cdrnsfHow to Keep ICE Agents Out of Your Devices at Airports
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/25/ice-airports-phone-security-privacy-safety/
Canada's ok, but only in May and October. The rest of the year is ice and/or black fly season.
In English, "America" means the USA specifically.
But you knew that already and decided to just post bait.
or, perhaps, they are wryly pushing back against the USA capturing a generic geographic term for themselves
To be fair though, that horse bolted a couple of centuries ago. What other name would you call it by? There's another "united states" on the same continent. The country to the immediate south is formally known as the "United Mexican States".
But the whole hemisphere is not "Mexico". USA and Canada are not also "North Mexico". Their harmless little reminder is more correct than any of the attempted arguments against it.
The level of arrogance some western-hemisphere Spanish speakers have, trying to tell foreigners that the name they use for their own country in their own native language is wrong, demanding that they translate the Spanish name and use that instead, is so absurdly entitled that it's just... hilarious.
It's so wierd to perceive that as arrogance. Actually "wierd" is being too nice.
In your world, then, is it normal to complain about other people's names, and expect them to change what they call themselves to better suit your preference?
"Immigration and Customs Enforcement have already started targeting travelers, with agents in plain clothes forcefully detaining a mother in front of her young daughter at San Francisco International Airport on Sunday after a tip from the Transportation Security Administration."
I don't think the tsa is at sfo. They use a private contractor for tsa functions. Is the quote made-up?
TSA does more than just the security checkpoints, even at airports with privatized screening TSA does all of the back-office work, including some on-site staff. The physical screening is the only thing that can be contracted out, not the whole rest of the process like maintenance of risk databases.
What might confuse things a bit is that this incident happened hours before ICE agents started reinforcing TSA at checkpoints and seems mostly unrelated, other than establishing the general principle that ICE will arrest people at airports based on tips from TSA's flight booking records.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/us/tsa-data-ice-deportati...
> Ms. Lopez-Jimenez, 41, a native of Guatemala, and her daughter, Wendy Godinez-Lopez, were flagged by T.S.A. officials on Friday when they showed up on a passenger list for a Sunday flight from San Francisco to Miami. The agency then tipped off Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the documents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/us/politics/immigration-t...
> Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers are sharing names and birth dates of travelers believed to have been ordered out of the country by an immigration judge. ICE can then send agents to the airport to detain and quickly deport those people.
They don't have to be at the airport to do this; airlines have to send them the manifest.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-19/chapter-I/part-122/sub...
> Except as provided in paragraph (c) of this section, an appropriate official of each commercial aircraft (carrier) departing from the United States en route to any port or place outside the United States must transmit to the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS; referred to in this section as the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) system), the electronic data interchange system approved by CBP for such transmissions, an electronic passenger departure manifest covering all passengers checked in for the flight.
No, the quote is not made up, which you can confirm yourself by doing a google search.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/ice-agents-arrest-crying-woman-sfo
Sounds like security flagged some undocumented Guatemalan people trying to fly and ICE was called in and they were detained at the SFO airport. SFO is not specifically on the list of airports where ICE is deployed at to fill in security roles for DHS personnel while funding is shut down. So they claim it's an isolated incident. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
The usual fare: log out, disable biometrics, use long pins and passwords, power off. Prefer a burner device, or clean your device and restore when you arrive.
I remember how Google's internal guidelines for travel circa 2011 required to remove any material under NDA from your laptop when traveling to China or Russia; you had to restore it over the VPN after a safe arrival. Funny that now the same precautions apply to the US :((
>you had to restore it over the VPN after a safe arrival
How do you restore it via VPN? Don't you first need a workable OS to connect to VPN first?
You have a working OS! But you're logged out, all sensitive data is removed (safely overwritten with random data first), and you don't have the means to connect to the VPN or anything corporate (it was before zero-trust architecture), even at gunpoint. You can check your flight status, or look up a cafe nearby to eat, etc. But you have to go to a Google office in the destination city, identity yourself, and get the trusted bits restored on your corp machine. This, together with an OTP device, finally allowed you to reconnect to the internal network (and go check fresh memegen).
I do understand why all these steps are required. And they are good. But how should zero-trust architecture solve that? You‘re still authenticated what the core problem is.
It's an interesting state that you can force someone to unlock their phone with biometrics, but you can't force them to reveal a pin.
Anecdotally, I have been to the US a few times in the past year, and seen no change myself - where are you going and why? Thanks have a good trip. It was for short business trips, and I'm white with a number of documented entries/departures, so my experience might be very different from the next person though.
Ditch the phone. The liability, tracking and mental health problems created due to modern phones has made owning one unsustainable. Email works, at worst, voip providers exist. Do you need a map? Print one. Do you need directions? Ask someone. Does the restaurant only offer app or qr, ask someone, or go somewhere else.
I have never encountered a phone-related problem that could not be solved with:
1. A print out.
2. Asking someone.
3. Using your web browser on your computer.
4. Using some kind of voip if audio communication is needed.
Yes, it is not as convenient as the surveillance and privacy nightmares of today, but if your life is only about convenience, then send your money to the government, and let them just decide for you how much money you need, and you don't even have to think about that.
A minor inconvenience is a price well paid for freedom from surveillance and excellent mental health.
The ones who complain about inconvenience don't really care about privacy, democracy and freedom, so should not complain when these things are attacked.