> Yep, police can simply ask anyone for their passwords and if you don't give it up they can put you in jail.
This is precisely the reason why I don't want to visit the US at the moment.
The USA immigration officers can ask me to forfeit my phone's password and look at all my photos, documents, messages, call logs etc, WITHOUT SUSPICION.
Some of that data can even stay on their servers for decades, and who knows if it ends up on a CIA/NSA server.
Of course, I can always refuse, but non-cooperation with CBP means immediate denial of entry and risks of lifelong headaches with future immigration checks.
Me too. I’m going to wait a few more years before I visit again.
I‘m also careful with what I say online. US CBP tracks what people post online, and has been known to deny entry to people for being critical critical of the current president. I don’t want to risk losing out on future opportunities in the land of the free.
I‘m also careful with what I say online. US CBP tracks what people post online, and has been known to deny entry to people for being critical critical of the current president. I don’t want to risk losing out on future opportunities in the land of the free.
I will rather choose not to visit the US for the foreseeable time, maybe never again (have been to the US more than 10 times). Freedom of speech is more important than tourist visits to the US. Well and working there was never an option for me, worker protection, universal healthcare, etc. make life much nicer.
Maybe the US will be free enough again in the future, but with its trajectory, I am not betting on it.
if you’re denied at the border for expressing speech online at some historic point (non-violent) then how can “respecting the culture” work?
When I am in Saudi Arabia, I don’t wear shorts out of respect for their culture; but they don’t go through my instagram looking for pictures of me in shorts.
> As for the US, probably 0.000001% or so had sad experiences at the border.
Heh it’s a lot more than that. About 1/3rd of my Australian friends have a story to tell about unfortunate US border crossing experiences. I personally know two (white) people who were denied entry at the border - in both cases for allegedly ridiculous reasons.
My partner was arrested at the beach once in the US. The police wanted her to narc on someone she was travelling with and she refused. (The case was thrown out of court by a furious judge, but it was a whole thing).
in the US we have free speech for citizens (generally). People in foreign countries are not citizens of the US. they do not receive the benefit of our free speech protections (whatever those may be), since they are not, in fact, citizens of the US.
you replied with an article about the US Vice President decrying what happened. I thought that to be a non-sequitur, so i asked what you were trying to say.
You said you don't arrest people at your border for [speech].
i responded to that non-sequitur with two reports of people being arrested for speech, who cares if it's at the border? that's UK citizens being arrested for "speech", not foreigners! Like, thanks, i guess, for letting us have free speech when you don't?
and here we are.
* note: i don't think we arrest people at the border, just deny entry. i could be mistaken, though.
But I only hold guests responsible for what they say while in my home. Not what they have said to their friends in DMs 6 months beforehand.
But the analogy is imprecise because the border patrol isn’t inviting people and revoking invitations when they misbehave. They are granting access to public spaces or revoking that. And the idea that a public place should do anything more than gate on current activity in that place is insane (for speech!)
In a world where people get canceled for things they said a decade ago, and for people whom they are friends with, and for what those friends said a decade ago, you are walking a fine line by not screening your guests’ past DMs
That’s why I said the analogy was imperfect. Because border guards (or the state) aren’t “inviting” anyone. It’s not an endorsement to let people in (unlike a friend to your house)
If I would push it further to the extreme, "you" are inviting yourself. You're not a guest yet, you're inviting yourself, showing up at a stranger's door asking to be let in.
Though I agree with you that analogies have limits.
I am not even sure of anything at this point, especially after reading the comments around, almost as if it was bigotry.
It could be a cultural / education difference too; I was taught that local cultures are equally legitimate as much as my personal culture.
> Be respectful of the tradition, culture and laws of the local country that you visit and you will be fine.
> It's not your role to decide or interfere in the politics of other countries where you are not a permanent resident. Think of it like you being a guest.
> It's not your role to decide or interfere in the politics of other countries where you are not a permanent resident. Think of it like you being a guest.
Well, that's a pretty damned repulsive view.
Countries, governments, whatever, don't have a right to just do whatever they want to their citizens without anybody else noticing. All individuals morally outrank all institutions.
As a counterpoint: I lived in Melbourne, Australia during the pandemic. We were going for elimination. We tried some of the world’s strictest lockdown laws.
Apparently there were protests in NY of all places on our behalf. I don’t know what they were hoping would happen - would the state of NY ask our state to change our laws for them? How bizarre. Our local policies are up to us, thanks.
Surely NY had other things to worry about at the time? The news we were hearing of ambulances in NY queueing outside overpacked hospitals… though I suppose the media there was saying equally scary things about life in Melbourne.
Our lockdowns didn’t work, but we loved our state premier for trying. He was so popular that the following election, the other political parties didn’t really bother to show up. The opinion of New Yorkers was against the will of most locals here. It was sweet to protest for us. But it had very weird vibes.
I have really, really, really bad news for you about any modern SoC, including all those by Qualcomm. Their ROM private keys are widely available to the three letter agencies. Your OS, while cute, provides no protection at all to anyone who has physical access. Secure boot root keys give away the whole kingdom
Secureboot keys do not give away any data on the encrypted "cute" OS. At worst they can attempt an evil maid attack but why bother when they can use any device of the same model.
There are no "ROM private keys" in Qualcomm or most other chips. The root of trust is fused in by the OEM. Apparently the exception is Apple.
They would have to individually steal keys from every OEM, in GraphenOS' case meaning Google. Then they'd have to do the right dance to fake the right stuff to satisfy the Secure Element(TM) and get it to let them use the data encryption keys. Which, by the way, I believe requires forking over a hash that may vary among individual phones; you have to know which version of the appropriate stage you want to fake.
... and you'll excuse me if I'm skeptical of your confident statements about what TLAs do or don't have access to, especially when you start talking about keys that don't exist.
At least you can walk in with a phone reset to factory settings, and once you cross the border restore from the cloud (or home server like me). In UK you can be stopped walking on the sidewalk. It's much more dystopian in UK.
Any good examples of that happening? As far as I know, the police have to have a probable cause to stop and search you, but they can certainly ask you to stop and answer questions to which you can ask "am I being detained" if you object to their questions.
Sort of. It's also footway when denoting the no-carriages part of a road that also has a carriageway.
There's a whole complex terminology of footway, cycleway, bridleway, bridle path, footpath, cycle path, and carriageway. Even more fun: It's ever so slightly different in Scotland to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
I haven't written up an article about it yet, but from a cursory look of the legal stuff this only affects private citizens and could be circumvented by setting up a shell company that owns your devices.
Legally, you can't surrender these devices, access to them or their passwords, as they are company property.
There's what's legal, and then there's what the border guard with a hemorrhoid flareup decides to do on the spot. One pain in the butt can cause you a lifetime of pain in the butt even if it wasn't the intent of any legislator.
Indeed, but the UK is in many ways words. At the least in the USA, often the constitution is upheld (give or take); in the UK you often don't even have such fundamental rights. The UK at present fits more to Russia than, e. g. European countries.
> At the least in the USA, often the constitution is upheld
Some of ICE’s detainees may have different opinions on that point.
The UK may endow her citizens with fewer rights. But I have a lot more trust in British due process. British civil servants seem much less … capricious than Americans.
I was almost denied entry to Hawaii once because I told the CBP agent I didn’t have any cash on me. (My money is in a bank account, obviously). He went on a big rant about how expensive Hawaii is. I think he was worried I’d end up homeless. (Even though my visit to hang out with my then employer.) Over the years I’ve heard so many stories from other Australian friends about wild and unfortunate encounters with US police and officials.
By comparison, the British government seems far more civilised. If something happened while visiting the UK, I have much more confidence that everything would be resolved in a fair and reasonable manner.
I had the same experience visiting the US - this was 15 years ago so I imagine it’s much worse now.
Got subjected to hour long questioning because I only had a little cash on me and told them truthfully that I would travel the country so I didn’t have one place to stay for the entirety of the trip (because I was TRAVELLING).
I since learned that my first mistake was to tell them the truth but alas.
After asking me about every single detail of my life they eventually let me in.
It’s a pity, such a great country being ruined by kleptocrats.
UK has (for now) the Human Rights Act and is a (for now) subject to the jurisdiction of (by being a founding member of) the European Court of Human Rights.
Which is not to excuse the errors, but to put it in context: it is a European country… albeit just like Turkey and Azerbaijan.
> In the UK I'd be worried about being arbitrarily arrested, deported, and banned from re-entry.
That's not going to happen unless you commit a serious crime, in which case it's not arbitrary. I can't think of a single case that's made the news.
Meanwhile across the pond in America you have the nightly news reporting on children and people in cages screaming. People being rounded up for not being white. Little to no due process at all until you've been through 6 rounds of hell.
By "commit a serious crime" I assume you mean "publicly state that I support Palestine Action" or maybe "hold a blank sign at a protest". Those are serious crimes in the UK now. But as I said, the worst they're going to do is kick me out, not kill me, and that makes the difference.
> I assume you mean "publicly state that I support Palestine Action"
They are currently a proscribed group, so yes, that is included in the list of things you probably shouldn't do. You're not going to get killed for it though. You're probably not even going to get arrested in most cases.
Whether or not they should be proscribed is a different issue. The best course of action is probably to wait for the courts to decide. Pressure groups damaging military assets probably aren't going to be well received by the public regardless of which cause they're for.
This confuses so many people - the Uk has a series of constitutions and a very strong and historical legal basis for rights. It’s not strictly codified in one purposely written document but it does exist. And it’s a mistake to say if there’s no constitution then you have no fundamental rights. The UKs system is a hodgepodge but so is having a written constitution that can be regularly amended or otherwise ignored.
The problem with that view is that when the "strong legal basis" is not codified, and codified in a way that nonspecialists can at least vaguely identify and understand, it gets a lot easier to get away with ignoring it. Which the UK has been going hog wild doing in the last 20 years or so.
I am not saying the US is better in practice. The bottom line is that authority worshippers will take whatever liberties they can get away with in any system.
I’m not really defending the system, just making the point about a form of constitution existing. Even if the things you mention were nailed down in a constitution, that constitution could be amended to undo them, same as every other form of law.
This is precisely the reason why I don't want to visit the US at the moment.
The USA immigration officers can ask me to forfeit my phone's password and look at all my photos, documents, messages, call logs etc, WITHOUT SUSPICION.
Some of that data can even stay on their servers for decades, and who knows if it ends up on a CIA/NSA server.
Of course, I can always refuse, but non-cooperation with CBP means immediate denial of entry and risks of lifelong headaches with future immigration checks.