France’s research minister said a French scientist was denied entry to the US this month after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration.

  • athairmor@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    How’d they get into his phone? Face or fingerprint?

    Make sure you turn off biometrics before traveling. They can’t force you to disclose a passcode.

    EDIT: Actually, if you have to travel to the USA, wipe your phone before you leave.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      13 hours ago

      IIRC they can compel you to unlock your phone. Or just deny you entry if you don’t. It’s best to make sure you travel with a ‘clean’ phone and PC, border patrol got ridiculous powers in the patriot act and nobody’s ever rolled any of it back despite decades of abuses.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 hours ago

          I’ve been very purposefully avoiding the US ever since the Patriot Act exactly because it became possible for the TSA to riffle through your electronics (even confiscate them) and do this kind of shit.

          Then on top of that festering pit of autocracy which, by the way, nobody reversed in all this time, Trump added the risk of ICE detention and “free trip to El Salvador (to go check a mega prison there)”.

          • jonne@infosec.pub
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            3 hours ago

            Yep, 12 years of Democrats in charge and none of them did anything to reign in this whole apparatus that could easily be abused by an autocrat. Now Trump has a turnkey surveillance state that can be turned on anyone in the country. All your internet traffic, current location, licence plate readers, face recognition, etc. It was all created to alternately catch terrorists or pedophiles, and now Trump is going to use it against anyone he doesn’t like.

            And it’s not like nobody was warned, there was plenty of dissent about the patriot act from experts and the people, but politicians were just like ‘don’t worry, it’ll only be used against terrorists’. Guess what, everyone’s going to be deemed a terrorist now. They’re trying to charge Luigi with terrorism already (and those are state charges in a Democratic state).

        • x-Cell@slrpnk.net
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          12 hours ago

          As a Latin American, the US is the very last county I want to visit on the entire continent. Literally the only thing that I kind of want to see there is the Lego store in NYC.

    • Technoworcester@lemm.eeOP
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      14 hours ago

      They can still make your life difficult though. I think the better option is don’t fly into or through US territory if you can help it.

    • philpo@feddit.org
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      13 hours ago

      They will also ask you for your password for online accounts and refuse entry if you don’t. And as we have all seen recently that does not necessarily mean “next flight home”.

    • Sabin10@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      If you have an android device, setup a second user account with nothing on it and use that when going through customs.

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 hour ago

        I mean, you might fool them. But its best to just backup everything to a Non-US cloud provider in an encrypted format, and wipe the device before leaving. I wouldn’t rely on the “multi-user” trick. Who knows what forensics tools they have.

    • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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      14 hours ago

      How’d they get into his phone? Face or fingerprint?

      I was looking for this as well. It seems like a rather important piece of info for the article to leave out.

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        57 minutes ago

        Here’s how the borders work:

        “Sir/Ma’am, please unlock your device”

        “No”

        “Entry Denied”


        (Except for US Citizens, they cannot be denied entry* even if they refuse to unlock their device, however, their devices could be confiscated

        *for now)