Courts close the loophole letting the feds search your phone at the border
reason.com
Coming from a district court, I think this ruling could be appealed, but it's welcome news nevertheless.
Coming from a district court, I think this ruling could be appealed, but it's welcome news nevertheless.
It's still an excellent idea to power off your phone whenever you are in the vicinity of a border guard and never voluntarily unlock it anywhere close to the border. You can't (generally) be compelled to unlock your phone but you absolutely can have an unlocked phone grabbed out of your hands by a border guard with no legal right to lock it.
Isn't that defined as 100 mile from the border (including international airports)
I believe it's 100 miles from the border including coastlines but does not include a 100 mile radius around international airports. I don't remember the source but Ive seen a map that represented it that way.
Also worth noting, this ruling only benefits citizens in that specific district, as other districts aren't bound by its rulings. Personally I'd recommend having a 2nd device you can use to record your interactions because if they violate your rights your chances of getting their body cam video of it aren't great.
What if you’re 99 miles and 5279 feet from the border while being questioned? Can you take one more step and be safe?
And are those statute miles or nautical miles?
They'll probably claim "hot pursuit" as a justification for arresting you.
Evading arrest is likely the charge, however I'm being pedantic.
Sorry I meant hot pursuit would probably be the justification for why they'd be allowed to chase you outside their jurisdiction
Sure, like I said I was being pedantic.
It would depend on where they initiated contact. For instance, let’s say a cop from City A pulls someone over on the boundary with City B. Even if you pull over on City B’s side, it’s still a valid stop because they initiated it (turned their lights on) while still within their own legal jurisdiction. Even though you’re outside of their jurisdiction at the moment, what matters is that they first initiated contact when it was legal to do so.
Not according to Dukes of Hazzard logic.
100 miles from the border or coastline is like 90% of the population of the country. And I assume that’s a feature, not a bug.
To add, the Great Lakes count as coastline because you can navigate to an international boarder from any of them. That's how you cover the vast majority of the US population with this loophole.
Not because nearly every major population center is next to a coast?
You get a lot of the population by that alone. You get 90% by including the Great Lakes.
So I should be glad I'm in Indiana for once?
I'll take it.
About a quarter of Indiana is within that zone. https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
I’m not in that quarter thankfully. Look, let me take my wins when I can. I’m in Indiana.
Hey, at least you’re not in Ohio.
I'd rather be in Ohio than Indiana. They're both terrible but in slightly different ways. I always cringe a little when I go into Indiana but I have been to some great concerts around Indianapolis.
This is important - power OFF your phone. Your phone is more secure before you unlock it for the first time after booting. Use a strong password as well.
You can also force your device into Lockdown mode, which does the same thing, without needing to shut it down or restart it. It's easy to do quickly once you know how.
On Android it's enabled by default, you just hold the power button and press Lockdown.
https://www.lifewire.com/use-android-lockdown-mode-6287933
Iphones have a way to disable biometrics as well with a button combo, but its more a side effect of activating Emergency SOS, not a dedicated feature and how you activate it varies depending on your device model.
https://thenextweb.com/news/how-to-quickly-disable-biometrics-iphone
Lockdown mode is NOT the same. This disables biometrics, notifications, etc. But what FULLY rebooting does is protect against more sophisticated attacks like those of Cellebrite which is a company that sells devices to law enforcement that break into phones. I know border crossings often have access to a device of this type.
Your device is encrypted pretty strongly, and before you put in your password for the first time after boot your data is essentially useless. But after that first time your device keeps the decryption key in memory so that it can be useful even while locked, serving you app notifications and processing in the background. This leaves your device open to many more exploits that could get around your lockscreen and into your unencrypted data. Leaked documents show that Cellebrite can very often get into devices after first unlock, but in the "before first unlock" state they can often only use brute force which you can protect against by having a cryptographically secure password.
Looking at lockdown mode it's pretty clear that it isn't resetting to the more secure "before first unlock" state because it unlocks instantly with your password whereas after first boot there's a small pause.
I don't think the lockdown mode is the same. It looks like it just disables biometric unlocking. I just tried, and it was far too quick to unlock, so it must keep the encrypted partition unlocked.
They tried to search my laptop when they went through my car at the border, and were greeted with an encrypted boot screen. They tried to interrogate me twice. Glad to know nobody else will have to deal with that now.
"So, you're a tech guy, huh? I bet you're smart." 😐 ...
"Are you into politics? Who'd you vote for?" 🫤 ...
"I'm just trying to have a friendly conversation with you." 🤐 ...
Smart enough to not be working border patrol.
Noneya
This is obviously just you flexing what little power you have in your life.
While I agree with you, if you do this they will use violence and intimidation against you.
Of course. But it'd be nice to put these losers in their place.
I mean every work laptop is (/should be) encrypted. It's about as suspicious as having 2 factor authentication.
Note that this really only affects citizens and lawful permanent residents.
If you're not one of those, they "can't force you" to unlock it, but they CAN deny you entry.
This is huge! Finally this loophole around the 4th amendment is getting fixed.
Now if only assets could stop committing all those crimes.
Travel with a burner, wipe it before boarding . If at any time my phone has been removed from my possession, when I arrive back at my home port/airport, I remove the SIM and drop the phone in the garbage.
Laptops I mail the encrypted drive back home and travel with a clean install on a disposable 128/256g drive.
Can I tour your bunker?
Infosec, Financials and Elections. Having good security posture is fashionable.
No bunker, but you can come tour my boat.
“No bunker”
Oh, I understand.
No you don't, but that's ok, I wouldn't expect you to.
I prefer to send electronics to e-waste recycling (or reuse for some task where security doesn't matter) rather than a landfill, but I'm with you in principle: If the authorities get it out of your possession, the hardware is compromised.
Anything else yes. Possibly a compromised device, I want to go gone bye ASAP and away from me.
trying to explain to my wife why we should buy a new phone every time we visit her family
If you really don't need much room a persistent operating system on a USB stick can be very clutch.
A 512Gb USB is plenty big enough for me to have a travel OS on, with space for extras. Hell, I used to run Puppy Linux on a 64gb USB.
My EDC boots Navigatrix.
Shouldn't you also reinstall the boot loader for the same reason as you'd bin the phone?
Speak of the devil. This article is from two days ago.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/07/secure-boot-is-completely-compromised-on-200-models-from-5-big-device-makers/
Who cares I'm not going to that shit hole anyway..
Hey, parts of the US are decent
Definitely, I just like visiting countries that treat their tourists nice.
It's also a hassle to get a new phone for the trip.
Yea, Vermont is basically an honorary part of Quebec!
But you could just go to Quebec and not worry about dealing with the US federal government searching your phone because you're within 100 miles from a border.
Not so fun fact: Canadas border is not better (maybe even worse?): https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/edd-ean-eng.html
We miss the decent people, but we fear the 1% confluence of poor armed belligerent gqp, as those people are a huge risk.
The news only likes to talk about the shittiest parts.
Well, if our government can stop Americans from going to other countries to discuss peace talks.
They can also force you and anyone else to hand over your electronics. With multiple men that are armed in the airport, there is nothing you can do until they allow you to get a lawyer, and then that will also not help to keep your rights after the fact.
Sure, but we shouldn't normalize searching through phones without a warrant, especially for journalists.
It's great that the courts are standing up against CBP here.
Like the peace Ukraine can make with Russia if they just bend over?