Now: I’ll be very clear that I don’t agree with these policies. They are terrible.
And obviously if I had anything sensitive I wouldn’t travel with it in the first place! But if I landed in Miami tomorrow for a holiday and someone asked me to unlock my phone so they could look around - would I? Yes! Because I know that not doing it leads to somewhere worse.
The point I was trying to make was that I don’t have the luxury of standing up for principles at the US border. Best case it will take a few hours of me being difficult while my family waits. Worse case I’m on a plane home again.
So the end result is that if I’m reluctant to show device data at the border, it’s because I realized that something on my device would be found a more serious issue than my refusal to show it.
Do not take my previous post as me subscribing to some form of “it’s no problem if you have nothing to hide”. That’s not what I was saying. It is a problem, and I just don’t have a choice.
Well put. Consider also the situation of people who are traveling to the US for business, and for whom it is a requirement that they travel there. Not only would being difficult subject them to a potentially-huge short-term monetary loss (lost sales contract, for example), but it might also wreak long-term financial and reputational havoc on them if they lose their job or are blackballed by their company for being someone who "can't travel without getting law enforcement involved".
That, again, is what the people authoring and enforcing these policies count on. The power dynamic is almost entirely against travelers. All the solutions are so radical as to be unfeasible in the short term (remodel international transit authorities; move business out of the US; remodel businesses to not require travel, etc.).
Now: I’ll be very clear that I don’t agree with these policies. They are terrible.
And obviously if I had anything sensitive I wouldn’t travel with it in the first place! But if I landed in Miami tomorrow for a holiday and someone asked me to unlock my phone so they could look around - would I? Yes! Because I know that not doing it leads to somewhere worse.
The point I was trying to make was that I don’t have the luxury of standing up for principles at the US border. Best case it will take a few hours of me being difficult while my family waits. Worse case I’m on a plane home again.
So the end result is that if I’m reluctant to show device data at the border, it’s because I realized that something on my device would be found a more serious issue than my refusal to show it.
Do not take my previous post as me subscribing to some form of “it’s no problem if you have nothing to hide”. That’s not what I was saying. It is a problem, and I just don’t have a choice.