French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found
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Wow, ok. You, guys (Americans), are royally fucked over there. Yet another reason not to visit the US ever.
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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.
Freedom of speech, eh? Guess I'm banned if they find out about this account or my Bluesky account.
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The answer is to stop visiting the US.
I mean, there could be situations where one doesn't have a choice. Definitely try and avoid it, though, and don't go for fun.
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Lesson: prepare for a trip to the US like you'd prepare for a trip to Russia or China.
Don't bring your real computing device. Being an empty device from which you can VPN to a system that actually has your data.
If you need to bring an encrypted device, consider the possibility that authorities will attempt to coerce you into unlocking it (and will cause you great disruption and indignity if you won't). If the data matters, make sure you cannot unlock your device under coercion.
(Trivial method: send your friend in the US a snailmail letter. Ask them to keep the letter until your arrival. Into the letter, steganographically embed the OTP key material to obtain the passtphrase to decrypt your device. Now to decrypt the device, three things will be needed: your cooperation, the device, and the letter. And you can deny that the letter contains anything.)
I'm not quite sure I'd call that trivial, haha.
There's also the option of making a hidden partition or otherwise doing stenography within the device. I'm guessing for most travelers just pretty surface level hiding of things will be enough, though. TSA agents are not cybersecurity experts.
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Lesson: prepare for a trip to the US like you'd prepare for a trip to Russia or China.
Don't bring your real computing device. Being an empty device from which you can VPN to a system that actually has your data.
If you need to bring an encrypted device, consider the possibility that authorities will attempt to coerce you into unlocking it (and will cause you great disruption and indignity if you won't). If the data matters, make sure you cannot unlock your device under coercion.
(Trivial method: send your friend in the US a snailmail letter. Ask them to keep the letter until your arrival. Into the letter, steganographically embed the OTP key material to obtain the passtphrase to decrypt your device. Now to decrypt the device, three things will be needed: your cooperation, the device, and the letter. And you can deny that the letter contains anything.)
My entry to China was really easy. I'm very concerned about my return trip to the US. I have to come back at my home and family are there.. doors anyone know if I'm denied entity if I can just book and flight and leave? Why do I need to have the government deport off in rolling to go on my own?
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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.
I told my wife before I could never go to the US because of the stuff I write online, now I'm sure of it
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Usually I respect the honesty more than the subterfuge.
But when it's Nazi's. Nope. Wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.
One thing authoritarian systems have in common is a permanent atmosphere of fear. Honesty is highly unwanted there, integrity will get you straight into trouble. Fascist systems are built on hypocrisy and fear.
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There tends to be a general distaste toward politicians in general among the scientific community.
"The most useless creature on earth, directly followed by the second most useless, the journalist" one of my chemistry profs (a highly respected authority within the chemical community) used to say about politicians. A slightly extreme opinion, IMO, but he predicted several upcoming "scandals" caused by the press' and politicians' complete ignorance of chemistry and inability to think scientifically. His predictions turned out to be 100% right.
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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.
Would be helpful if we could see those messages so we can form an opinion.
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My entry to China was really easy. I'm very concerned about my return trip to the US. I have to come back at my home and family are there.. doors anyone know if I'm denied entity if I can just book and flight and leave? Why do I need to have the government deport off in rolling to go on my own?
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immigration officers at an airport searched his phone
There's no mention in the article if this search was voluntary, or not.
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Consent in a situation like this is difficult to establish, to the point of it being pointless. Your comment implies to me that you think if the person said "OK" to a search request then whatever happened next is their own fault.
Consider just the situation where you're in the immigration line and two uniformed officers walk up to you and say, "please come with us." If you go with them, is that voluntary? If you say "yes" I just think "voluntary" doesn't hold much meaning. What happens if you don't volunteer to go with them? Surely, they say, "come with us now or you'll be arrested." And if you don't volunteer at that point, they'll physically restrain you and take you away.
Since most people are able to understand the subtext of the situation, they're able to tell that, "please come with us" actually means "you are required to come with us now. You may either walk of your own accord, or we will take you captive and punish you beyond whatever we initially intended." So, there's not any consent happening. Just deciding whether being beaten and dragged away in public would be helpful to you, and in many cases it is not.
You might be confusing US law around unlawful search and seizure with US law around border crossings. While the ACLU's position is that the 4th amendment trumps CBP, CBP's position is that it does not and that you cannot stop them.
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I told my wife before I could never go to the US because of the stuff I write online, now I'm sure of it
You're not missing a fucking thing, buddy.
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Consent in a situation like this is difficult to establish, to the point of it being pointless. Your comment implies to me that you think if the person said "OK" to a search request then whatever happened next is their own fault.
Consider just the situation where you're in the immigration line and two uniformed officers walk up to you and say, "please come with us." If you go with them, is that voluntary? If you say "yes" I just think "voluntary" doesn't hold much meaning. What happens if you don't volunteer to go with them? Surely, they say, "come with us now or you'll be arrested." And if you don't volunteer at that point, they'll physically restrain you and take you away.
Since most people are able to understand the subtext of the situation, they're able to tell that, "please come with us" actually means "you are required to come with us now. You may either walk of your own accord, or we will take you captive and punish you beyond whatever we initially intended." So, there's not any consent happening. Just deciding whether being beaten and dragged away in public would be helpful to you, and in many cases it is not.
You might be confusing US law around unlawful search and seizure with US law around border crossings. While the ACLU's position is that the 4th amendment trumps CBP, CBP's position is that it does not and that you cannot stop them.
Consent in a situation like this is difficult to establish, to the point of it being pointless.
Hard disagree.
Consenting to a search, or have one mandated by a judge's order, is one of the fundamental pillars of citizen rights and laws in this country.
Was it a legal or illegal search? That's not a pointless question to ask.
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Yep, 12 years of Democrats in charge and none of them did anything to reign in this whole apparatus
Its hard to actually repeal it. Any politician, republican, democrat, independent, whatever, who does so, and then a terrorist attack happens, they take the blame. That's why nobody tries. Its not an excuse tho, its just an explanation.
Yeah, of course. The patriot act was already written way before 9/11, it was a wishlist and they only needed the right excuse to pass it. It's something they'd always wanted to begin with (both Republicans and Democrats), and it's politically not possible to repeal.
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You're not missing a fucking thing, buddy.
Personally I'd like to visit the US for their national parks, or whatever is left after this administration policies.
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I told my wife before I could never go to the US because of the stuff I write online, now I'm sure of it
These guys are handing their phones over to show work itinerary in their emails amd the immigration officers are then going through all their other emails and messages.
Never, never, never, hand your unlocked phone over to an immigration officer. Print everything you need out before hand.
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You're not missing a fucking thing, buddy.
But think of the endless suburban car parks and Walmarts. Such culture.
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Okay so the "Don't travel to the US right now" aside, do people these days still not understand that border crossing are a sensitive location?
Like, literally, anywhere you go, the first thing you should do before leaving is encrypt and reinstall / factory reset (which should delete all encryption keys to the old data) the devices. And if you have very sensitive stuff, use a disk overwrite program, and for phones start recording a video with the phone aimed at like a wall (and turn off the audio recording). Leave it recording overnight and it should fill up your phone. Use 4K recording to fill the storage faster. Then just wipe the phone again. Now, DONT DOWNLOAD ANYTHING THAT COULD BE CONSIDERED SENSITIVE. Load the phone with innocuous things like pet photos, nature, etc... and act like a "normie". Don't have anything critical of any politician, especially not of the country you're visiting, nor of its allies. Its best to not have any social media apps, preferrably, you should never post things under your name, but if you already did have such accounts, delete them.
If they ask you "Do you have any social media accounts" you say "I don't recall having any" or "I don't think so" and "I'm not the type of person to use social media". Or alternatively, you can have a social media account that have only non-political posts, and show then that.
This is completely unnecessary if you travel to a western democracy, like an EU country, Canada, Australia, etc. America is no longer part of that group though, sadly.
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The Nazis literally did this with a law. They made it illegal to be critical of the party. Fuck the alarm, we've already been had.
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These guys are handing their phones over to show work itinerary in their emails amd the immigration officers are then going through all their other emails and messages.
Never, never, never, hand your unlocked phone over to an immigration officer. Print everything you need out before hand.
Yeah but he can just say "hand over your unlocked phone or I will reject your entry" and then it's the same thing
