Instead of fixing the real issues this country has: poverty, homelessness, joblessness, hunger, drug abuse, health care accessibility, affordable housing accessibility - we prefer to look for a boogeymen outside of the country.
Around 500-1000 Homeless Americans die from hypothermia per year, 2000-4000 Americans die per year from hunger, 35000 people on average die from drug over dose, over 500,000 people die from heart desease so in the last 15 years we lost just to these causes - around 8million people!
According to a September 2016 study by Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, some 3,024 Americans died from 1975 through 2015 due to foreign-born terrorism. That number includes the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2,983 people) and averages nearly 74 Americans per year.
8million+ people dead vs. 3000? So where are the real issues?
Why do we allow the government propaganda machine to fool us?
I always have a hard time interpreting these statistics.
I understand the numbers of terrorist-related deaths versus non-terrorist one are staggering as displayed above, but if we stopped funding these security measures at airports (scanners, staff, etc), what could the number go up to?
Are these 3000 deaths so low because of the security measures? If we were to remove/loosen security measures at airports, how could we even estimate the impact in number of terrorist-related deaths?
Are these fears of possible ramp-up of terrorist attacks (if security measures are loosened) unfounded?
The Joker explained it well. People are not afraid of violence, we habituate to it very easily and it's everywhere. They are afraid of unpredictable violence.
That homeless guy is going to die of hypothermia from being out in the rain? Makes sense. He should try to get out of the rain.
Thousands of women are killed by their ex-boyfriends every year? Makes sense, some guys are crazy. Good thing I don't date guys like that.
Someone might bring a gun into Starbucks and shoot random people? Good lord what is the world coming to! Take all the guns away! Islam! It's those creepy loners again!
There are plenty of legitimate complaints to be made about our current situation, but this line of argumentation isn't one of them. The whole idea that the number of deaths from a particular cause determines precisely the degree of threat from that cause is silly. Swimming pool drownings kill many times more people per year than terrorists did on 9/11 but it's perfectly appropriate that there's no war on swimming pools but a war against terrorists.
I don't disagree some of the TSA searching doesn't necessarily decrease the chance of successful attack, and that the searching methodology isn't necessarily comprehensive.
But I felt bringing death caused by other problems (homeless or even reckless driving) is a strawman. First, terrorism IS a problem, both domestic and foreign. So whether we have more people dying because of hunger or not, isn't going to affect the searching policy in airport. We have to discuss death by drunk driving and death by terrorism separately. Is government prioritizing homeless issues? That's different from is TSA search effective. They are two completely different issues.
many people fear death by random, terrorist acts more than they fear death by any of the causes you mention because they feel they exert some control over those causes, but not over terrorist acts. many people believe terrorist acts are hard to understand, predict and avoid.
and, aside from that, many people really really really hate the notion that a terrorist, often from a foreign country, can kill people in their own territory, a place they consider "safe". people find this particularly disturbing because of the direct human malevolence involved. people are one of the scariest things people can face.
when we simply reduce these types of deaths into counts, we lose some of that human perspective and what makes people live their lives in fear and anger.
> we prefer to look for a boogeymen outside of the country.
Looks to me like we're looking for bogeymen inside our country. This is what countries suffering hard times with poor leaders do when the real outside enemies are hard to find or don't actually exist.
Because ego and thus hatred against perceived differences that assists mental seperation is so very deeply ingrained in your culture. Just look and see. It really is the root cause of all suffering, the concept of "I". It is what allows for illusions like "I have rights" or "they are attacking us" and everything that comes after it: Very, very naive and subjective perception that is regarded as absolute truth and even defended to great lengths.
>> Why do we allow the government propaganda machine to fool us?
my current working theory is that US citizens have helped their Govt hone the tactics earlier. The propaganda machine was then turned at other countries( US enemies and even allies)
And US citizens fully supported it then and even now.
"More recently I was made to wonder: Does the 4th Amendment apply to Muslim citizens at LAX?"
Well, no actually, it does not. Nor does it apply to non-Muslim citizens, or white citizens, or any other types of citizens.
And excuse me, but you were just "recently" made to wonder about this? Only recently?!?
We apparently decided after 9/11 that airports and any place within 100 miles of the border were going to be Constitution-free zones, where the laws around search and seizure just do not apply to anyone.
The following happened to me, for instance, in an airport in 2006:
This is one of those things that kills me -- those of us whining about all this, especially under Obama, were "shrill" civil libertarians. But then Trump came to power.
Now that this crap is happening under Trump, and it's happening to ACLU lawyers and doctors and newspaper journos and so on (cue the scary music), it's suddenly a crisis, and people's hair is on fire.
It was a crisis over a decade ago, when we just abandoned the Constitution in airports and at borders. And the warning that civil libertarians gave, which was roundly ignored, was "wait until the wrong person gets hold of this power."
The hundred-mile border thing is a myth; it refers to a SCOTUS holding that limits searches with a nexus to a border crossing to within that distance, but does not allow CBP to search people who haven't transacted directly with the border in some way.
ACLU, which I otherwise support wholeheartedly, does us all a mild disservice by perpetuating the myth, which is very widely believed.
Even prior to 9/11[1], you didn't have any rights at the border. As stated in other comments, most of the bill of rights doesn't apply at national borders, even for US citizens.
But I totally agree with you. We had eight years of domestic spying, increased TSA nonsense (I no longer fly within the US. I wish more Americas would refuse to fly), predator drones, secret kill lists and the first president in history to spend every day of this tenure at war. I wish everyone who is out protesting now was protesting just as loud during the Obama years instead of falling into the false left/right divide: http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-a...
[1] What's the difference between 9/11 and a cow. You can't milk a cow for 16 years.
Most Americans are not the sort with the knee-jerk "Think of the children!" reaction. The problem is that most sane Americans do not vote. Our political landscape is such a mess that Americans don't want to think about politics, and so their opinion is drowned out by fear-driven activism.
If I understand terrorism, I will not react to it irrationally. The rational reaction is, in fact, no reaction at all. The problem is that those who do react to terrorism react in fear. They push this agenda of security over liberty.
In order to overcome this idiotic agenda, those of us who are sane enough not to react, must actually take action. We must actually vote. We must actually talk politics, instead of going on with the things we find more immediately important, we must actually take political action. It has just been too damn hard to get that to happen, so here we are.
If I'm not mistaken, the Supreme Court made a ruling that searching a person's belongings without probable cause is ok if that person is traveling. It was in 1973, way before 9/11.
Every time US border security is being discusses here, I read comments about how things are bad at the Canadian or UK border too.
But does this really make an overreaction legitimate - That other countries are doing it too? Please think again before writing some knee-jerk reaction like "other countries are the same or worse"...
I was once treated unfriendly by Austrian border agents while re-entering the country. Yes, I experienced worse things when entering other countries. I still think that this particular incident was unacceptable, even though things are worse in other countries...
> I read comments about how things are bad at the Canadian or UK border too.
I've flown through Germany, Moldova, the UK, Ireland, Singapore, Australia, etc. etc.
America is the worst. Most other countries will not preform pat downs. The German head of transport security even mentioned the body scanners have over a 50% false positive rate (they're literally about the same as random chance; multi million dollar worthless pieces of security theatre shit that should be removed).
The only pat down I recall was Moldova, and even there it was just your legs. I won't fly in the US any more. If I need to leave the country, I'd rather just take a bus to Canada. At least if they violate my rights there, I'm not a citizen and it doesn't bother me.
"But does this really make an overreaction legitimate - That other countries are doing it too?"
No, but it can help calibrate whether people really are overreacting. I find it is quite common for people to decry their home country for doing something that they seem to think is egregiously bad when it is in fact something done by lots of countries and something that has been done for lots of history. This may lead you to condemn those other countries and the "lots of history", too, but it does tend to at least tamp down on the idea that we're doing something uniquely new and horrible which could lead to uniquely new and horrible outcomes.
I think there's some truth to the idea that what HN is complaining about is not effectively securing our borders, and that this is at best a waste of time and at worst a process that will generate a lot of false positives. But there is also some truth to the idea that some people seem to have picked up the impression that the standard around the world and throughout history is that border agents just wave people through every border without questions and with a smile, and that therefore any scrutiny beyond that is some sort of unprecedented betrayal of the very foundation of civilization.
Or, if you prefer, the US may be overreacting at the border, but it's probably overreacting a lot less than people think relative to what is common in the world and throughout history.
Then there's a relatively new issue (on a civilization scale, anyhow) of what to do about cell phones and computers at the border. Again, I think, once you get rid of the idea that borders examining what kinds of things you're bringing in with you being some sort of brand new imposition unprecedented in the history of the world or Western civilization, you can get a clearer picture of why this is such a confusing problem. If it isn't that abnormal to look at people's papers they're bringing in, how do you deal with the fact that people can nowadays literally slip the entire contents of a library down their sock? And, on the flip side... why exactly do you care when they could also just have SCP'ed that entire library over too? When this topic comes up, we often discuss how easy it would be to get around this by simply carrying in wiped devices and recopying everything we need over the Internet afterwards, which is a challenge to the entire reason the border agents think they have an interest in this matter.
My point here is not to defend or attack our current practices. My point is that if you consider these issues from a historically-informed perspective about how borders have historically operated in the real world, as opposed to how you think they ought to operate combined with the ever-present human cognitive temptation to conflate the is vs. the ought, that the current confusion around how our borders function in a highly-connected world at least starts to make more sense. And if you want to have an effect on how we go forward with our border policies, it is always a good idea to have a better understanding of how we got here rather than a worse one. I would imagine some people are trying to play the "but other places have it worse so who cares" game, but I think some people are also trying to do a bit of education as to how borders really work.
I really want to travel to Florida from London with my wife and baby for holidays. Stories like this though are big deterrent. I'm an atheist with a muslim name, and Chinese wife(a devout Christian). We've never travelled to US before and honestly don't know what to expect.
Expect to be treat rudely and aggressively by the first person you meet. The next person (and most other people after that) will, in all likelihood, be the complete opposite.
Based on my experience as a white Englishman with an American kinda name. It's not all about race and/or religion - it's just the way it's always been.
Thinking that one news story reported by the media is representative of the whole United States is like westerners thinking that if they travel to the Middle East there will be a roving bands of Muslims beheading people in the streets.
The media exaggerates EVERYTHING.
The absolute worst thing that will possibly happen to you is to get pulled aside for some extra questions and apparently somebody flipping through your phone. That sucks, but as an American who travels all the time, I have never seen or known anyone to have to go through anything like that.
The closest I can get to is one of my Indian friends being pulled aside for a pat down in Canada.
This is really an overreaction I believe. I know many many Muslims who regularly go from UK to the US without any hassles at all. Of course as a non-Muslim I'm always terrified by these stories but the odds are very very low - you'd probably have a greater likelihood of being hassled coming into the UK from a non_EU country honestly.
This most definitely doesn't seem normal. Problem is so many are looking the other way thinking "well I don't look like a terrorist, so no one will search my phone"
Recently worked with explosives haha, she buys fertilizer on the wrong day.
I'm pretty ignorant, I hope our country works itself out, would be a pity to go down after winning WW2 sure 70+ years later
Oh well... Like the Romans I guess
Edit: I really am ignorant to the world, busy being poor, chasing the dream of "entrepreneurship" 30% of nothing is nothing. Too scared to use the bike rack on the public bus so instead I'll walk for 1.5 hrs (6 miles) home. Scared of bums asking me for money.
Oh well, 1 in 330+million, some people will save us hopefully. It's just hard to see the bad stuff to me because I'm in my own little peasant world. Am I losing my rights/internet privacy problems? I don't know... I don't feel free that's for sure just because of finances but that's not permanent/my own fault.
Ahhh well live or die my life was alright, I was privileged. A bag of meat on a rock.
Last week, Apple insisted on me giving my account password + filevault password to replace the battery (!) of my macbook at the Apple store. So I guess it's just an American thing to do...
Just and idea for Android: If you are rooted: Make a backup with nandroid and put it somewhere encrypted on your laptop or cloud. Make Backup with root, syncthing and rsync of your sd card (it's so complicated because many cannot remove internal "SD"). Reset phone. Cross border. Restore both backups.
The question is: WHY I need to this counter measures to protect my right of privacy when entering a country like the USA.
She went through standard TSA searches - scans, pat downs, and explosive chemical swabbing. (I travel twice a month and have TSA-Pre and I still have to go through that 1/3 of the time). She was then questioned about the nature of her travels. Upon return she was questioned about her travels, the contents of a CD she had, why she tried to open up a bank account abroad, and where the thousands of dollars she left with went. I don't think it was unreasonable for border patrol to be suspicious. Their job is to investigate suspicious behavior and from their perspective they don't know whether the woman was telling the truth or not, but the facts of the matter do raise suspicion. I would be a bit more worried if they didn't ask all of those questions and investigate the issue, why else are we paying them?
In summary, yes. It is a misdemeanor (subject to a fine of not more than $1,000) to refuse to provide assistance (e.g. translation or decryption). Assuming you refuse, they will likely seize the device and detain you for some unknown period of time.
If by "required to" you mean "legally and constitutionally required to", then that's still at least somewhat ambiguous and hasn't been fully tested in court.
If by "required" you mean "to get on my flight and avoid getting arrested", then probably yes, it's required.
What if you and your wife enter on different flights? Wouldn't it makes sense to carry each other's devices and not share the passwords with each other? You aren't refusing; you have a plausible defense to not knowing the passwords.
It's less compelling, but i guess you could have a trusted friend change your passwords for you and require them to later unlock them. (after you get out of detainment 5 days later and fight in court -- instead of the gov't winning, you both lose)
I know that there is racial profiling going on, and travel to certain countries will have higher numbers of individuals with certain ethnic backgrounds, but how often is this happening to middle-class white Americans? I used to travel a great deal but haven't done much over the past 5 years.
I remember being questioned for about 15 minutes on my flight from the UK to Paris back around 2008. My trip from the US to Turkey from 2013 was pretty timid, maybe 2 minutes of questions and a mandatory body scan (stopover in Amsterdam). From the US to South Africa completely painless. I did get my hands swabbed for explosive residue on a trip from Detroit to Las Vegas a couple years ago.
I'm just curious if anyone here has personal experience as a middle class white individual getting treatment as harsh as I read in some of these articles.
WHY???? Of all people, the ones who get targeted have standing! Of all people, she might have a shot of pulling in the 4th AND the 14th amendments!
I know people want to live their lives rather than get embroiled in legal fights but the ones whose lives are interrupted by this sort of injustice are the only ones who CAN put a stop to this.
[+] [-] readhn|9 years ago|reply
Instead of fixing the real issues this country has: poverty, homelessness, joblessness, hunger, drug abuse, health care accessibility, affordable housing accessibility - we prefer to look for a boogeymen outside of the country.
Around 500-1000 Homeless Americans die from hypothermia per year, 2000-4000 Americans die per year from hunger, 35000 people on average die from drug over dose, over 500,000 people die from heart desease so in the last 15 years we lost just to these causes - around 8million people!
According to a September 2016 study by Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, some 3,024 Americans died from 1975 through 2015 due to foreign-born terrorism. That number includes the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2,983 people) and averages nearly 74 Americans per year.
8million+ people dead vs. 3000? So where are the real issues?
Why do we allow the government propaganda machine to fool us?
[+] [-] NotHereNotThere|9 years ago|reply
I understand the numbers of terrorist-related deaths versus non-terrorist one are staggering as displayed above, but if we stopped funding these security measures at airports (scanners, staff, etc), what could the number go up to?
Are these 3000 deaths so low because of the security measures? If we were to remove/loosen security measures at airports, how could we even estimate the impact in number of terrorist-related deaths?
Are these fears of possible ramp-up of terrorist attacks (if security measures are loosened) unfounded?
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|9 years ago|reply
That homeless guy is going to die of hypothermia from being out in the rain? Makes sense. He should try to get out of the rain.
Thousands of women are killed by their ex-boyfriends every year? Makes sense, some guys are crazy. Good thing I don't date guys like that.
Someone might bring a gun into Starbucks and shoot random people? Good lord what is the world coming to! Take all the guns away! Islam! It's those creepy loners again!
[+] [-] phd514|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yeukhon|9 years ago|reply
But I felt bringing death caused by other problems (homeless or even reckless driving) is a strawman. First, terrorism IS a problem, both domestic and foreign. So whether we have more people dying because of hunger or not, isn't going to affect the searching policy in airport. We have to discuss death by drunk driving and death by terrorism separately. Is government prioritizing homeless issues? That's different from is TSA search effective. They are two completely different issues.
[+] [-] HillaryBriss|9 years ago|reply
and, aside from that, many people really really really hate the notion that a terrorist, often from a foreign country, can kill people in their own territory, a place they consider "safe". people find this particularly disturbing because of the direct human malevolence involved. people are one of the scariest things people can face.
when we simply reduce these types of deaths into counts, we lose some of that human perspective and what makes people live their lives in fear and anger.
[+] [-] leereeves|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreamcompiler|9 years ago|reply
Looks to me like we're looking for bogeymen inside our country. This is what countries suffering hard times with poor leaders do when the real outside enemies are hard to find or don't actually exist.
[+] [-] Mo3|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] galtwho|9 years ago|reply
my current working theory is that US citizens have helped their Govt hone the tactics earlier. The propaganda machine was then turned at other countries( US enemies and even allies)
And US citizens fully supported it then and even now.
[+] [-] jonstokes|9 years ago|reply
Well, no actually, it does not. Nor does it apply to non-Muslim citizens, or white citizens, or any other types of citizens.
And excuse me, but you were just "recently" made to wonder about this? Only recently?!?
We apparently decided after 9/11 that airports and any place within 100 miles of the border were going to be Constitution-free zones, where the laws around search and seizure just do not apply to anyone.
The following happened to me, for instance, in an airport in 2006:
https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/05/6767-2/
This is one of those things that kills me -- those of us whining about all this, especially under Obama, were "shrill" civil libertarians. But then Trump came to power.
Now that this crap is happening under Trump, and it's happening to ACLU lawyers and doctors and newspaper journos and so on (cue the scary music), it's suddenly a crisis, and people's hair is on fire.
It was a crisis over a decade ago, when we just abandoned the Constitution in airports and at borders. And the warning that civil libertarians gave, which was roundly ignored, was "wait until the wrong person gets hold of this power."
[+] [-] tptacek|9 years ago|reply
ACLU, which I otherwise support wholeheartedly, does us all a mild disservice by perpetuating the myth, which is very widely believed.
[+] [-] djsumdog|9 years ago|reply
But I totally agree with you. We had eight years of domestic spying, increased TSA nonsense (I no longer fly within the US. I wish more Americas would refuse to fly), predator drones, secret kill lists and the first president in history to spend every day of this tenure at war. I wish everyone who is out protesting now was protesting just as loud during the Obama years instead of falling into the false left/right divide: http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-a...
[1] What's the difference between 9/11 and a cow. You can't milk a cow for 16 years.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|9 years ago|reply
They're not a new phenomenon that suddenly started under the Trump administration.
[+] [-] thomastjeffery|9 years ago|reply
If I understand terrorism, I will not react to it irrationally. The rational reaction is, in fact, no reaction at all. The problem is that those who do react to terrorism react in fear. They push this agenda of security over liberty.
In order to overcome this idiotic agenda, those of us who are sane enough not to react, must actually take action. We must actually vote. We must actually talk politics, instead of going on with the things we find more immediately important, we must actually take political action. It has just been too damn hard to get that to happen, so here we are.
[+] [-] maxerickson|9 years ago|reply
Like to ~1800.
[+] [-] justin66|9 years ago|reply
A guy carrying a weapon into an airport. An old woman with a back brace who has done nothing wrong. Yeah, it's almost exactly the same thing!
[+] [-] KKKKkkkk1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] struppi|9 years ago|reply
But does this really make an overreaction legitimate - That other countries are doing it too? Please think again before writing some knee-jerk reaction like "other countries are the same or worse"...
I was once treated unfriendly by Austrian border agents while re-entering the country. Yes, I experienced worse things when entering other countries. I still think that this particular incident was unacceptable, even though things are worse in other countries...
[+] [-] djsumdog|9 years ago|reply
I've flown through Germany, Moldova, the UK, Ireland, Singapore, Australia, etc. etc.
America is the worst. Most other countries will not preform pat downs. The German head of transport security even mentioned the body scanners have over a 50% false positive rate (they're literally about the same as random chance; multi million dollar worthless pieces of security theatre shit that should be removed).
The only pat down I recall was Moldova, and even there it was just your legs. I won't fly in the US any more. If I need to leave the country, I'd rather just take a bus to Canada. At least if they violate my rights there, I'm not a citizen and it doesn't bother me.
[+] [-] 1_2__3|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerf|9 years ago|reply
No, but it can help calibrate whether people really are overreacting. I find it is quite common for people to decry their home country for doing something that they seem to think is egregiously bad when it is in fact something done by lots of countries and something that has been done for lots of history. This may lead you to condemn those other countries and the "lots of history", too, but it does tend to at least tamp down on the idea that we're doing something uniquely new and horrible which could lead to uniquely new and horrible outcomes.
I think there's some truth to the idea that what HN is complaining about is not effectively securing our borders, and that this is at best a waste of time and at worst a process that will generate a lot of false positives. But there is also some truth to the idea that some people seem to have picked up the impression that the standard around the world and throughout history is that border agents just wave people through every border without questions and with a smile, and that therefore any scrutiny beyond that is some sort of unprecedented betrayal of the very foundation of civilization.
Or, if you prefer, the US may be overreacting at the border, but it's probably overreacting a lot less than people think relative to what is common in the world and throughout history.
Then there's a relatively new issue (on a civilization scale, anyhow) of what to do about cell phones and computers at the border. Again, I think, once you get rid of the idea that borders examining what kinds of things you're bringing in with you being some sort of brand new imposition unprecedented in the history of the world or Western civilization, you can get a clearer picture of why this is such a confusing problem. If it isn't that abnormal to look at people's papers they're bringing in, how do you deal with the fact that people can nowadays literally slip the entire contents of a library down their sock? And, on the flip side... why exactly do you care when they could also just have SCP'ed that entire library over too? When this topic comes up, we often discuss how easy it would be to get around this by simply carrying in wiped devices and recopying everything we need over the Internet afterwards, which is a challenge to the entire reason the border agents think they have an interest in this matter.
My point here is not to defend or attack our current practices. My point is that if you consider these issues from a historically-informed perspective about how borders have historically operated in the real world, as opposed to how you think they ought to operate combined with the ever-present human cognitive temptation to conflate the is vs. the ought, that the current confusion around how our borders function in a highly-connected world at least starts to make more sense. And if you want to have an effect on how we go forward with our border policies, it is always a good idea to have a better understanding of how we got here rather than a worse one. I would imagine some people are trying to play the "but other places have it worse so who cares" game, but I think some people are also trying to do a bit of education as to how borders really work.
[+] [-] princetman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dazc|9 years ago|reply
Based on my experience as a white Englishman with an American kinda name. It's not all about race and/or religion - it's just the way it's always been.
[+] [-] smt88|9 years ago|reply
That said, there are much nicer places to visit than Florida. I live 5 hours away and have never gone voluntarily...
[+] [-] jeremyt|9 years ago|reply
Thinking that one news story reported by the media is representative of the whole United States is like westerners thinking that if they travel to the Middle East there will be a roving bands of Muslims beheading people in the streets.
The media exaggerates EVERYTHING.
The absolute worst thing that will possibly happen to you is to get pulled aside for some extra questions and apparently somebody flipping through your phone. That sucks, but as an American who travels all the time, I have never seen or known anyone to have to go through anything like that.
The closest I can get to is one of my Indian friends being pulled aside for a pat down in Canada.
[+] [-] robk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] archildress|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianbreslin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leereeves|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ge96|9 years ago|reply
Recently worked with explosives haha, she buys fertilizer on the wrong day.
I'm pretty ignorant, I hope our country works itself out, would be a pity to go down after winning WW2 sure 70+ years later
Oh well... Like the Romans I guess
Edit: I really am ignorant to the world, busy being poor, chasing the dream of "entrepreneurship" 30% of nothing is nothing. Too scared to use the bike rack on the public bus so instead I'll walk for 1.5 hrs (6 miles) home. Scared of bums asking me for money.
Oh well, 1 in 330+million, some people will save us hopefully. It's just hard to see the bad stuff to me because I'm in my own little peasant world. Am I losing my rights/internet privacy problems? I don't know... I don't feel free that's for sure just because of finances but that's not permanent/my own fault.
Ahhh well live or die my life was alright, I was privileged. A bag of meat on a rock.
[+] [-] LeonM|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|9 years ago|reply
I don't understand this attitude.
[+] [-] therealmarv|9 years ago|reply
The question is: WHY I need to this counter measures to protect my right of privacy when entering a country like the USA.
[+] [-] amckenna|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brbsix|9 years ago|reply
Edit: Found relevant article at https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/what-could-happe...
In summary, yes. It is a misdemeanor (subject to a fine of not more than $1,000) to refuse to provide assistance (e.g. translation or decryption). Assuming you refuse, they will likely seize the device and detain you for some unknown period of time.
[+] [-] apetresc|9 years ago|reply
If by "required" you mean "to get on my flight and avoid getting arrested", then probably yes, it's required.
[+] [-] darkarmani|9 years ago|reply
It's less compelling, but i guess you could have a trusted friend change your passwords for you and require them to later unlock them. (after you get out of detainment 5 days later and fight in court -- instead of the gov't winning, you both lose)
[+] [-] amckenna|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huffmsa|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bborud|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Eclyps|9 years ago|reply
I remember being questioned for about 15 minutes on my flight from the UK to Paris back around 2008. My trip from the US to Turkey from 2013 was pretty timid, maybe 2 minutes of questions and a mandatory body scan (stopover in Amsterdam). From the US to South Africa completely painless. I did get my hands swabbed for explosive residue on a trip from Detroit to Las Vegas a couple years ago.
I'm just curious if anyone here has personal experience as a middle class white individual getting treatment as harsh as I read in some of these articles.
[+] [-] lordlimecat|9 years ago|reply
WHY???? Of all people, the ones who get targeted have standing! Of all people, she might have a shot of pulling in the 4th AND the 14th amendments!
I know people want to live their lives rather than get embroiled in legal fights but the ones whose lives are interrupted by this sort of injustice are the only ones who CAN put a stop to this.
[+] [-] danesparza|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kw71|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huffmsa|9 years ago|reply
Get a $70 candybar, assume it will be lost, stolen, broken, pawned while overseas.
Problem solved -- at least the phone part.
[+] [-] visarga|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooks|9 years ago|reply