A US citizen who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) was stopped by Customs and Border Protection (CPB) when reentering the US shortly after the President’s Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States was issued. This is newsworthy because CPB officers asked the JPL engineer, Sidd Bikkannavar, who was returning to the US from Patagonia to turn over his Jet Propulsion Lab secured smartphone and his PIN to it (h/t: Gizmodo). Bikkanavar describes what happened in a Facebook post:
Sorry for the absence. On my way home to the US last weekend, I was detained by Homeland Security and held with others who were stranded under the Muslim ban. CBP officers seized my phone and wouldn’t release me until I gave my access PIN for them to copy the data. I initially refused, since it’s a JPL-issued phone (Jet Propulsion Lab property) and I must protect access. Just to be clear – I’m a US-born citizen and NASA engineer, traveling with a valid US passport. Once they took both my phone and the access PIN, they returned me to the holding area with the cots and other sleeping detainees until they finished copying my data.
I’m back home, and JPL has been running forensics on the phone to determine what CBP/Homeland Security might have taken, or whether they installed anything on the device. I’ve also been working with JPL legal counsel. I removed my Facebook page until I was sure this account wasn’t also compromised by the intrusion into my phone and connected apps. I hope no one was worried. JPL issued me a new phone and new phone number, which I’ll give out soon.
This is important and worrisome for several reasons. While the JPL issued phone was for unclassified information, it was issued so that Mr. Bikkanavar could access official – confidential, but unclassified – work material on it when traveling. That material, as he indicates in his Facebook post, has protected access. Even though it is unclassified government information only those who work for the government (civilians, uniformed personnel, and/or contractors) and who need to have access to it – need to know – may do so. Moreover, the instructions that come with the issuance of such devices are very specific about safeguarding the PIN and ensuring the device can be accounted for at all times. The rules for need to know access can be found here as part of the description for DL1.1.17. Need-to-Know.
A determination made by a possessor of classified information that a prospective recipient, in the interest of national security, has a requirement for access to, knowledge, or possession of the classified information in order to perform tasks or services essential to the fulfillment of an official United States Government program. Knowledge, possession of, or access to, classified information shall not be afforded to any individual solely by virtue of the individual’s office, position, or security clearance.
As Mr. Bikkanavar indicates in his post, the JPL security folks and legal counsel are now working on this. The Special Security Officer for JPL will have opened an investigation. Moreover, the Customs and Border Patrol Officers who demanded access to his phone, and got it, have now accessed information they did not need to know on a device they were not authorized to access. I would expect that part of JPL’s investigation of this will be an attempt to identify the CPB officers who did this. The slipshod manner of the implementation of this Executive Order, ostensibly issued to make Americans safer, has now led one or more Customs and Border Patrol officers to violate US government rules pertaining to access and need to know. If its found that tracking or monitoring software was placed on the device by CPB, then this will be elevated into an even more serious Interagency security breach investigation.
If you’re a Balloon Juice reader who works for the US government, is in the US military, or is a contractor working for the US government and are issued an official smart phone for your usage, please ensure you get guidance from your Special Security Officer about how to deal with Customs and Border Protection prior to traveling with it outside of the United States. We have now reached the point where one US government agency is now compromising another!
Baud
I miss the days when they only interfered in presidential elections.
Corner Stone
This has the potential for so much fun.
schrodingers_cat
Does not even sound like a Muslin name. What was the ostensible reason given for the seizure?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Like they can tell.
villiageidiocy
Cannot the CBP also search, without warrant, anyone within 100 miles of a border *or* CBP station (e.g. international airport)? If so, they can search any car or phone within 100 miles of Dulles. The folks at Langley should be very concerned.
Lapassionara
U.S. passport did not even protect him from extra scrutiny. That is just terrifying. Why would anyone want to come visit the US, unless she looks like Barbie?
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: From the Facebook post there doesn’t appear to be one other than they could.
Adam L Silverman
@villiageidiocy: If you’re on official business, unless you’re in a non-official cover (NOC) position/assignment, you travel on an official US government passport. This is not a diplomatic passport. Unless one is a contractor, then you travel on a regular US passport when on official travel pursuant to one’s assignment for the US government.
dm
Presumably this risk also extends to laptops as well.
When I worked for an employer who did that kind of work, we were told not to take out laptops overseas. If we needed a laptop for overseas business travel, we were issued a “burner” laptop (i.e., one that would be freshly reformatted on our return).
I left that company before smartphones would have become an issue (though I understand that particular place doesn’t permit bring-your-own-devices on their network, so….).
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Is this new policy? I seem to recall them claiming they have the right to ask for passwords several years ago.
Doug R
It takes a special kind of person to be a border agent….
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: So anyone can be harassed at will? I miss the days when Customs people would say welcome home, when I returned from my international travels.
Ella in New Mexico
Now THIS seems ripe for another sweeping lawsuit.
American citizen, returning from a place other than the banned countries, who works for the US Government being detained for absolutely no reason other than his apparent ethnicity as possibly coming from a “dubious” background.
They fucking think they’ve got a fucking dictatorship going on now, don’t they? Well they got rude awakening coming up…
Adam L Silverman
@dm: Yep, I would think so.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: I have no idea. I’ve never had this issue with CPB upon return from overseas temporary duty assignments or my deployment to Iraq.
RobertDSC-iPhone 6
Is this something the detainee can sue for?
lollipopguild
@villiageidiocy: It’s the Border Patrol people who should be concerned. If the Border patrol declares war on the CIA who do you think will win?
Wag
@schrodingers_cat:
Foreign sounding name in a person of dark complexion
Lapassionara
What has happened to the CBP? One minute they are helpful and welcoming, then they get an EO, and they become the kind of people who handcuff 5 year olds and keep people in holding areas for hours! and seize phones from people.
Doug R
It sounds shocking, but it’s not really new.
Elmo
So far my work has been strictly confined to CONUS plus AK and HI. Guam and Saipan have also been possibilities.
But if they send me anywhere else, I will need to address this…
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
When was that?
The only time I haven’t been harassed was crossing the border from Mexico into CA at Tijuana on my motorcycle. And I would split lanes right up to the front and they would call me first, look at my info and wave me on. Of course it was hard to hide a dozen illegals or several kilos of drugs on the bike but I never got searched or questioned once or even asked to take off my helmet. That crossing took maybe 5 minutes from coming up to the back of the line until ridding off into the US, while in a car the wait was about 2 hours or more. Every other time/place I’ve spent lots of time and had vehicles searched. And not once was there any welcome home.
Svensker
@Ella in New Mexico:
I hope so but I doubt it.
Adam L Silverman
@Doug R: Yep, pretty much everyone in Florida can be searched at all times.
ETA: And while I disagree with that policy and the Federal Court ruling on it, that’s different than demanding access to US government issued smartphones or laptops. Those are covered under need to know. And CPB doesn’t in order to do their jobs.
mai naem mobile
What the fuck? Seriously what the fuck? These isn’t just the executive order. These are mofo CBP RWNJS feeling emboldened to pull this shit. Probably some redneck POS acting like those fucking racist cops on a power rush.
schrodingers_cat
@Ruckus: 2014. Boston, Logan airport was the latest.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: To be fair, Floridians are inherently suspicious.
mai naem mobile
@Adam L Silverman: You’re white.
beth
I think we’re going to start seeing some serious pushback from the corporations that depend on tourism. I work for a small hotel company and we’ve been discussing this quite a lot in the last two weeks. You would think someone who owns a hotel company would have a clue?
Mnemosyne
@Doug R:
The new twist seems to be that it’s one government agency accessing sensitive information from another government agency that they’re not supposed to be looking at. They didn’t just look at the guy’s personal information or personal research — they looked at government-owned JPL research.
If it comes down to a battle of the bureaucracies, this could get way uglier than any of the Trumpies imagined. JPL does not fuck around with security.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: All to true!
Gin & Tonic
I am not a USG employee or contractor, and not brown, but for years now, since smartphones were a thing, I keep my eastern European smartphone with friends in eastern Europe, and retrieve it when I get there. My US phone stays home. There’s a microSD card that travels with me (and is easy to conceal), but I do not carry a phone or computer when entering the US. Call me paranoid. I call myself prudent.
villiageidiocy
@Adam L Silverman: CPB has stopped persons at checkpoints which were not on the Mexican border, but were less than 100 miles from the border. Searching (without warrants) cars and devices of folks who were going about their daily business and not trying to cross the border. I’m just extending out the logic and I’m not sure what power they have away from the borders. What about the physical proximity to the international areas within airports which the CPB has control over – can they be considered borders? Can a CPB station be set up within 100 miles of any international airport and be used in the same fashion?
Adam L Silverman
@mai naem mobile: I was traveling at the time on a US government issued passport and/or had copies of my official travel orders with me.
evodevo
@schrodingers_cat: ‘Cause he was darker than the accepted norm probably – and had one a them furrin names … we live in interesting times
Ack! I see Wag beat me to it.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: That is very, very smart.
Adam L Silverman
@villiageidiocy: I do not know.
scav
@Lapassionara: They’ve always been these people, it just never hit the news this way, and they’ve been essentially licensed to do what they’ve always done on the down low to the most vulnerable.
? Martin
This is the 4th such story I’ve heard of someone on a US passport who looks muslim being detained, including this one.
I hope the state AGs are collecting this information to help bolster the case that this is not a 7 nation travel ban but an effort toward a full-on Muslim ban.
Lapassionara
@scav: yes. The difference this time was the publicity. Sigh
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: I call you Prudence. That’s not a problem, is it?
Timurid
@Mnemosyne: I wonder if he was harassed not (just) because of his ethnicity but because he was a filthy scientist.
scav
WHoof!
A) natural-born U.S. citizen
B) enrolled in CBP’s Global Entry program, so already with a background check
C) working for JPL
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
It’s possible but, again, pitting federal bureaucracies against each other is generally a bad idea.
Mnemosyne
@scav:
Depending on what he does at JPL, he probably has additional security clearances as well.
Elmo
@? Martin: Not really disagreeing with you, but: how does one “look Muslim?”
Brown? There’s an entire continent to our South that’s full of Catholics.
Brown and bearded? Brown, bearded and wearing robes? These Hindus and Sikhs over here would like to have a word.
Not that I think you’re wrong, only that people are idiots.
Ruckus
Seems to me that a lot of the conservative gang and the religious extremists are isolationists first and foremost. Go back and think of all the things they say. American exceptionalism, America first, we can just bomb the fuck out of them, they don’t count, even global warming and on and on. Go back and look at conservatism 50 yrs ago, 100 yrs ago, whenever, it doesn’t matter. They are the party of exclusion, if you aren’t one of us, you are one of them. Their entire concept is to exclude anyone who isn’t like them, speak english, immigrants are bad, the list runs long.
How do you combat that fear? That fear not of danger but of difference. They aren’t all that stupid, they know people are getting shot, that’s why they want guns, to shoot back or even first. The issue is that they see danger in difference not in actual danger.
We have to marginalize that concept that difference=danger. People of color are different, humans without the same genitalia are different, people who don’t speak the pigeon english we do are different, people who don’t worship the same god are different…….. These are the people they are afraid of, people who are different than them.
What now?
sigaba
A friend of mine is presently scouting locations for his next feature in Jordan, he’s Armenian. Part of the production planning involves how they’re going to get all of their dailies out of the area, last time he shot in the ME his media was confiscated for months. Since everything is digital now he’ll probably set up a storage location somewhere in Asia with AWS and encrypt/relay from there over the Internet.
(I assume this is how terrorists do it too.)
Ruckus
@Elmo:
I think you answered my question before I asked it.
PhoenixRising
I’m considering doing a backup to the cloud before I re-enter, then resetting my devices to factory.
Is there something I’m not thinking of? The relevant law seems to be that my devices can be taken from me and copied for later perusal if I sass a CBP agent. Or went the wrong place. Or whatever. But I guess I’m wondering, as a citizen in private enterprise, whether it makes sense to simply upload everything to the cloud before boarding the flight to JFK, then log out and wipe it while getting lined up at the gate.
Feedback welcome.
scav
@Mnemosyne: If they thought with both hands for a week — in teams — they may not have come up with a better poster child for demonstrating their essential thoughtless policy being enacted in a discordant and ham-fisted fashion. whee!
? Martin
@Elmo: Agree 100%. I imagine there aren’t a lot of Indonesians being picked up, either.
PhoenixRising
@sigaba:
I have a trip coming up end of the month, and I can’t really risk every client I meet having their number linked with every other client and location such that they would be unable to enter the US because their identity is flagged as ‘associates travel to Muslim nations’.
I bought an unlocked GSM device for this trip & plan to buy it a SIM at my first EU location. However, I will be creating some work product that I’d like to be able to save.
Maybe a microSD card tucked into my whatever.
Papers, please!
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne:
Because they’re not so very bright and they didn’t understand the difference, plus they were in an overstimulated adrenaline rush to fuck over someone they were sure was one of those ragheads trying to sneak into America?
This is what happens when there’s a leadership vacuum like there was, in which an overly broad order came down with no clarification or direction and was left up to the G-7”s at the airports to determine how to implement. It was like the fucking Lord of the Flies in every international airport in the US that day.
Fucking pray for the day that Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions and Michael Flynn are all frog-marched out of their offices and charged with conspiracy to work with a foreign enemy to commit treason, or whatever we can legally call it.
Timurid
@Adam L Silverman: Any thoughts on this little gem?
sigaba
@PhoenixRising: Have the lappy wiped before you leave the house and keep all your critical documents on an SD card or USB drive, then you can just format the drive (or just destroy it). Erasing an external volume is a lot faster and secure than trying to wipe a laptop on an airplane.
sigaba
@PhoenixRising: I would not try to hide any media on my person.
If you’re creating work documents use Dropbox or some cloud service to upload it.
ruemara
If you back up your device and ship it, would that be sensible?
sigaba
@ruemara: My understanding is if you fedex an encrypted hard drive it’s absolutely possible CPB will call you up and ask for the password. Or they’ll just degauss the motherfucker if they’re bored.
ThresherK
I haven’t been in a plane since 2000. However, after 9/11 the amateur radio community in the USA has been advised that if they’re carrying-on a radio (receiver or transceiver) to be prepared with charged batteries and demonstrate that it works as a radio.
I don’t know if this is a regulation, but I hope to hell that hams from other nations are prepared to do this when entering the US. (Reciprocal licensing, wherein you’re allowed to operate a transmitter in one country because you’re licensed in another, is a popular thing.)
This situation is getting soooo out of hand.
sukabi
So who’s going to stop Bannon, Manafort, Paige, Miller and drumpf and dump their phones? Right now they are the biggest threats to this country.
3 weeks in and it’s already been way too fucking long.
PhoenixRising
@sigaba: Good points. Not carrying a laptop, because it’s too much trouble to figure out how to secure it from my own government. The phone and tablet I normally carry I can back up before I leave the house, upload changes to the cloud during the trip, then reset when I’m done reading on the return.
The local phone has a mini SD card. Maybe I’ll mail it to myself.
Gin & Tonic
@ruemara: I have done that too.
sigaba
@PhoenixRising: Phones are hard. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t start seeing solutions on the market. I have an old iPhone I use for running, it’s blank and has no logins on it, it’s my international travel phone.
Dropbox etc. are your best bet as long as you don’t have to move tens of terabytes every day.
Helenin\eire
Wait. What? Am I gonna get stopped a immigration?
Baud
I took my phone when I went to Europe last year, but I wouldn’t do that again.
Taylor
You can install your own cloud drive on your local network, and allow access from the internet. Best Buy sells solutions (e.g. WD), more sophisticated alternatives are available (e.g. Synology). I don’t know how secure Internet access is. About as secure as any Web server, which means, probably not very.
Dropbox stuff is encrypted with keys that DB controls, who knows who they provide access to.
If you store anything that you encrypt in a 3rd party cloud (AWS, DB, Google Drive), assume you are on an FBI watch list. Ditto encrypted email.
sigaba
@Taylor: I have terabytes of encrypted commercial archives on AWS. They can watch me all they like.
burnspbesq
The only way this will stop is if people start suing CBP officers as individuals, and start winning motions for partial summary judgment on qualified immunity. Put their houses at risk, and see if that slows them down.
The consensus among a private FB group of which I am a member is that if you’re traveling back to the United States from overseas, (1) sync your devices (preferably to a computer at home or office, rather than to the cloud) before you leave for the airport, (2) wipe them before landing, and (3) restore when you get back to the location of the backup. I might even go one step further: (4) toss your SIM card in the trash before you board and (5) stop at your carrier’s most convenient retail store on the way home to get a replacement.
Anybody know of an “invisible” audio recording app?
MobiusKlein
I hate that we need this level of paranoia for our routine travel.
At my office, we got an email with company policy for unlocking company laptops while traveling abroad. I work for a financial services & related company, with office all over the place. So… I wonder how long before they issue burner laptops for travel too.
burnspbesq
@Lapassionara:
CBP have been assholes ever since the reorganization that moved them from Treasury to Homeland Security. I once hit Customs at Pearson Airport in Toronto during a shift change, bitched rather loudly about how long the line was and my fear of missing my flight, and was threatened with arrest.
Millard Filmore
@PhoenixRising:
I recommend that you copy your data to a cloud storage service like Mountfile.net or Datafile.com or even use Google Drive which you get free with google mail. But get a throw-away gmail name to do that and do not connect to it on your phone, and only on a “private” window in Firefox.
I have been through the experience described here. They took my stuff to a back room “to do a forensic analysis”. Gotta roll my eyes at that one. There are thousands of OS files on a laptop. Many places to hide things.
BUT DO NOT HIDE THINGS on your laptop or phone. Put it in the cloud, do not carry it across the border.
Cooperate always and pleasantly, volunteer nothing.
Chet Murthy
@Elmo: Heh. I’m of South Asian descent. When I was growing up, I was variously a “wetback”, a “sand-ni(clang!)”, “camel-jockey”. Don’t remember any of the others. Oh, and “little Indian boy”.
The deal’s simple: “boy, you ain’t from around here, are you (heh heh heh)”.
Mike in NC
I worked as a software engineer contractor for several companies in the DC area for about 20 years. By far the worst project was with the US Customs Data Center (1999-2002), where they went apeshit concerning security after 9/11. Many of the other contractors were hardcore wingnuts and a lot of the government employees weren’t much better. Cop mentality, etc. Transferred to another office ASAP and was so happy.
burnspbesq
@sigaba:
Dropbox is notoriously insecure. Find a service that encrypts at rest and in transit, and doesn’t have your password. I use Tresorit.
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: Same thing that I’ve told those of you who have emailed me about it:
Taylor
@burnspbesq:
If you record a CBP person without their permission, you are in violation of wiretap laws.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
Worth noting is that for a brown guy Bikkanavar’s often pretty fucking pale, though coming back from a racing trip in South America he’d probably have gotten some sun while there. I hope JPL makes a serious issue of this, and as a US citizen he may well have a 1983 action. Emphasis on “may” as I have not researched the issue but it’s a possibility.
Adam L Silverman
@Helenineire: If you’re traveling on your US passport most likely not. But it is a possibility now that if you fit whatever profile they’re looking for you could be subjected to extra scrutiny.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Adam L Silverman: We were supposed to email you? I did not know, and have been a slacker as a result.
Adam L Silverman
@MobiusKlein:
This is the point of what they’re doing. They want people to be afraid. They need people to be afraid. And they want and need people to give in to despair. To just give up. Don’t let them.
chris
@Ruckus: Things begin to make a certain demented sense if one is deeply concerned about white genocide and recognises the urgent need for a white homeland. With nukes.
Gods, I despise the term “homeland”
Villago Delenda Est
@Ella in New Mexico: Pure.Fucking.Racism.
Absolutely pure.
We must purge this mentality from this country. If it takes expelling stupid white guys from all government positions, so be it.
Adam L Silverman
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: You email me all the time!
I get questions, requests, complaints, and the occasional bit of spam on my official Balloon Juice email address. I try to reply to everyone but the spam. Or, as appropriate, do a post.
I’ve been meaning to put something else up about the news reporting regarding LTG Flynn, but have not had a chance yet. Was going to do it tonight, but saw this and decided it was worth posting on.
Adam L Silverman
@chris: If you’ve seen any of the clips of Stephen Miller from the Sunday shows, most of the commentary revolves around “his statements are factually inaccurate and he’s nuts”.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Taylor: I’ve noticed the signs when getting off an overseas flight prohibiting any use of cellphones or cameras. I always sort of shrugged it off and thought, “don’t know why they’d object, but OK, who cares?”
Now suddenly I’ve got a queasy feeling about the un-American reasons those signs (and presumably any supporting legislation that allows them to post them) might be there.
Not sure if those signs have always been there. Only noticed them the last couple of years.
chris
@Adam L Silverman: It would appear that they’re all nuts from the very top down to the lowliest brownshirt. It’s frightening, to say the least.
Seth Owen
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd-bikkannavar-detained-cbp-phone-search-trump-travel-ban
The Verge article includes a photo. Guy is whiter than I am, so I’m guessing it was simply his odd-sounding (to a clueless American) name.
Amazing.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@chris:
My primary gripe on the allowances seemingly granted by the Bush administration to every lance corporal manning a checkpoint was that you don’t grant that kind of discretion to men barely out of their teens. Military justice needs to apply in all instances to the military, and civilian justice to spooks – and if information needs to be gained by extraordinary acts with crimes committed, THAT is the point and purpose of pardon authority. It should be rare, not commonplace.
When we let the lowliest thugs among us have discretion, really bad things happen, as we’ve now seen.
What kind of mentality would it take to fuck with the former PM of Norway over a trip he took over two years ago? On a clearly marked diplomatic passport?
chris
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: What kind of mentality? “Absolute power corrupts…”
Central Planning
@schrodingers_cat: I loved it when customs said “Welcome home”. I wish they still did it.
Yarrow
This story getting the attention it is will catch the attention of companies that don’t want their top secret data stolen. Like tech companies developing new devices or software. Or pharm companies working on a new medication. Any company, and that’s most, will have data they don’t want stolen.
Imagine how much power the CPB has. They can download and potentially steal and sell data from anyone they want. Someone in product development at Apple is flying in? Steal the data and sell it to Samsung. Or Google. If you were a CEO, would you want your people flying overseas with tech that has or has access to top secret data? How will they handle that? Is this going to slow business travel to a crawl?
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Seth Owen: That was my point earlier- dude’s pretty pale (hot, though) given some presumably Indian ancestry based on his name. Although having been in South America for a couple of weeks, he may have gotten some sun which could have changed his skin tone.
Roger Moore
@PhoenixRising:
If you want to be really careful, you should have a dummy image rather than a complete factory wipe. A factory wipe makes it obvious that you’ve erased your data, which would make anyone suspicious enough to look at your phone even more suspicious. Instead, you want to have something innocuous that makes it clear you’ve actually used the phone but doesn’t contain anything remotely incriminating. For example, you could have a second Google account that has its own Twitter account that’s an egg who follows a handful of celebrities, some pictures of food you ordered at restaurants, the email account you use when you’re expecting people to spam you, etc.
schrodingers_cat
@Seth Owen: I checked your link, he also looks like Jeebus.
pluky
@Adam L Silverman: You’re not brown, with a “funny” name.
Ruckus
@chris:
demented sense
I think you got the first half right. Pretty sure that second word is misused, even with the modifier.
NotMax
By this time next year, all fliers will have to wear only government issued Speedos (surcharge conveniently added to ticket cost). The only allowable carry on item will be whatever you wore to the airport, sealed in the equivalent of carbonite.
Luggage will be ‘guaranteed’ to arrive 48 hours after you do, following ‘routine inspection.’
Sam
I’m one of those people with a bat phone and it seems simple to me. I do not give it up until the security people at my agency tell me it is ok. Security is a personal responsibility.
There are real issues. For instance, source selection material is guarded very strictly. Unclassified email marked source selection sensitive can only be shared with small groups of people. So if you have those sorts of emails on your govt device, it is most definitely not ok to let someone else copy those emails. Doesn’t matter who they are.
Mnemosyne
@Sam:
It would be very interesting if someone with sensitive US government material on their phone refused to allow the TSA to copy it and to see exactly what happened when the TSA minions went up against a high-level lawyer or bureaucrat.
However, it’s easy for me to think about how interesting it is because I wouldn’t be the one who would have to sit in a detention room at the airport waiting for that shit to get sorted out.
eyelessgame
As this is the most recent open thread – I’m in northern California watching the Oroville spillway – they’re evacuating Oroville and parts of Marysville, both of which are over 10K people; the spillway is failing and the whole hillside looks like it’s in the process of waterlogging and collapsing. (Cue Republicans calling for tax cuts.) This is a big deal – Lake Oroville is a big reservoir and we’re going to lose a lot of that capacity, maybe permanently.
Mnemosyne
@eyelessgame:
Yikes! Martin was giving up some updates earlier based on the press conferences. This is the crappy thing about climate change: 5+ years of drought are followed by more rain than the reservoirs were designed to hold. Hopefully the whole damn thing doesn’t fall apart.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
For me, I’ll just leave the photos in place, leave text messages in place, but delink my Outlook on the tarmac. Fuck ’em-I have client details in there, credit card numbers, etc. They can’t make me relink it without technically breaking privilege., and if they want abuse, they can experience it from me.
sdhays
This isn’t totally new, and I believe the power for CBP to do this was granted from the PATRIOT Act reauthorization a few years ago. I work for a British company and after the law was changed, a company-wide email was sent out that employees were not to take their work laptops or equipment through customs without first getting approval from a security officer. Apparently, an executive had been stopped at the border and forced (or nearly forced) to allow access to his corporate laptop with potentially sensitive (government) data.
Multi-National corporations, regardless of their business and whether or not they do business with governments (but especially those) are already upset about this – if this signals a stronger willingness to use that power on the part of the Republican Administration, then perhaps they’ll do more than grumble.
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
One interesting point that I didn’t notice explicitly mentioned (maybe obliquely by Gin & Tonic) in the previous Flynn thread is that observer.com is the remaining outlet for the former New York Observer and was until very recently, or maybe still, owned by Jared Kushner. One struggles to read the article in that light as a straight news piece. Cough. (Having fun watching it all. )
I’m assuming wikipedia is largely accurate here: New York Observer
sdhays
@Yarrow: Really, any company doing any kind of business overseas should be worried about this, not just tech companies. Every company has trade secrets, not the least of which are oil companies. It’s not like CBP gives any kind of guarantee on the safety of your data after they’ve copied it; they can easily sell it and I suspect that the legality of that would be a best a gray area. CBP is given way too much latitude, but it’s easier to overlook when it’s not being told to abuse its power all the way from the top.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: You are correct that Jared Kushner owned it and that he recently sold it/signed it over to his brother. Schindler has repeatedly stated that they have never interfered with what he has written.
Cain
I made a post on this on facebook with the linked article. Ive encrypted my phone, but they could try to get it from me by showing me a list of consequences. But basically what I told my friends on facebook is that your personal information would be compromised and that whatever I have stored on my phone would be open to investigation. That means anybody who has a muslim name and indian name will be investigated, but as well the americans will also. With photos there is sophisticated facial recognition that can also extract information.
I think PhoenixRising has the right idea, and that is reset the phone prior to international travel and then do not hook up any social media at all. All they should have is your texts to your love one. If they want my facebook, tell them they are welcome ot search for my name and read my public posts. I will say I already swore an oath to the U.S. that should be good enough.
But be careful out there, even domestic travel is not safe for people of foreign sounding names. They will take you aside. I’m in San Diego right now and I took my passport so that I have some claim to American citizenship. We are living in strange times.
Sab
I am just a middle aged wildfire, and this whole thread has been amazing and scary. Thanks, and I mean that. We need to know this stuff is going on.
Adam L Silverman
@Sab: What exactly is a middle aged wildfire?
Sab
It’s autocorrects idea of a housewife. I love it and will use it henceforth. My poor spouse.
Sab
Actually I meant to say luddite .How auto correct turned that into wildfire I don’t know. Weird and wonderful.
Nelle
We are tech illiterate and overseas right now. Husband has to go back for work (scientist at environmental branch of law firm). I am tempted to just stay here, where we used to live (dual citizen of allied country, as if that means anything anymore).
randy khan
@Cain:
Seriously, if they want to get your social media, they don’t need to look at your laptop or phone. They have lots of other ways to get that, so I wouldn’t worry about that stuff. Personal financial data, confidential business files, etc. – that’s a different story.
opiejeanne
@burnspbesq: Changing planes in Chicago we were required to go through security, and the ninny looking at boarding passes didn’t recognize an airline code in the top right corner, thought it meant “random check”. I didn’t know what she was looking at so I let her put me in a glass isolation booth while she called for security. My husband had gone through the stand next to mine and sailed through, but he stood inside the gate and watched me while we waited for someone to come and clear me. The clock was ticking down on our connecting flight, and after 10 minutes the idjit who had stuck me in the box noticed my husband and asked if he was with me, and stuck him in the box with me, and called for security, and security did not come.
We didn’t fuss because we’d seen the video of the nursing mother they did this too and how they treated her when she tried to talk to them. People walked past the booth, staring at us but we didn’t care because we don’t know them, we just wanted to make the flight. I think this was 2010.
Finally a supervisor wandered over and asked about us, looked at our boarding passes and chewed the ass of the idiot, and let us go. We ran to our gate and boarded just in time.
Dave laughs that they stuck him in the box because he was flying with a terrorist. *snort*
Those people are assholes.
Before that, back in 2005, they harassed us about my dad’s wheelchair at Dulles, made him get out of it to walk through the metal detector, then they harassed me about some thing they spotted in my purse, asking what I had in my purse but wouldn’t let me see what they were asking about. I finally stood on tiptoe and spotted the little flat wrench used to adjust Dad’s wheelchair and the supervisor came up and chewed her ass because the item was on a list of allowed items with a picture. They had made Dad take off his shoes so after we cleared up the wrench issue I was tying his shoes and some little weenie fussed at me that we had to move, we had been there too long. I stood up and turned around and let him have it: DO YOU SEE WHAT I AM DOING? DO YOU SEE MY FATHER IN THE WHEELCHAIR? WE WILL MOVE WHEN I GET HIS SHOES TIED. THE ONLY REASON WE ARE STILL IN THIS AREA IS BECAUSE YOUR COLLEAGUE DID NOT DO HER JOB CORRECTLY.
He backed way way down.
I must have looked like I was going to remove his spleen. Through his nose.
sigaba
@burnspbesq: When I want to put something safe on Dropbox I use encrypted disk images. On Windows I understand you can create encrypted ZIPs with simple tools.
Fancier people should research PGP/GPG. It’s what I use for all my bulk cloud AWS archives.
Tehanu
@chris:
Me too. I really have trouble with the idea that this particular soil — not these particular ideals as stated in the Declaration and the Constitution — is what makes us Americans. And on top of this, they would — wouldn’t they? — choose a word that reeks of Nazism. Heimat!
SWMBO
@opiejeanne: With a wheelchair wrench. I would pay real money to see that.
J R in WV
@Seth Owen:
I note that he has long hair and a beard, and probably multiple graduate degrees – you never know what those long-haired folk are learning in those graduate schools!!!
I also have long hair and a beard, but I’m from West Virginia, and look maybe a little bit like a once-was biker. My hobbies involving heavy hand tools and big power tools have resulted in a somewhat burly build. My hobbies involving food and drink have resulted in a large waist size. Sad.
Haven’t been asked for social media account passwords, which is a good thing, as I wouldn’t touch Facebook or Twitter, etc with a long stick.
And I too hate the term homeland anything. My home is Planet Earth. I like most of it. All I’ve seen so far, except Border Patrol checkpoints, ICE, TSA.
Guess I’ll be buying a new laptop to take on travel, with nothing but navigation and books on it. Buy a cheap phone over there, take numbers on a piece of tissue paper – the few I don’t remember.
ETA: I have a friend who does systems admin on the side, a government scientist full time. He has an odd sense of humor, all his wireless devices have assigned names like “FBI Field Team AB47NG42” and the like. No one ever tries to use those for anything.
The Moar You Know
Adam, thanks. But damn if you haven’t given me a world-class headache with this, because I’m going to have to get a policy in place for my traveling guys immediately.
NorthLeft12
I am a Canadian who lives right across the St. Clair River from Michigan. I pretty much never cross the border anymore, with the biggest reason being the yahoos who represent the US as border guards. It completely baffles me why you put the most incompetent and bellicose people in that job. I guess it makes sense if you believe that everyone coming into the US is trying to do your country some harm and you need them to be aggressively challenged. But for the +99.98% who are just visiting for pleasure or regular business, this is kinda a large turn off.
Not surprised to hear that border guards went heavy for Deadbeat Donald.
I would be interested to hear if US citizens have similar encounters with Canadian border guards. They are very friendly to me, but then again I’m a Canadian and I wonder if they go full pit bull with citizens from the US or other countries.
Larkspur
@NorthLeft12: My only memories are from the 60s. My grandparents lived in Detroit, and every autumn, they’d take me and my sister to the great-grandparents’ farm in Connecticut. We’d travel through Canada, of course, and I cannot recall the border crossings at all, except for I was a little scared of the Ambassador Bridge. What I mean, of course, is that the border was less trouble than some toll road, and I never saw rudeness or anger or anything, just a smooth easy crossing both ways. Heck, in the Detroit area, our coin currency was all mixed up with Canadian coin currency, and no one cared; we just used the coins together.
I have no idea what it is like today, which is what you were asking, but I’d be so sad to hear that it’s become problematic for anyone. It probably has become more of an issue, because these are modern times. Back then I was worried about the atomic bomb blast radius and if I’d live through it. Later we worried about skyjacking, but mostly those ended okay: the hijacker wanted passage to someplace, or money, and everyone was scared and inconvenienced but no one imagined a plane itself being weaponized. But do not mistake this for nostalgia for a simpler time. It wasn’t simpler, it was just different.
NorthLeft12
@Larkspur: I was born and raised in Windsor, Ontario in the sixties and seventies, and as a child and teenager travelled across the border often. I never recalled any issues besides trying to avoid the slow lines as we came through the tunnel or bridge.
Even as a young adult, and husband and father I never was bothered much at any crossings. Shit got real after 9/11 though.
NOTE: I am a Caucasian though……….if that means anything.
Larkspur
@NorthLeft12: My past self (the tall skinny awkward white girl) waves at your past self from across the river. I’m part Canadian, which makes me happy. My grandma was born in London Ontario, the youngest of seven kids, the rest of whom emigrated from Glasgow, Scotland. I’m not gonna ask for Canadian asylum, though. I’m an American citizen and we broke it so I and the rest of the Ami jackals have to fix it. But cheers anyway!