Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

http://idlewords.com/2017/02/social_media_needs_a_travel_mode.htm

by jmduke • 9 years ago

280 220 9 years ago

vosper2• 9 years ago

We need a ‘trip mode' for social media sites that reduces our contact list and history to a minimal subset of what the site normally offers. Not only would such a feature protect people forced to give their passwords at the border, but it would mitigate the many additional threats to privacy they face when they use their social media accounts away from home.

Border security officer: I see you have trip mode on. Turn it off, and give us the phone, or you're not getting into the country.

Reminds me a little of this: https://xkcd.com/538/

idlewords25• 9 years ago

Please read the entire post.

mholt4• 9 years ago

If you're referring to a configurable duration: setting an expiration doesn't work either. They'll just detain you for that length of time.

NeutronBoy• 9 years ago

I understand, but their default response for "You've done something to hide information from us" isn't going to be "Oh well, we tried. On your way!"

nicoles• 9 years ago

I'd love to see travel modes take off. I was talking with some friends about how great it would be to be able to switch my login credentials to some sort of shared multiple person-required password for the duration of a flight. Like Shamir's Secret Sharing, but temporarily.

tptacek18• 9 years ago

To be effective, this would need to become a kind of norm for overseas travelers, the same way traveler's checks used to be. The idea would be that just as you don't carry a bag with your birth certificate, stock certificates, property titles, and jewelry with you, you also don't carry a 10 year archive of every email you've ever sent or a detailed list of every person you've ever spoken to.

In particular, it needs to be normal enough that a significant fraction of all travelers do it. The feature can't be marketed as a protection for at-risk travelers, but as a common-sense safety mechanism useful to all travelers.

I think it's crazy that people walk around with phones that have access to years of email communications, and that even in the happiest timeline we could have ended up on after 2016, features like this are long overdue.

enraged_camel• 9 years ago

>In particular, it needs to be normal enough that a significant fraction of all travelers do it.

Yes, exactly.

Border agents are trained to look for anything out of the ordinary. Currently, using a feature like this would immediately raise a huge red flag and encourage more questioning, detention and possibly even deportation based on the person's country of origin and the mood of the border agent.

Incidentally, that's why I think there is virtually zero chance for these types of features to take off: the system strongly discourages early adopters from trying them.

tptacek18• 9 years ago

Right, the idea is that US travelers would kick-start the norm by travel-locking their accounts; they're at little risk while traveling. It might take many months or even years before travel locks were normed enough that at-risk travelers could rely on them, but that just means we should get started on these features sooner than later.

Mz2• 9 years ago

Incidentally, that's why I think there is virtually zero chance for these types of features to take off: the system strongly discourages early adopters from trying them.

That can be addressed by how it is marketed. Instead of calling it "Travel mode," it could be called "Work mode" or something like that. Commercials could target college students going home to visit parents and not wanting parents to see all their crap or that sort of thing.

dublinben• 9 years ago

Thankfully, as US citizens we are free to establish a norm of using features like this, with no fear of deportation.

the_watcher3• 9 years ago

Why wouldn't it be marketed as a feature for leaving the country, not returning? There's a very reasonable case to be made that other countries have substantially worse privacy protections than the US does. Whether or not that's true is a separate conversation, but for the purposes of the border conversation about why you've enabled it, blaming the lack of Constitutional protection in foreign countries seems like a good approach to me.

TorKlingberg2• 9 years ago

Good point, but it doesn't need to be anywhere near a majority. If just 1% is travelers use it, it would not trigger more than a few extra questions. Especially if those 1% are mostly computer professionals where deeper questioning hardly ever turns up anything.

One feature I'd like with this travel mode is having a log of every bit of data that was accessed during the trip. At least then I would know how much was copied. Some kind of rate limiting would be good too, so they cannot just copy everything.

Alex3917• 9 years ago

I think it's crazy that people walk around with phones that have access to years of email communications

The one anti-pattern on every website is using your primary email address for both notifications and password resets. There is zero reason why you'd ever want an email address you have authed on your phone to handle Facebook/Twitter password resets, but the only way to avoid this is if you're willing to give up receiving whatever notifications you'd normally want to receive via email on your phone.

eridius2• 9 years ago

There is zero reason why you'd ever want an email address you have authed on your phone to handle Facebook/Twitter password resets

There's a really obvious reason: because you need to reset your password while on the go.

tedunangst4• 9 years ago

You can set a filter to only forward certain notifications.

MrQuincle• 9 years ago

It can be effective immediately.

Where do we have all this AI for?

+ Facebook can make a filter that only displays a tiny subset of all posts. A filter that only displays a tiny subset of my friends.

+ Gmail can make a filter that shows only a subset of my emails.

+ Preferably the AI can then fill it up with stuff. :-)

In this way it all looks perfectly fine. There is only way less info in it.

This would save me time from making accounts for traveling purposes.

kasey_junk4• 9 years ago

I think it's crazy that people walk around with phones that have access to years of email communications

You think its crazy in you wish you (and everyone else) had a viable alternative? Or, you think its crazy in that you do something else that others don't do?

If the latter, what do you do?

tedunangst4• 9 years ago

I have tar files of old maildirs, but they're encrypted and backed up and not readily accessible. My regular mail client has access to a smaller set of mails. Of course this requires an email setup that allows such easy bulk operations, which gmail isn't really.

ldp01• 9 years ago

It seems like there is an inherent trade-off here between the usefulness and vulnerability of our systems.

Each feature we add for our own convenience makes a more tempting prize for a potential adversary.

Edit: Whether or not a particular feature/behaviour is reasonable or crazy depends entirely on the level of threat.

TeMPOraL• 9 years ago

I think it's crazy that people walk around with phones that have access to years of email communications

Why? I thought the whole point of connected, portable computers is for one to have access to pretty much all their data on the go.

confounded• 9 years ago

Yes, for one.

Much of the point of the cloud shift was to get your data into the ownership of a private company who can make money off it.

If, for example, Apple can make up some lost money on iCloud with new obsidian gunmetal TimeCapsules with plausible deniability and localhost-tunneling features to sell to rich people, I'm sure they will try and do it.

Oxitendwe• 9 years ago

even in the happiest timeline we could have ended up on after 2016

I'm not really sure why you mentioned this, did something bad happen?

tedunangst4• 9 years ago

Prince died.

Mz2• 9 years ago

Lots of people seem to be bemoaning 2016 as The Worst Year Evarrr or something.

I am not in that camp and I have my objections to it. But, in this case, I think the sentiment is reasonable wrt the topic at hand, basically.

cbhl• 9 years ago

Read this as "even if <your favorite political candidate> had won the US election"

MBlume• 9 years ago

Yes, an incompetent autoocrat got elected to the highest government office of the most powerful nation on earth. You almost certainly already knew this.

maxerickson5• 9 years ago

One thing I wonder about is how quickly a travel mode would become grounds for denial of entry.

joezydeco• 9 years ago

Or how quickly Facebook/Google/Twitter would comply with some classified FBI/NSA directive to provide the data anyway.

The first mistake is trusting these networks with your personal life in the first place. Nothing can erase that except your ability and willpower to keep your secrets to yourself.

maxerickson5• 9 years ago

Illegitimate government actions are sort of out of scope for this discussion though (which is about convincing companies to mitigate legitimate government actions).

As for your second point, there's no going back for an awful lot of people. And holding that aside, it's a sad world where using a computer to communicate is somehow a mistake.

ksenzee3• 9 years ago

Note that CBP does not have access to all the data NSA has gathered. If they did, we wouldn't be talking about this at all; they'd already have everything they wanted.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

It's a real concern for non-citizens. US citizens can't be denied entry.

maxerickson5• 9 years ago

Right. I was assuming that was reasonably well understood.

TorKlingberg2• 9 years ago

They could. CBP can deny any non-citizen entry for just about any reason. They could just start denying all non-citizens all the time, so why don't they? Because it would hurt business, tourism and other countries would retaliate and refuse US citizens entry. That is the power we have. The time to start using Travel Mode is now, before demands for passwords becomes stand procedure at the border.

maxerickson5• 9 years ago

The time to start using Travel Mode is now, before demands for passwords becomes stand procedure at the border.

Sure. I'm pretty sure I want to activate such a feature for my email on my phone just in general.

pizza• 9 years ago

Airplane mode: from the end of the microwave peril to the era of alternative inspection, in under 10 years.

mnm1• 9 years ago

It's not like they couldn't make you turn travel mode off if they wanted to. How about pushing for a law closing this 4th amendment loophole at the borders, at least for citizens?

Not that it'd do much. If the border agents really want to see one's social media accounts, I have zero doubt they can get that data from other government agencies. In fact, they probably already have it. It sounds to me like they're just trying to assert their power and dominance over the people whose accounts they are demanding access to as a way to get off on intimidating others. Pretty typical behavior by law enforcement officers the world over.

tptacek18• 9 years ago

The idea is that they cannot in fact make you turn travel mode off, because travel mode doesn't turn off. It's a time lock. The point is that while locked, Facebook and Google Mail are still usable; they just don't have your whole history available on them.

If we stipulate that your second paragraph is true, then travel mode is in fact a complete countermeasure to that behavior. (I don't think it's true).

mholt4• 9 years ago

Why wouldn't they just detain you until the time runs out?

erentz• 9 years ago

Citizens AND permanent residents. For some reason everyone is just saying citizens. But the whole intention of asking for access to people's accounts is meant to be for verifying they are complying with their visa. [1] E.g. Similar to looking through someone's documents as they cross and seeing a letter that's an offer of work would be cause for refusal if they weren't entering with the correct work permit.

But in the case of citizens and permanent residents both have no cause for this kind of verification. They're allowed to enter for any purpose. So at the very least citizens and permanent residents should not be searched.

[1] I'm not defending the practice or saying this is how it's actually being used, but it is the only actual reasonable justification CBP have for the practice of searching phones.

mholt4• 9 years ago

How do you turn a travel mode off? Once border patrol knows this feature exists and how it works, the jig is up. Any expiration/timeout would just cause you to be detained for the duration the travel mode is enabled. A second password to turn it off would just cause that second password to be coerced out of you. Location-based deactivation can be spoofed.

ksenzee3• 9 years ago

From the fine article:

To work effectively, a trip mode feature would need to be... irrevocable for an amount of time chosen by the user once it’s set. There’s no sense in having a ‘trip mode’ if the person demanding your password can simply switch it off, or coerce you into switching it off.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

US citizens can't be detained indefinitely at the border. The limit is a few hours.

ppog• 9 years ago

That's fine for US citizens entering the US, but any 'travel mode' needs to work for the outbound trip too. If the country you're visiting has adopted a US-style border stance, then you're in no better a position than a non-US citizen visiting the US: the border forces of that other country can detain you until travel mode expires if they want. It seems like "They can't hold me for days while they wait for the mode to expire" only works for citizens returning to their own countries.

dingaling• 9 years ago

So you keep stating but there is no codified limit short of 'indefinite'.

Imagine I am a CBP agent. State your argument that I must release you after, say, 23 hours

jethro_tell2• 9 years ago

If they get your password can't they just turn of travle mode for you? Or wait until you do the same? I don't know that there is a technical answer here accept wiping your phone/laptop before you go through customes.

The real solution is a political one where we speak up and legeislate and litigate that the 4th amendment applies a the border.

paulv• 9 years ago

From the article:

To work effectively, a trip mode feature would need to be easy to turn on, configurable (so you can choose how long you want the protection turned on for) and irrevocable for an amount of time chosen by the user once it’s set. There’s no sense in having a ‘trip mode’ if the person demanding your password can simply switch it off, or coerce you into switching it off.

waterphone2• 9 years ago

Then if border agents really want to get in to a particular individual's device, they'll just detain them (or seize their device) until trip mode automatically turns off.

nodamage2• 9 years ago

It doesn't even have to be a time lock, what if you left behind a key or random passcode at home that could be used to switch it off when you return?

kjksf2• 9 years ago

This is addressed in the article: you say how long travel mode should last and once set it cannot be undone, even by the owner of the account.

deong4• 9 years ago

Wiping your stuff does no good at all. As pointed out in the article, they know who is on the flight hours before you land. They'll know you have a Facebook profile. The difference between having a laptop already logged into Facebook and a wiped laptop with no data is quite literally the time it takes them to tell you to type in the password for them. Ignorance isn't an escape clause.

Which is, I think, the same problem Maciel's solution faces. Border patrol can possibly just see that you've enabled "trip mode" (by the anemic presence) and put you back on a plane. You're welcome to try again after your trip mode expires, but if they want to see your account, there is, as sure as mathematical logic, no possible "out". Anything you do to deny them that access can be grounds to refuse you entry (if you're a non-citizen).

You're right that the only real solution is a political one. Unfortunately, there are no political solutions to any problem anymore. Not in the US at least. The days when government was even interested in solving problems are gone and I doubt they're ever coming back.

TillE3• 9 years ago

The difference between having a laptop already logged into Facebook and a wiped laptop with no data is quite literally the time it takes them to tell you to type in the password for them.

No, that's not how it works. Border agents are entitled to "search" your laptop. They can't force you to retrieve arbitrary data from a remote server.

All this with the caveat that they can, of course, refuse non-citizens for basically any reason.

tptacek18• 9 years ago

If you're an at-risk traveler, you'd enable travel-lock pretty much as soon as you decide on your itinerary, potentially before you ever get on an airline manifest.

The thing I think I see a lot of people missing here is that travel-lock doesn't wipe or disable your accounts; it just restricts history and breadth. For a lot of people, I think these services will get easier and more pleasant to use while travel-locked, so it's relatively painless to give yourself a generous margin before departing and after arriving.

username223• 9 years ago

The difference between having a laptop already logged into Facebook and a wiped laptop with no data is quite literally the time it takes them to tell you to type in the password for them.

I have no idea what most of my passwords are. They're complex strings of ASCII stored in an encrypted file on my personal machine and a few backups. If I travel internationally, I can just leave my personal machine at home.

nodamage2• 9 years ago

The real solution is a political one where we speak up and legeislate and litigate that the 4th amendment applies a the border.

Considering the tiny percentage of Americans that travel overseas or even hold passports, I'm not sure a political solution is realistic. I think we might be outnumbered by the people who don't care about such privacy issues because it will never affect them.

tacostakohashi• 9 years ago

This is completely naive.

Firstly, social media's only incentive is to make your data as widely available as possible (in the interests of ad revenue), and maintain a good relationship with the government in their jurisdiction. Every other existing "privacy" setting on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc is already obfuscated to the point of unusability, for this reason, and "travel mode" would be no different.

Secondly, lets imagine that FB did implement a watertight "travel mode" that hid your embarrassing data effectively while you were travelling. Third parties would just start capturing and storing posts while you have "travel mode" off, and sell that to CBP, or whoever else wants to pay for it.

ksenzee3• 9 years ago

He's pointing out what social media companies should do, not predicting that they'll actually do it. That is not naive. Imagine what would happen to the Overton window if we never talked about what people should do, even when we expect them never to do it.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

People who care deeply about these issues work at Facebook and Google.

severine4• 9 years ago

Please clarify: I take your answer as a (fair) response to the first objection, but what about the other ("third parties would just start capturing and storing posts while you have "travel mode" off, and sell that to CBP, or whoever else wants to pay for it")?

Does that possibility worry you? Wouldn't that also put you in a position where you’re lying at the border?

edit: readability

Gracana2• 9 years ago

That's a statement that's true for all sorts of issues, for all sorts of people, at all sorts of places. But what matters is whether their employer has made them responsible for solving those issues.

What are they paid to do?

x0x0• 9 years ago

They don't seem to be in positions of any authority though -- see eg realnames. Or maybe this is enough of a threat to the core business for them to care?

krapp• 9 years ago

Facebook and Google also cooperate closely with the US government, law enforcement, intelligence services and state department. How can they be part of the solution when they're part of the problem?

cronjobber• 9 years ago

You also wrote

They can do whatever they want to do, including organize, work to rule, walk out, or go on strike.

Observationally, they don't organize or go on strike. Maybe some "work to rule", get PIP'd and walked out. Maybe some actually walk out on their own.

In the long run, the "People who care deeply about these issues" get boiled off.

In fact, they probably are largely boiled off by now. Probable, because that's consistent with observable Google behavior.

I see no actual reason beyond "be nice to everybody" to assume a random Googler "cares deeply".

the_watcher3• 9 years ago

Facebook has incentives to make your data available to advertisers. That does not mean it needs to make your data available to someone who possesses a device that you accessed Facebook from. The point of the idea is that when you turn it on, your data isn't removed, it's simply not accessible via a device until it's turned off.

craigds• 9 years ago

If a third party could access my private Facebook posts then border patrol wouldn't require my phone in the first place.

k-mcgrady• 9 years ago

I feel it would be quite obvious looking at your device and it's lack of data that such a feature was in force and they would just deny you entry. Nice idea but the problems need fixed in law. IMO technical solutions are just temporary bandaids.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

I agree that technical solutions are bandaids. However, US citizens can't be denied entry. They can be delayed for a few hours, not longer.

deong4• 9 years ago

Your device can be confiscated for much longer, of course. You could take that time difference and hopefully permanently wipe account data before the lock expired, but that has the drawback that it's terribly inconvenient for you and causes the government no great concern at all, so it might simply become routine procedure.

ecopoesis• 9 years ago

There is no technical solution to this. If you want there to be no searches of your phone when crossing the border, speak to your representative in Congress and your Senator. If they don't listen, then vote for someone else or even better, run yourself.

The only way this is going to change is with a change in the law.

tptacek18• 9 years ago

I appreciate the sentiment here and think that tech as an industry could do with a lot more humility about its intersection with public policy. I feel like I know the people involved in this proposal well enough to say that they agree with this as well.

The point of the travel-lock proposal is that it's actually common sense. Everyone should want this feature. It is actually weird that we walk around all the time with unfettered access to decades of personal correspondence and a detailed log of every person we've ever meet even fleetingly online. The default should be different: getting access to years-old emails or a photographic memory of every acquaintance you have should be extraordinary.

deong4• 9 years ago

Yes, for that at least, I agree completely. I'm not sure how much the idea would do for border crossing, but just as a general mitigation of risk, it's extremely sensible.

chinathrow• 9 years ago

I feel that all technical modes will fail.

Why?

- We first had PIN numbers. Easyily cracked/defeated.

- We then had passwords. Provide them or go back home where you came from.

- We might have travel mode. Defeated or made illegal. Go back home.

I think the only resolution to this is political. Make these searches go away - worldwide - as we near a very bad precedent.

binarymax2• 9 years ago

An article with an interesting suggestion and a noble goal but I'm not the first one to say it:

Technology cannot solve the problem we currently face with erosion of privacy at the border! These clever tricks trying to get around the issue only kicks the problem downfield, and likely won't effectively work. If they found out you have travel mode enabled - you may be denied entry or worse (note the comment from @mholt) - they would just detain you until the time lock runs out.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

They can't detain US citizens longer than a few hours.

binarymax2• 9 years ago

What if I'm a US citizen traveling to Canada, and their border patrol is similarly vigilant? I could be denied entry to Canada.

Sadly this policy is being picked up in many other countries :(

p4lindromica• 9 years ago

What is actually needed is a dead man's switch: a secondary password that, when entered, destroys the security enclave/TPM to render the device unreadable

zapt022• 9 years ago

Then the border guards send you home. What mission has been accomplished?

rdl2• 9 years ago

I'd been thinking about a similar thing: a "limited access for border guards" mode.

Basically, you can turn over the phone to border guards in a way which gives them access to what is on the phone, but which logs actions, and allows you to easily revert/revoke any changes they make. (This would also be a mode you'd turn over to an employer demanding access).

Potentially this mode might also block access to certain things (secret FB groups, archives over a certain age, some chat logs), but would otherwise be fully functional.

The benefit would mainly be that all actions taken would be logged and reportable, as a way to try to keep authorities from poking in places they shouldn't. It seems they are NOT mostly using forensic imaging tools, but logging in directly on the devices, at least right now, so there would be some value.

Bokagha2• 9 years ago

Why not go further with the idea of a Travel Mode toggle and have it be tied to the device itself. This cuts out any possibility of any data being left on the device from being analyzed easily, social media or otherwise.

Google and/or Apple could add this as a new menu toggle similar to Airplane mode. Once switched on, while in an airport, prevents the device from being unlocked. Then by utilizing geofencing, once the device leaves the airport it unlocks and can be used again.

zapt022• 9 years ago

What if the border agent takes your phone outside? It would go something like:

Tell me your password OK, not sit here while I go out to unlock your phone.

Bokagha2• 9 years ago

I doubt that border agents will want to walk every phone outside and then come back in. It is security through inconvenience.

But I guess there could be an option to extend the range of the original airport geofence.

eridius2• 9 years ago

This would make it very difficult to call a Lyft or let your family/friend know you're ready to be picked up.

lj3• 9 years ago

Didn't Moxie come up with something like this a while back? It was a bit of a non-starter since you had to install a custom version of Android in order to get it work

rdl2• 9 years ago

I think you could easily justify something like this as a "travel mode" not just for border security, but "in case your phone is lost/stolen while traveling". Make it so you have full or enhanced access to very recent stuff (photos, status updates, etc.) from the trip itself, and don't have access to as much from before the trip. Help defeat localization settings in the place where you're traveling, and get tourist/visitor-specific ads instead of local ads. Value for the user (usability and safety) as well as for the social media network and advertisers.

The other form of this which would make sense: worksafe mode or public mode. If you're logging into your facebook/twitter account from a public computer, perhaps it doesn't have as full and unlimited access, and doesn't have access to non-reversible account actions, and strongly logs out. If you're logging in from a place defined as "work", it doesn't have notifications, certain groups, etc. (the "giving a meeting presentation on your laptop when a racy notification from spouse pops up" problem).

thex102• 9 years ago

Nice idea. But it's treating the symptom rather than the root problem.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

I agree. But the practical alternative right now is doing nothing.

thex102• 9 years ago

Fair enough!

There are many good ideas here and I'll even wager that a 'trip mode' of some sort could even produce benefits outside of the held-at-the-border use case. It really does seem silly at retrospect that these tech giants have decided the default needed to be "expose all of the connections"

everythingspun• 9 years ago

The root problem is terrorists wanting to kill people.

maxerickson5• 9 years ago

Inbound foreign travelers to the US have pretty much already been screened.

soraminazuki• 9 years ago

That's not a good excuse for denying ordinary people of their basic rights. There will always be killers anytime, anywhere.

debt• 9 years ago

Most Americans don't travel so this likely won't happen in the US; even less travel internationally.

http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2016-O-001/index.html

tptacek18• 9 years ago

The overwhelming majority of people CBP actually deals with at the border are in fact citizens.

ar15saveslives• 9 years ago

Why is it a bad idea to have fake FB/Gmail/Twitter accounts?

wbeckler• 9 years ago

They look you up before you arrive and find out what your real account it.

mirimir• 9 years ago

This isn't very different from refusing to provide login credentials. Sure, turning travel mode on and off could require keys, which are present only on primary devices, which are left at home. So there'd be no need to lie.

However, foreigners would likely be turned back. Because using travel mode is arguably evidence of hiding stuff. And citizens might still be detained. It seems unlikely that they'd send agents to homes, to turn off travel mode. But it's arguably not impossible.

dustinmoris• 9 years ago

Social media doesn't need a travel mode. Non US citizen just stop travelling to the US whilst the country is violating human privacy rights at border control.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

Many non-citizens live in the United States.

lacampbell4• 9 years ago

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

As a non-american looks like I'm fucked if I want to fly into my own country with my own electronics.

hd4• 9 years ago

This may be a hugely naive question but what could they do if I simply don't use social media?

Do they automatically suspect someone who denies using it and what would follow in that event?

tptacek18• 9 years ago

If you legit don't have a Facebook account, you're fine. The problem is that most people do have them, and it's an extremely bad idea to try to sneak them past CBP.

kefka2• 9 years ago

(Read on the screen)

"$Company noticed an intrusion by the US Federal Agents, Border Guards, and have marked this as a compromised account. Please have your designated friend, if set, to authenticate your account."

Its now out of the persons sphere to fix, even if coerced. And companies can defend this by fact of an Acceptable Use Agreement violation itself is breaking a federal law: CFAA.

That, and it seems the only way to stop these issues now is to jam it up in legal limbo by citizens.

fakeshoes• 9 years ago

And if you're a permanent resident with a green card or any other type of visa, you won't be allowed in at all. All these solutions assuming you're a citizen aren't all that helpful to every other person.

kefka2• 9 years ago

That's the difference. You complied, and the company is road-blocking you.

Frankly, denying everyone at the border is probably a good thing due to the brain-drain it causes. We're not going to get saner laws without some serious economic impairments to punish these 'lawmakers' (really, religious zealots WRT to a very narrow system).

In all honesty, I'm looking at other countries that have saner laws, and less overall problems. I'm looking at the Nordic countries right now, along with Australia... But no country is free from really nasty influences of xenophobia, racism, and hatred.

aphextron2• 9 years ago

Or we just give up social media.

What, exactly, has been gained from the days of just posting on anonymous message boards and using email?

Nothing but giving unimaginable power to creepy guys like Zuckerberg and the ability for governments and employers to track your entire life. I'll pass.

tzs• 9 years ago

So instead of asking to see your social media account at the border they would be asking to see your email account. How is that better?

aphextron2• 9 years ago

How is that better?

My private email account can't be proven to exist, or submit to NSA requests either.

secfirstmd• 9 years ago

Ok, firstly, I think it's great that so many people are engaging on issues of privacy and at least trying to help folks understand how to mitigate their risks in these situations. Something I think that is getting missed about all this is that a lot of people are being very US and techno-centric when they create these articles. Security when travelling is about more than just digital issues.

Doing something like this requires that you consider the risks of your phone seizure versus the risks you may face without your primary smart phone. If your an activist flying from London to D.C then fine. But what about if your an activist flying from D.C to the D.R.C and back - then your threat model changes from potential TSA problems to physical security threats.

For just one example of this, let's say you ask people to ditch their phones and take a burner because of a potential risk at the US border. Now you have removed one of the best devices for the person's physical security - a smartphone that can update people about security alerts, about local news, weather, disease risk, riots (e.g the stuff we put in the Umbrella App dashboard - shameless plug -> https://www.secfirst.org), share data amongst groups of people on the ground, can send GPS alerts in a emergency, can help them navigate if there is a problem, has a flashlight on it in darkness, has access to emergency contact details, insurance information, medical data, nearest hospitals etc. Now, your relatively low likelihood/low impact potential digital security risk at a US border has overridden the low/medium likelihood but high impact physical security risks...

Ditto it's important to thing about basic tactical things like that people are lazy, data is expensive and they will often not bother to restore the most important contacts and information that they may need when they travel, which can be a problem in an emergency...

Again, it's great to see people engaging on security issues but please be aware of the threat model, context and consequences of what you are trading off.

scratcheswell• 9 years ago

a smartphone that can update people about security alerts, about local news, weather, disease risk, riots, share data amongst groups of people on the ground, can send GPS alerts in a emergency, can help them navigate if there is a problem, has a flashlight on it in darkness, has access to emergency contact details, insurance information, medical data, nearest hospitals etc.

I'm confused about why you're implying a burner/temp travel phone can't do these things. You can get a cheap & fully capable android phone at best buy for $40

ABCLAW• 9 years ago

It is worth noting that while social media represents a significant threat to ordinary travelers, the potential for significant harm through indirect leaks exists through retained professionals as well.

In fact, this situation might even be worse for those passing through the Canadian border. Please see: http://www.canada-usblog.com/2017/02/03/what-canadians-shoul...

& the linked: http://www.lexsage.com/documents/Border%20Searches%20of%20El...

rspeer2• 9 years ago

What if the phone can be put into "suck mode" that just makes it completely infuriating to get any information from for a while after you've flown a long distance in a plane?

Sure, you can open Facebook and stare at a loading icon until you give up. You can go to a profile page and see images that are failing to load. At some point you're going to stop wasting everyone's time.

The reason this is better than just a "trip mode" is that it's so banally realistic. Of note: because of the weirdness of connecting to cell networks after having moved thousands of miles in airplane mode, most phones I've owned already do this to some extent.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

I was going to say, this already exists on my phone.

Any countermeasure on the device will just result in you being asked to log in on a CBP laptop.

rspeer2• 9 years ago

Can you set up Facebook to require 2FA when you log in from a mysterious new device? And configure 2FA so it'll fail to reach you while you're traveling?

Edit: Actually, a sufficiently robust Suck Mode would make 2FA impossible. And I think all you have to do to get there is configure your cell network settings wrong, set Boingo Wireless as the top Wi-Fi SSID to connect to, and not pay for Boingo.

dragonwriter• 9 years ago

2FA, for services that support it, with the second factor being a device that isn't with you when cross the border would be a solution that would be near absolute in prevention of logging in at the border, whether from your own device or a CBP-controlled device (of course, it wouldn't prevent you from any consequences CBP applies to not logging in.)

Of course, there's a question of the risk to that device, which somehow has to cross the border separate from you, which creates its own ream of problems (you could protect the access to that device with 2FA that uses the device you do keep with you, which mitigates the security risk of loss, but you still risk losing access to the services it protects if it is lost in transit; obviously, you want to make sure your 2FA has a recovery process and one that isn't usable from arbitrary locations or the device you carry across the border, but will be usable by you when you get home, at least.)

amelius• 9 years ago

Social Media needs a "delete everything older than X days" function.

aethertron• 9 years ago

Agreed. Conversations and status updates are about what's going on now, aren't they? After two weeks, delete 'em. Keep a backup on your PC at home.

Same for hosted email.

The software with a human-usable UI (automated backups, viewable in a useful client) for all this doesn't yet exist, but it could.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

Yes it does. Or at a minimum, the ability to set time horizons on things like Facebook groups.

The Women's March was organized mostly on Facebook. Why does that list of people have to be stored in perpetuity?

rythie• 9 years ago

The simplest solution would be simply to not to travel to the US. I'm sure it wouldn't be long before the airlines & hotels were lobbying for a change in the law.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

Some of us live here.

neumann• 9 years ago

I've been thinking of this.

I don't want to take my digital possessions through customs if they can request access or deny me.

I don't want a burner that is subpar and I can't afford another phone with great camera etc.

So, I can see two options:

A virtualbox/dualboot where you run two OSes of your devices with full encryption - and one is a dumb/fake install with no personal data that you enable when traveling. It doesn't login to your mail or your facebook and doesn't have your real contacts, photos, passwords on it. You can do this trivially (still for the technically savvy) for a laptop, probably for an android it is not too hard with a custom bootloader. If you were more paranoid, you could create 'dumb' social media accounts, but that starts being time consuming.

Second option is you make an encrypted snapshot of your system before travel. Then you reset / wipe your system before traveling, and then reload the snapshot once you are through customs. This could be done more securely by not actually taking the snapshot on physical media across borders, but storing on a server and downloading once you are through customs. The downside of this is you need data access during travel.

As an aside, I am curious how they would react to someone like me who has no social media accounts. Do I need a fake one to make me look 'real'?

JustSomeNobody• 9 years ago

You would simply be forced to turn off travel mode. And don't lie to the border agent and say it's not on.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

Please read the entire post.

lacampbell4• 9 years ago

I think social media and gmail are a complete lost cause wrt privacy. I already de-activated my facebook due to it being a time sink. But I think I'll go ahead and delete it now.

idlewords25• 9 years ago

One thing about Facebook culture is that the employees there see themselves as fanatical guardians of privacy. It's a very strange belief system, but it's real.

severine4• 9 years ago

Plus what you leave in and out of the "safe" profile makes for a very interesting info ;)

skewart• 9 years ago

I'm curious about a couple of things:

1. I far as I understand there is legal precedent establishing that electronic devices are basically the same as suitcases, and both can be searched at the border (i.e. in the same way that border agents can rummage through a backpack looking for drugs, they can rummage through a laptop's hard drive looking for evidence of drug dealing). The key idea is that objects brought across the border are fair game for search. However, wouldn't accessing social media accounts require fetching data over the internet from a data center somewhere? Maybe there is some info cached locally on the phone, but for them to, say, look through a traveler's post history they'd have to access data that is _not_ being brought across the border. How is this different from border agents finding a house key in a traveler's bag and then using that key to go to the traveler's house, open it, and search everything they find there?

2. Searching the data on the device is one thing. Asking a traveler to provide passwords seems completely different. It seems like a pretty clear 5th amendment violation. There's a lot of precedent protecting people from being compelled to speak.

Just to be clear, I'm wondering about this for US citizens returning home. Obviously all bets are off for non-citizens.

dbg31415• 9 years ago

Obviously all bets are off for non-citizens.

Why shouldn't non-citizens be protected by The Constitution? Not a lawyer, but these came up pretty quick in a Google search.

"It is well established that, if an alien is a lawful permanent resident of the United States and remains physically present there, he is a person within the protection of the Fifth Amendment. He may not be deprived of his life, liberty or property without due process of law."

Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding

". . . The Bill of Rights is a futile authority for the alien seeking admission for the first time to these shores. But, once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country, he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders. Such rights include those protected by the First and the Fifth Amendments and by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. None of these provisions acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens. They extend their inalienable privileges to all 'persons,' and guard against any encroachment on those rights by federal or state authority."

Bridges v. Wixon

"The alien, to whom the United States has been traditionally hospitable, has been accorded a generous and ascending scale of rights as he increases his identity with our society. Mere lawful presence in the country creates an implied assurance of safe conduct and gives him certain rights; they become more extensive and secure when he makes preliminary declaration of intention to become a citizen, and they expand to those of full citizenship upon naturalization. During his probationary residence, this Court has steadily enlarged his right against Executive deportation except upon full and fair hearing. . . . And, at least since 1886, we have extended to the person and property of resident aliens important constitutional guaranties -- such as the due process of law of the Fourteenth Amendment."

Johnson v. Eisentrager

tomp• 9 years ago

The difference is that non-citizens don't have a right to enter the US, so while they can't be compelled to share their personal information, they can "voluntarily" choose whether to share it and enter the US, or go back.

Kluny2• 9 years ago

Instead of that, I'd like a way to clone everything on my phone and save it on a USB. Every app, logins, contacts, photos, settings, factory updates, wallpaper, lock screen password, everything, in an encrypted archive that I can put on a USB in my checked baggage, or mail ahead to my destination, upload to my personal server, whatever. Then I'll just do a factory reset, install some cover apps, and go. Then reinstall my backup when I get where I'm going.

The Android backup feature that comes with the phone backs up contacts and photos, but it's very incomplete. Settings, saved logins, and other stuff gets lost. You have to reinstall swype every time. It's too inconvenient to use the way I've described. Other phone cloning apps exist, but a cursory google search only finds ones that require two phones, rather than a phone and a PC.

mayneack• 9 years ago

If border patrol can ask for your password, can they just sign in on a different device?

lacampbell4• 9 years ago

Why would putting something in your checked baggage or sending something via mail be an impediment to a state that wants your information?

NoGravitas• 9 years ago

On a rooted Android device, TitaniumBackup can be used this way (not factory updates, but those don't get wiped by factory reset anyway).

However, it doesn't solve your real problem, which is that you can be compelled to log into your social media accounts in the presence of the border control officers. You can do that from the browser on a wiped phone, or on their equipment.

Kluny2• 9 years ago

Yeah, it's true. I guess it would be one part of a strategy. Mine also involves saying "pardon me?" a lot and telling them that I'm deaf. 98% of people in uniform don't have the patience to try to communicate with a deaf person, and just tell me to move along. Also, they probably won't believe that I don't have facebook or email, but I can avoid telling them about things like okcupid, instagram, and disqus logins at least long enough to delete those accounts if I do get searched. Like any security, it's more of a deterrence than an absolute block.

foreigner2• 9 years ago

What if you changed your password to something really long and not memorable before you leave home? Print it out on a piece of paper and leave it in a safe. You can't be forced to produce a password you don't remember. When you get home, open the safe and change your password back to something you know.

foreigner2• 9 years ago

Although I guess they could force you to go through the reset password flow, so you would have to cripple that as well...

mathgenius• 9 years ago

Border agents can find your profile online and make you log in on their own machine.

What if you have a long password that you cannot remember? Same for email, etc.

I don't have fb on my phone. And I don't remember the password. They would have to make me do a password reset via email, which might work.

jameslk• 9 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how this is any different from refusing to provide your password. Border Patrol may just detain you regardless of whether the issue is you aren't providing your password or you decided to make your device less accessible before going on your trip. Both are forms of trying to prevent them access to your device, which they won't like. The real solution seems to be changing the laws that allow them to get away with what they're doing.

utunga• 9 years ago

I love this idea, but it also needs to be discussed within the context of knowing that (since Snowden) the NSA already has all your social media data categorized and ready to go should it need.

So, in context, this is about stopping one branch of government - CBP - from being able to compile data that another branch of government already has.

I love the idea but worry it might be a form of security theater, given the three lettered elephant in the room.

staunch• 9 years ago

Cell phones often have 4G connections but if they're on wifi or laptops on wifi, we could collect the IPs of all airports and present the travel mode by default.

Phones could use GPS to detect when their in/near airports and inject an X-Travel-Mode cookie into HTTP requests.

delegate2• 9 years ago

Delete your 'social media' accounts. I'm talking Facebook, LinkedIn, G+ and so on.

I did that and life goes on perfectly - I don't miss them a bit and I don't think anyone noticed.

My wife and daughter are right here at home, I use Skype, Whatsapp or Slack to talk to my friends and colleagues.

So there is nothing that's missing.

Social networks are brainwashing farms (yes, advertising is a form of brainwashing) so stay away from them.

I don't want to sound too negative, but we all sense it: tough times are coming and these accounts will become a liability, even if you have 'nothing to hide'.

gmac• 9 years ago

tough times are coming and these accounts will become a liability, even if you have 'nothing to hide'

That looks like a major chilling effect[1], and it makes life that much easier for those instigating the toughness.

It's not obvious to me, therefore, that opting out now is the right choice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

delegate2• 9 years ago

Respectfully, I disagree.

Social media is not the best nor the only place to share your opinions, political or not.

In fact this is the exact danger that these networks pose - people start thinking that it's the only place where we can express our right to free speech.

But this is not what social networks were designed for. They were designed to distribute advertising; all the rest of the features are just clever ways to disguise the real purpose of the SN. Even people who work at these companies are delusional about their company's real purpose.

The place to express our right to free speech is 'the Internet'.

Distributed, resilient, no central control.

Plenty of space for anyone to shout as loud as they like and 'share' it with their friends, without selling their soul.

dao-• 9 years ago

Thanks for your advice, but if all I wanted was to chat and see people that are "right here at home," I wouldn't be on social media in the first place. It actually provides value to me beyond that, and yes, I would miss aspects of it :/

mustafabisic1• 9 years ago

Agreed and plus we'll have a little bit safer environment ...

edandersen• 9 years ago

Would basic geoblocking help? A setting that says this account cannot be accessed outside your home country? Has the plausible deniability of "security". VPNs can also be effectively blocked if the same lists Netflix etc subscribe to are used.

mlinksva• 9 years ago

Is a more general application of this idea a 'vacation mode' -- a way to enforce an intentional limited vacation from social media?

Social Media Needs a Travel Mode

Related Stories