Quick reminder: Non US citizens only go to conferences outside the US.
There is no excuse we should put up with this.
Canada and EU are much better locations for this reason alone.
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Not much better in Canada: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/guilty-plea-ends-case-t...
And also Australia and the UK:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-08/if-a-border-agent-dem...
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/traveler-who-refused-to-gi...
It seems to be mostly a Five Eyes thing.
It scares me the number of people who think that the US is in some uniquely bad place for some issue, not because of "whataboutism" but because of the blindness it can entail and skewed perceptions of all sides. No, it's not a dystopia in the US, but a wonderland paradise everywhere else. There's plenty of places that treat various people badly.
Countries often have reciprocal arrangements regarding how they treat each other's citizens. If your country treats country X's citizens like crap, odds are country X will start treating your country's citizens like crap too.
Because of this, it's likely that the world will likely spiral to worse and worse treatment of everyone. As the saying goes, an eye for an eye and soon the whole world is blind.
This is why Brazil now fingerprints travellers from the USA and not from anywhere else.
Yup! Not sure why Canada gets to slip under the radar on things like this. They are demanding access to devices as well.
“On the other hand, we’ve got very recent case law from the Supreme Court of Canada, starting in about 2010, that says you’ve got an intense amount of privacy in your electronic devices."
If he went all the way up to the supreme court instead of taking the plea deal, the story might have gone the other way.
Well if CBSA continues with this practice I hope it ends up with a lawsuit and gets shut down by the supreme court.
Or New Zealand: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/10/0...
Given their reported membership in the Five Eyes, I don't see NZ as a place to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
In the past several years, I’ve entered 6 countries as a US citizen. Only Canada has demanded access to my phone.
Another anecdotal point, in the past few years I've entered the US a dozen times, China, SA, Australia, Canada and some European countries outside my native France, and I've never been asked to unlock my phone once. I always get the fingerprint treatment at LAX though.
Getting fingerprint is supposed to be a standard procedure.
I was asked to unlock my phone trying to get to Canada as a US citizen too.
What are they even trying to find on your phone?
Evidence that you're coming to Canada to stay and perhaps work, rather than visit temporarily.
Are these kinda searches that common?
Also, don't fly through the US to get to that conference in Canada.
Is it a risk if you stay in the airport, in the secure zone? (Whatever it's called...I've flown rarely over the past couple of decades.)
Yes, on a flight to and from New Zealand with a refuel/crew change in LA I was fingerprinted, retina scanned and asked about my personal business despite being held in the "secure" zone.
This was 2005 so they didn't have such a hard-on for electronic devices back then. Seeing as the US has upped its game quite a bit since then, the likelihood of me ever visiting the US is now zero. Sorry my fellow US HN'rs.
And you know it's such a shame because I had a trip to Boston in November 2002, and even with it being only just over a year since 9/11, my passage through customs was friction-less and the staff were delighted that we'd come to visit the US. No fingerprints, no eyeball scanning, no interrogation, just a friendly "business or pleasure, and enjoy your stay".
All flights that stop in the USA require all passengers to clear customs before continuing their journey.
The US forces you to clear customs regardless of your final destination (transfers included).
There is no transit visa to the US. Everyone landing goes through customs and immigration regardless of whether you are connecting to another flight.
Yes the secure zone is even more risky in my opinion.
Canada is not exactly welcoming to visitor. Particularly visitors that may have a mark on their background check from any number of years ago. Good luck getting in at all -- its becoming a common mention in hip hop lyrics even.
>Canada is not exactly welcoming to visitor. Particularly visitors that may have a mark on their background check from any number of years ago.
Not a bug, working as intended. Entering a country that you aren't a citizen of isn't some inalienable human right, especially if you're a convicted criminal.
By that same token there is no reason to complain about how difficult it can be to enter the U.S. for certain individuals -- or working as intended as you call it. I also find it a bit disturbing how easily you apply law & order in the name of a country that was not involved in deciding the validity of that decision or the circumstances behind it.
Pretty much any country does this. Unless you're a citizen of that country, you have no right to enter it and should be on your best behavior at all times, and they can decline you for any reason they feel like, justified or not.
I've been all across the world. I've been turned away from Canada twice (every occasion) over some weed 15 years ago. No other country cares unless you are applying for a long term visa or something. I even tried applying for the right to visit and was turned down (again, over weed).
Americans who have concealed carry permits on their person when entering Canada will have their vehicle searched with a fine toothed comb.
That’s actually pretty reasonable. I don’t think anyone reasonable thinks Canada doesn’t have the right to enforce their firearm laws at their border.
> Americans who have concealed carry permits on their person when entering Canada will have their vehicle searched with a fine toothed comb.
If the Canadian border authorities are searching your person, such that they are likely to notice something like a concealed carry permit, your border crossing has already gone south.
Alternatively, prefer to avoid bringing your own devices with you when you fly. Leave your laptop and smartphone at home, and rent temporary ones after you cross.
Better, have a secure server at home and ansible playbooks to set up laptops (including getting any minor secrets that you need onto that laptop. Restrict more important stuff to just ssh).
If your threat model doesn't include physical tampering/rootkits, just wipe your devices pre-travel and set it up when you get where you're going. If it does and you can afford to mitigate that risk, arrange to have cheap new devices at your destination and travel with nothing.
If you're going that route, why not just create a disk image and scp it from your server? Certainly a lot easier than trying to rebuild everything from scratch.
Would work if you trusted that the devices weren't tampered during inspection. Why would I put my keys on something which might've been wiretapped? If you really need to compute whilst traveling or through the states, just buy something cheap whilst you're there.
Nah , just backup and then wipe all your devices and then restore them after customs. (Kevin mitnick does this).
Or, perhaps he says that but has two passwords, one that decrypts and runs an OS and one that presents as if no OS is installed?
How do you find a rented laptop trustworthy?
Although it may not be morally ok, one could just buy a laptop for a conference etc, and then return it after a week if the store has a return policy. I've seen stores take back laptops no questions asked for up to 60 days.
If you are in a pinch.
If not you can just sell it (there or at home) and take the loss as a rental fee.
Why wouldn't a rented laptop be trustworthy?
Could you give us a set of countries whose customs agencies cannot refuse entry to non-residents, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason?
I have a feeling that is an empty set.
Under the terms of the UN Treaty there are actually certain non-residents that the US cannot refuse visas and entrance to.
I don’t think this so great for non us citizens working in the USA because they have to go in and out and can just as well be denied entry. For someone like that who made his life in the USA and has family here, going to conferences outside the USA is potentially much worse and riskier than say a German resident and citizen getting denied travel into the USA for a number of years.
This is not remotely unique to the U.S.
No it's not but this kind of issue tends to happen more frequently in the US.
Quick reminder: Without a true Bill of Rights, your rights, as much you might think they are secure, are virtual at best.
The same is true with a Bill of Rights.
The government does what the government wants. If you're lucky, later a different part of the government will apologize.
A bill of rights may reduce the odds that those enumerated rights are denied to you, but it cannot prevent it.
Maybe they're just trying to make flying so annoying people don't do it, to help with global warming. Just video conference, easier, faster, better for not drowning.