i like this. i've wanted to do this. but what might be the "right answer" to an inquisitive border force who ask why you have device(s) that are factory fresh?
I’ve never actually been detained or questioned (but know people who have).
If I were I’d tell them the truth that I feel more vulnerable during the chaos of travel and don’t want any risk that a lost or stolen device could leak anything personal.
Would this satisfy them? No idea. Getting stopped at the border is legitimately a single small concern of many more likely scenarios.
for you or anyone reading this, let me enlighten you. when you are dealing with border police there are a few things that you will come to understand. in practice, these border police answer to absolutely no one. there is no oversight and there are no consequences for them treating you poorly -- in practice. for future commenters please read the following words: "IN PRACTICE." the idea that you would tell them that you feel vulnerable about such and such and they would be understanding about it literally makes me laugh. they couldnt care less about the way you feel or whether or not you are at risk for leaks, theft, humiliation or any other bad outcome. you are less than human to them. this is what its like when there is almost literally zero accountability. if they pull you aside, they have already decided that you are guilty. sometimes they might search you and let you go but they also will just decide that they dont like the look of you and that you arent going to get in. once they pull you aside they can search you, interrogate you, hold you, whatever they want. the idea of there being some human element to this interaction is completely laughable.
pretty much every country runs one of these stockyard style mini police states on their borders now. and everyone puts up with it because of "terrorists." meanwhile, literally millions of undocumented people have streamed over the southern border of the US in recent years and how many terror attacks has that resulted in? well ill be damned, zero! so it turns out when the border police tear up your stuff, treat you like human shit and cost you thousands of dollars in hotel and other reservations because they decided they just didnt like the look of you -- it was literally all for nothing! besides the sadistic pleasure that the border police take in hurting people of course. isnt life just so funny like that? hee hee!
most people dont know because the vast majority of people are never pulled aside. but if 80% of people had the experience of being pulled aside, the same one that people have now, even if they all made it through to their destination... the border police would essentially be abolished back to their pre-9/11 status. its gotten completely out of control.
canada is the worst offender when it comes to this. one time they pulled me aside and one by one i literally explained or swatted down every single one of the officers objections. they werent used to someone who was already familiar with how things work. she tries to pull out a paper and pen and ask me all of my destinations to prove that i couldn't afford the trip. and half way through my meticulous and articulate explanation of my plans and stops it became very obvious that i could afford the trip and the clip board kind of melted away off to the side and she chose something else to nit pick me on. ive had canadian border police literally bark at me, sneering, eyebrows slanted at 45 degrees like i was looking at a cartoon character. they really treat you like you arent even human.
edit: if you give a phone call to the canadian border police, i forget the acronym, the first thing you hear is an automated message that swearing and verbal abuse will not be tolerated. IE they have tons of people who make angry phone calls to them after being put through their sadistic border process. how can they not realize that if they dont want people to be mad, they should treat people like human beings. thats the thing, they way they treat you is completely unnecessary. its not like being rude will foil the terrorist.
The point of saying "I feel more vulnerable during the chaos of travel and don’t want any risk that a lost or stolen device could leak anything personal" is not to generate empathy in the border agent, it's to provide a plausible cover story that will cause minimal fuss. Whether or not they empathise with you is irrelevant.
I truly don't see why you're being downvoted. Much of this is often true and some of it is sometimes true, but none of it is absolutely unbelievable. Speaking specifically of the Canadian border police, from personal experience with being "taken aside", I can vouch for an absolutely arrogant, condescending, shitty attitude of treating you as if you were a suspicious piece of scum for no good reason or justification outside the random bullshit they make up in the spur of the moment when they can find nothing concrete.
It's not a difficult answer—I bring a burner phone with me when traveling internationally because I don't want to run any risk of a thief getting the keys to the kingdom. Sure, I could remote wipe if that happened, but it feels a lot safer to just not have a phone with real data on it at all.
You're not the first person they've detained who didn't want to bring their real phone with them for totally innocent reasons.
this has not happened to me yet, but as a non-US citizen with a green card, if USBP told me "give us the code or you're not admitted" the next time i try to enter US, i'm gonna give them the code
IANAL, but as a green card holder my lawyer told me they cannot deny you entry without an order from an immigration judge (likely if travel was not brief - more than 180 days, or they engaged in illegal activity after leaving the United States as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(13)) - you only have to answer questions about your name and status, nothing more - though, obviously it will likely cause delays.
It's similar in Canada; permanent residents and citizens have the legal right to reentry and it can't be denied. But that right applies to you, not anything you are carrying. Play that game and you'll probably lose the device to border security.
Losing the device in such circumstances is definitively the best outcome. There is a shit ton of data that these devices have and the law is so complex that you probably committed a crime somewhere without you realizing it.
Yikes, I don't know about border detentions. The right to representation attaches (generally) at the start of criminal proceedings, pursuant to the 6th Amend. Is a border detention a criminal proceeding? Probably it's just some sort of administrative function and so your rights are certainly much slimmer at this point.
Good choice. The only circumstances where it’s not a big risk to withhold your PIN is when you are a citizen entering your home country. Even then they can turn it into a pretty nasty time for you (as seen by the guy in the article, where they threaten to just keep his stuff).
Depends how much you want to visit the country in question. I will be bummed if I am blocked from visiting EU (I am US citizen) but any other country is kinda irrelevant. If Japan put me on no travel list, I would not care one bit.
There is inconvenience of being deported but frankly risk of giving access to all clouds account to random official is just too high.
There is also risk of them putting you in jail but I am not sure if unblocking phone really mitigate it.
All the deportations I’ve heard of where the person arrived by air, they were jailed until they could be put on a flight back. They only say “you can’t come in, now go away” if you’re crossing a border by land - and plenty of countries are going to refuse to let you walk away even then.
"So that I have the maximum amount of space available for downloading tons of beheading videos over the hotel Wi-Fi when I get to my room in New York."
More seriously, I would say that the wiped phone has a minimal amount of data in it, which has the advantage that if it is has to be searched, the search time will be minimized.
