid of important, it’s not like the people of the usa want their country to be anything aside from evil, they just keep waving flags for red evil, and for blue evil. The rest of the world needs to shut that shit down.
OP probably needs to look at a burner phone, and would also need to put some ‘i love trump’, ‘blow up the world’, or ‘usa for pedophiles’ posts on it just to be on the safe side.
As an American, I want it to not be evil, and as a commie, I hate the Republicans and the Democrats.
The problem is I can’t get out. I wish I could get to safety. Someplace where the government won’t attack me for being a trans girl.
If you have any advice for me, please share it.
There are good people everywhere, somewhere like the usa would have always been a problem for them, now even more so. I would assume leaving by land, is easier than air? I do not live there though, so have no idea what the land border situation is now. It is still a question of having the finances and somewhere to live when you get to the other side.
Internally the democrats are no doubt the lesser evil, especially when compared to trump. Long term the people of the usa really need to kick them both out.
Internationally the usa is war on earth either way.
If you have good backups of the phone to say something like nextcloud or a other cloud service. Wipe the phone clean before travel. Then just give them the pin. Nothing to see at all. Then pull down a backup once passed the border control.
I turn off biometrics and power down. They can ask for the unlock pin, I can decline until they produce a warrant and I can request an lawyer. My risk profile is sufficiently accommodated.
I can see someone with a different risk profile, say, an online presence showing vocal criticism against Trump and goons, and/or not white and/or not a native born US citizen and/or has a travel history to muslim-majority countries might want to take further measures.
I’ve just skimmed headlines and seen a short or two on the guy who gave LEOs the distress pin. I’m not sure why he didn’t decline to give them his pin until they produced a warrant, but I think giving a destruction pin was not the brightest idea. But also, fuck the cops and double fuck border cops playing these racist, fascist games with people’s lives.
I mean thats what its for. Maybe, like playing dead, he thought they’d get tired of fucking with him. Also, all of that seems like a hassle when you have the distress pin right there. And prior to this, no hint at the potential consequences. Also, you just want to go home at this point. Its been a little while since I read about it, but I think they said you can give us the pin or we will crack it with XYZ software (idk what its named). So there’s a risk at that point if you think it might work. Idk, I’m not going to judge the dude.
Also they were saying that normal rules didn’t apply at a border. No request for lawyer, no need for warrant.
also they were saying that normal rules don’t apply at a border
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.
I think I’m at low risk.
I power my phone off prior to arriving in the US and keep it off until I leave the airport.
Under US case law, you can be compelled to give up a thumb print or face ID with a search warrant. But you cannot be compelled to give an unlock code, because the code information is testimony, and you have the right to remain silent.
If they insist on seizing my phone unless I unlock it, my plan is to ask for a lawyer, shut the fuck up, let them seize the phone or whatever, then sue them later to return it.
This plan works for me because I’m a US citizen, and I have an absolute right to enter the country. If you are not a citizen or LPR the local CBP officer has the discretion to refuse admission even if you have a visa. So that’s a real consequence to non cooperation.
Don’t lie to the feds about not having a phone if you really have one. That’s a separate crime all by itself.
Some LEOs argue that the “compel” limits bit is limited to US citizens, and that even then, they can confiscate your phone if you refuse to unlock it. Plus, they can refuse to let you fly, confiscate your passport, or deport you to the country of their choice.
compel” limits bit is limited to US citizens
This is completely not true. The 4th and 5th amendments apply to everyone.
that even then, they can confiscate your phone
If they do this without getting a search warrant from a judge, you can sue for the return of your property. You can make them justify to a judge why there is probable cause that your property will yield evidence of a crime.
they can refuse to let you fly
This is a thing that can happen, but you can also sue the federal government to challenge your wrongful placement on the no fly list. People have sued and won and been awarded costs and attorneys’ fees
confiscate your passport,
This can happen if they think the passport is fraudulent, invalid, expired, stolen, or if you owe taxes, or are a sex offender that needs an annotated passport, or sadly if they think you are trans.
For many of these causes, the simplest solution is to apply for a new passport. For the trans victims, the issue is currently in federal court, and I am hopeful for a positive outcome.
deport you to the country of their choice.
At this point I assume you are talking about non-citizens, non-LPRs. If such a person is refused admission they are preferentially deported back to wherever they came from. At land borders, that is cheap and easy. Air carriers are required to transport passengers back to origin at the air carrier’s expense when CBP so demands. (This is why airlines check your documents thoroughly before they let you go.)
If for some reason the person’s travel origin refuses to accept them, then the next preference is a country where they have citizenship or strong residence ties.
With the exception of the original set of CECOT flights, which were done in actual contempt of court, true third country removals are the last resort both in law and in actual (however fucked up) practice.
The people who have been sent to the strange African countries have problems with no documents, no proof of citizenship, their true home country refuses to accept deportations from US because of bad relations, or they have withholding of removal because of a legitimate fear of torture or persecution in their home country. That’s not something that’s going to happen to the vast majority of people that show up at an airport with actual good documents.
burner seems safest and fastest
Or you could backup all you data somewhere accessible over a secure connection, wipe your phone before go anywhere, and restore the data once out of the country. You would need to do the same before coming back. Backup, wipe, travel, restore.
Consumes a lot of time (and data) which probably isn’t worth it for short trips where your mobile data is costing you. But if you’ll be gone a while and will have access to an unmetered network connection, it’s feasible.
It accomplishes the same thing as wiping your phone at customs, but planned and executed in-advance instead of panic-wiping it in front of them. 🤷
Remember to back up your backup, because once you wipe your phone, your backup is no longer a backup; it’s your sole copy.
Is there a way to back up to something like a thumb drive? I haven’t thought about it but I guess we all probably carry a lot of data on our phones we dont strictly NEED day to day that you could back up and leave at home.
I typically back up everything important on my phone the week before. Then uninstall all Apps I don’t want scanned if needed (password managers, banking, etc.) This allows me to worry slightly less…🤏
If you’ve got the money, blank burner phone and/or laptop. If you get questioned just say your regular devices are expensive and you were afraid of losing them/damaging them while traveling
I mean they can search you for a phone so saying you don’t have one doesn’t seem like a viable option. Having a burner that you freely offer up seems like a better option. I know that some journalists who travel to dangerous parts of the world will often do this (along with many other things) to try and protect themselves.
Wow, yeah I didn’t consider that they can search you. What else do the journalists do?
Here is a good video on the topic: https://youtu.be/7iaAgup85gk?is=iPivJgDPPLj9mqAj
I’d probably use a burner. Out of principle.
But! I think it is important to keep the risk in perspective too. For most ppl, the chance is tiny. Could happen. Almost certainly won’t. There are about 55K device searches / yr, and most of those are shallow. Only a few were deep. That sounds like a lot, until you realize there are 260 million international travelers / yr. Edit -> for the USA alone. That’s around 0.02% who even get the shallow search.
Ofc the risk may be a LOT higher for certain ppl. Reporters say. So keep that in mind too. Assess your own risk with open eyes! For some it will be far more than 0.02%. You’re a reporter, better have your shit sorted! But that also means the risk is lower than 0.02% for the rest.
Tiny chance for most ppl, But nothing wrong with being careful out of principle.
I like this point, and kinda want to dig in. What are the risks for journalists? I assume contact information and notes they’ve taken about potential stories. Chats. Passwords to those applications. Is it the same for the activist person?
What are other common risk profiles people might need to think about?
I care about it in principle, but also they’re making up the rules as they go.
Backup, dump SIM, wipe, load ghost account.
Wipe, load primary account, retire from backup load sim.
