SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
CNN and a a lot of other outlets are reporting that JPL engineer Sidd Bikkannavar, an American-born citizen, was detained at the border when returning from racing solar powered cars overseas.
The border guards demanded he turn over his government-issued NASA phone and its PIN and held him in their detention area.
Bikkannavar also was interviewed by The Verge:
"It was not that they were concerned with me bringing something dangerous in, because they didn't even touch the bags. They had no way of knowing I could have had something in there," he says. "You can say, 'Okay well maybe it's about making sure I'm not a dangerous person,' but they have all the information to verify that."
Bikkannavar says he's still unsure why he was singled out for the electronic search. He says he understands that his name is foreign — its roots go back to southern India. He didn't think it would be a trigger for extra scrutiny, he says. "Sometimes I get stopped and searched, but never anything like this. Maybe you could say it was one huge coincidence that this thing happens right at the travel ban."
Land of the free? Home of the brave?
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:49AM
I never visited a repressive regime which would demand me to unlock my laptop or phone (or maybe I just wasn't aware and got lucky), but I know some colleagues who went to the US.
Some would send the key of sensitive partitions to a colleague in advance, delete their own copy, and are therefore incapable to unlock the laptop on demand.
My phone will wipe everything when I mis-type the security code 10 times...
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by rob_on_earth on Wednesday February 15 2017, @08:51AM
The problem with the "I cannot unlock my device" defence is they WILL take offence and make your life unpleasant. The correct solution is having an unlock key that ONLY unlocks a benign instance of the phone. But I am not sure how that would work with the hardware copying device that they seem to be applying to any unlocked device they get their hands on.