US Border Officers Don’t Always Delete Collected Traveler Data

https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/11/cbp-officers-fail-to-delete-traveler-data/

by toufiqbarhamov • 8 years ago

133 40 8 years ago

engadget.com

rue• 8 years ago

Completely by accident. There was never any intent to mine that information, no sir.

isp• 8 years ago

Not wittingly.

ggggtez2• 8 years ago

Perhaps, but perhaps not. If you've followed the news since 2001, you'll find that improper deletion of data is a theme that goes back a long time to the point where you should really question whether it's really an accident or the result of purposeful lack-of-enforcement of policy.

pleasecalllater2• 8 years ago

What a surprise, right?

leibwiht• 8 years ago

I am absolutely SHOCKED, I did not expect this in a million years. Why would I ever have any reason to believe the government isn't telling me the truth? And, as a law-abiding citizen, I can't imagine what they'd even want with it anyway. This must have been an honest mistake.

pleasecalllater2• 8 years ago

I think we should tell them that we are really sorry about all that. We should buy them flowers.

Zak2• 8 years ago

The authority to conduct such searches should simply be removed. Border searches are nominally for the purpose of preventing the importation of something that's illegal to import, but it's trivial to transfer information that's illegal to import (e.g. child pornography) over the internet instead.

laken2• 8 years ago

  Border searches are nominally for the purpose of
  preventing the importation of something that's
  illegal to import

_You_ can be illegal to import if you don't have authorization to work/visit/marry/etc. with your visa. Generally, that's what these phone searches are for -- if they think you're lying about the reason why you're visiting, they will search your phone's messages quite often. You see it all the time on the US CBP television program (can be found on Netflix).

dawnerd• 8 years ago

Suggested that show on here as well. The Canada and Australia variants are also a good watch.

Zak2• 8 years ago

That's at least more realistically connected to a legitimate government purpose. It seems hugely invasive to be doing without a court order though.

projectramo• 8 years ago

This would seem more plausible if the searches were only restricted to people who only had single intent visas. Is that the case?

I haven't seen the program but it seems hard to believe that enough people would have a clear message about their intent in their email to make this program worth it. You'd have to go through 1000s of regular people to find the one odd person who contradicted themselves in an email. "Don't worry bud. I am pretending to go as a tourist but will actually look for a job and then apply for a work visa! haha!"

gammateam3• 8 years ago

Exactly, something can be constitutional while nobody practices it.

Eugenics being a good example. Supreme Court upheld it 100 years ago, no constitutional amendment or ongoing fight with "two camps", people just stopped. State laws changed, licensing organizations stopped supporting it.

In this case, President could unilaterally tell the Border Patrol to not do it. Congress could make consequences.

avar• 8 years ago

Eugenics is still practiced in developed countries today. It just became opt-in, e.g. screening pregnant women for downs syndrome, which is standard procedure: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/down-syndrome...

Edit: I'm not saying that's comparable to practices called "eugenics" in the 1st half of the 20th century. Just narrowly responding to "people just stopped [the practice of eugenics]". The Wikipedia article on the subject agrees with this usage of the word, "practices that [aim to] improv[e] the genetic quality of a human population"[1].

There's also the whole topic of "designer babies" which has also been called "new eugenics"[2].

This is admittedly way off-topic from the original discussion. I just thought it was an interesting side-note.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_reproductive_technolo...

mtnGoat3• 8 years ago

neither do the people that work at most of the cell phone stores(verizon, spring, etc)... i knew a couple guys that worked at them and they all were in cahoots to steal private photos from female owned cameras. and then shared them in a massive repo.

this is why i dont let anyone touch my tech.

jabberthemutt• 8 years ago

Please blow that whistle loud and clear.

mtnGoat3• 8 years ago

one was/is a multi-state regional manager. these companies don't want this stuff to make the light of day, so even if you reported it, they would bury it. And I have no faith in law enforcement to do anything about it, they are not tech savvy enough to know where to begin.

screwed up world. keep your privacy game tight!

Drdrdrq• 8 years ago

As someone who has "nothing to hide", the prospect of such search is why I don't consider travelling to USA a possibility. Or at least not with my phone / laptop.

manicdee• 8 years ago

I’d be more surprised if anyone in customs/border security actually deleted the collected data. Deleting collected data would imply that they were competent and procedures were being followed, or that procedures exist.

BLKNSLVR• 8 years ago

There's unlikely to be any real control put on this, so assuming that this is "a new normal" we need to work out how best to deal with it. I found a couple of articles which cover some precautions but aren't quite "paranoid enough" (warning: both of these articles showed me full-paged ads):

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3209648/android/the-pa...

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/guide-getting-past-customs-dig...

We need a nice, clean, to-the-point github readme style list. Off the top of my head:

- Backup contents of device to two places, confirm both, delete it all from device

- Record all personal accounts on the phone, make sure the login/email/passwords are known, then remove them all

- Factory reset the device (if asked about why it's "blank", say that you bought it recently, specifically for the trip. Work out some reasonable excuse)

- Create a throwaway account, set that up as the only account on the phone

- Encrypt the device

- Don't use biometric unlocks

- Use a relatively simple passcode that isn't related to any of the ones you may regularly use (unless you already have a regularly used "burner" passcode)

- Remove your local / home sim card before going through customs (if asked, you're planning to buy one that's local to the country you're visiting)

- Any data that you may need to get back on to your phone once you're through customs should be made available somewhere online and accessible via credentials you can either remember or have stored elsewhere. Possibly through a chain of dependence such as remember the credentials to download the VPN config, then access further documents / details via the VPN.

I fundamentally treat phones and laptops as disposable devices so that, if they're lost or stolen there should be minimal life impact. If they're the only store of photos of your kids precious milestones, then you're doing it wrong (you're also probably not someone suspicious, but in that case you shouldn't be subjected to government departments stealing said photos).

justinclift2• 8 years ago

Perhaps "don't use your real phone" when traveling to the US?

There's no telling what kind of APT's may be installed now or at a future date, so thinking a phone wipe of any kind will do the trick sounds risky.

APT's are apparently commonly used with China, so doubt the US would be any different.

tzs• 8 years ago

Factory reset the device (if asked about why it's "blank", say that you bought it recently, specifically for the trip. Work out some reasonable excuse)

Or simply say that you factory reset it because you are traveling to a foreign country, and (1) don't want to risk that you have some app installed that is legal here but not there, and (2) you do not trust the carriers or government there to respect your privacy.

US Border Officers Don’t Always Delete Collected Traveler Data

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