Man sues feds after being detained for refusing to unlock his phone at airport

The problem with Customs and Border Protection is the attitude. They do have a challenging job. 99%+ of travelers are legit and doing nothing nefarious. They have to pick out the ones who are not legit&#x2F;up to no good. I have no problem with them asking questions of myself or other travelers, even a lot of questions.<p>The problem is the attitude and abusive nature of their conduct. I have had this experience a couple times and one time with my mother and I am a citizen. Plenty of other countries have customs&#x2F;border agents that quiz you without attacking or belittling you.

The &quot;unlock your phone&quot; part is obviously a problem, and the focus of HN&#x27;s attention.<p>What gets me is an Officer can say to your face &quot;You are not under arrest&quot; but then handcuff you, take you someplace against your will, and detain you there without access to a lawyer.<p>How can that possibly be the conduct of Officers in a free country?<p>I could even understand if the Officer just plainly said &quot;we can not let you board this flight, you must leave the airport&quot; or something similar. But handcuffs and detention even though you are not under arrest is insanity.

This is certainly not the first article of its kind, and the legality of such action seems to be upheld in court (at least the use of search without a warrant at the border).<p>So, the selfish question then is: How do I protect myself from such unwarranted searches? Is there a way I can present my phone such that it drops into a mode that contains no data? Do I need to back my phone up before traveling, wipe it for the border crossing, and then restore once I feel safe?<p>It feels crazy to ask this question, as an American citizen, but HN, what do you do to protect your data at the American border?

Those &quot;unlock your phone at the border&quot; stories have become so famous that anybody who&#x27;s &quot;up to no good&quot; would be traveling with a decoy phone at this point.

I decided a long time ago that I will never travel to the US because I&#x27;m not white and cares about my privacy.

Here&#x27;s are the procedings [1] and the complaint [2]<p>Say what you will about the US and the fact that you can get shot for looking at the wrong guy at the wrong time, but the mere fact that this happening and so easy to follow is quite interesting. In Germany you&#x27;d be laughed out of the room and I&#x27;ve had my fair share of racism to deal with from the authorities despite having grown up here.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.courtlistener.com&#x2F;docket&#x2F;8168712&#x2F;haisam-elsharkawi-v-united-states-of-america&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.courtlistener.com&#x2F;docket&#x2F;8168712&#x2F;haisam-elsharka...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.courtlistener.com&#x2F;recap&#x2F;gov.uscourts.cacd.727665&#x2F;gov.uscourts.cacd.727665.1.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.courtlistener.com&#x2F;recap&#x2F;gov.uscourts.cacd.727665...</a>

So did anybody call a lawyer like he asked? Reminds me of the movie Trading Places where Eddie Murphy asked for a lawyer and all of the aristocrats coughed and turned away<p>My rehearsed line is “you in the &lt;distinctive clothes&gt; I’ll split the settlement with you if you record this and call a lawyer!”<p>Gotta disrupt the bystander syndrome by calling out a particular person<p>And provide the financial incentive

&quot;Do as we say or you&#x27;ll miss your flight&quot; probably get 99.99% compliance. Most people have plans and &quot;have nothing to hide,&quot; or so they think.<p>Question: Why do they ask all these question about kids, schools, wife etc? Identity is established, the passport is legit because they can check it, WTH do they want?

Suggestion: for international travel, when possible stow your powered off phone in checked baggage, and bring a non-important factory-reset phone or tablet for entertainment or to connect to the cloud if needed for work etc. If needed keep your work files in a hidden folder on an SD card in your camera... lots of annoying but increasingly necessary workarounds to deal with the growth of authoritarian states.

The border doctrine so clearly violates the Constitution, it’s absurd that we allow it to continue (especially when it’s applied to most of he population of the US due to the coasts). It has to go.

The fact that border agents can search your personal effects is totalitarian, not unlike the stasi and other authoritarian regimes. The fact that this is &#x27;normalized&#x27; in a democracy is astonishing.<p>This case also highlights the massive gap between civilized rule of law and what actually happens in these interactions, the dehumanization and arbitrary intimidation is not compatible with a democratic civilized society, and this culture of enforcement and lack of accountability is akin to a police state.

Searching through a phone&#x2F;laptop is like searching through your mind itself, this should not be legal under any circumstances.

Geez. This is terrible. This just makes me consider using a burner phone and imaging my own laptop before visiting the States after being in China for four years.

I was searched at the border a few months ago on my way in via car from Vancouver to Washington. It did unfortunately appear to be the case that they had selected a significantly larger number of non-caucasion looking people for searches that followed mine (I&#x27;m caucasion), thought I hadn&#x27;t noticed until my girlfriend pointed it out to me. However, while I was waiting for them to finish searching my car, I spoke with a caucasion fellow who happened to be Canadian with a German passport. Based on what he described, they decided that he must have been trying to work in the states without the right visa. They then proceeded to molest him and his personal privacy for 4+ hours. He tossed me a pamphlet that they gave him indicating that they had the full legal right to do so and he was more or less screwed. I proceeded to start deleting every avenue they&#x27;d have to view chat messages, emails, photos, anything, but there really was only so much I could do. Fortunately, it seems like they just wanted to try and intimidate me. The search seemed to be a formality. From what I hear, similar things happen on the way into Canadians to Canadians. It&#x27;s a strange world we live in, and I wish all the good fortune in the world to those who try and fight it.

Don&#x27;t take your devices with you.

Was this incident recorded by any passers-by?<p>It may sound as if I&#x27;m asking out of doubt, but rather, I&#x27;m asking to see if my hunch that CBP is equally as reckless and uncaring in front of a camera as e.g. other law enforcement agencies.

To me this kind of story should be on the front page of the NYT, not the fact that Netflix found out what my Candy Crush score was via my FB messages.<p>Being physically detained by law enforcement and having your Constitutional rights denied seems way worse than FB data leaks, at least to me.<p>And maybe I&#x27;m wrong but I can&#x27;t help but wonder if race is a factor, that this and other stories like it would be bigger news if white U.S. citizens were the ones being subjected to this treatment.

What&#x27;s the protocol if the phone (or other electronic device) was provided to you by your employer? Wouldn&#x27;t unlocking and handing over a &quot;protected&quot; device be against most company handbooks?

Just a reminder: anyone that is on the TLA&#x27;s shitlist will have their phones combed through as soon as it hits american networks(possibly others).<p>This is more or less a form of intimidation at the border.

I would hate to go to a place where they tried to force me to unlock my phone and surrender my privacy.