Civil freedoms have been threatened since US President Donald Trump took power in January. The Trump administration has mainly targeted more vulnerable groups, such as immigrants, tourists and non -American activists, because US law does not grant them the same protections as American citizens.
Some immigrants and tourists found themselves trapped on the border for long periods. In some cases, they were detained due to publications on critical social networks with regard to Trump. This raised the question – What should a person be prepared when they meet American immigration agents?
Entry points
Crossing the American border is a particular point of vulnerability for Trump’s repression targets.
Us Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrested Lebanese doctor and deputy professor at Brown Rasha Alawieh University, while trying to reintegrate the United States in March, and finally deportee She after agents would have discovered Hezbollah -related images on her phone. The agency provided no evidence that it had no connection with the paramilitary group, and it tried to explain that it did not support them before it was finally sent to Lebanon.
Tom Bowman, a political lawyer at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), said that crossing the American border raises “separate confidentiality problems”, because customs and border protection have more authorization to search people than regular police. They are allowed to search the electronic devices of people “without mandate or probable cause,” he said.
“If you are a citizen, they cannot deny you to enter the country on the basis of refusing to unlock your phone. They can confiscate the phone, but they cannot deny the entrance to you, ”explains Bill Budington, principal technologist of the Electronic Frontier (EFF) Foundation. “If you may expel, it may be advisable to comply with customer requests and border application, but that does not mean that you cannot minimize the amount of data you take with you.”
“Some travelers choose to limit the data they carry through the border,” says Bowman. “This may involve the use of a travel device only, storage of essential information in the cloud and the output of all accounts, or deleting sensitive applications and files. Complete disc encryption To protect their content. »»
The ice has targeted student demonstrators who support Palestine, and it often examines social media to do so.
Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral scholarship holder at the University of Georgetown, was seized by immigration and customs application (ICE) in March while he returned home after a Ramadan Iftar. Ice alleged Suri, born in India and was in the United States with a student visa, “spread the propaganda of Hamas and promoted anti-Semitism on social networks”, which his lawyers denied.
Two days earlier, citizenship and immigration services of the United States had announced that it would close the social media accounts of people postulated for a permanent residence and non-citizens affiliated with educational establishments for evidence of “anti-Semitic activity”.
Punishing demonstrations
Although the Trump administration has not yet invoked the insurgency law, it punishes people to protest – non -citizens, for the moment.
The administration notably attempted to expel an activist student from the University of Columbia appointed Mahmoud Khalil because of his involvement in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and his is only a similar case.
“I think people should be very worried,” said Daniel Solove, professor of intellectual property and technological law at George Washington University. “We live in a supervisory company, and the government can use facial recognition technologies and AI assisted surveillance technologies to systematically identify and monitor demonstrators. We already see the government going after demonstrators. ”
The student and activist at Cornell University Momodou Taal has revoked her student visa and recently decided to leave the United States to avoid expulsion. Yunseo Chung, student and activist of Columbia and legal permanent resident who has moved to the United States from South Korea at 7, was also targeted by ice.
Federal agents could use video surveillance, social media surveillance, facial recognition or geolocation data to identify who participates in demonstrations, says Bowman. He says that people documenting protests with photos and videos can also involuntarily identify who has participated in a particular demonstration, so that people should pay attention to how they use their devices.
“Basic protection is to turn your phone in plane mode when you are going to protest. This will guarantee that you do not send your data in real time, ”explains Budington. “You can always navigate the streets with offline cards. Google cards and Apple cards have a way to do so.”
Protectors can also use messaging applications as a signal to communicate during manifestations, as their messages can be encrypted. Some may recommend leaving your phone at home, but you may want to have it in an emergency or if you want to document the unjustified police actions.
It is essentially impossible to prevent all governments from ficking the government and that the data is completely secure 100% of the time, but there are actions that people cross the border or attend demonstrations can take, which will help reduce the risk that they are targeted by the government.
Americans are increasingly aware of their need for intimacy and they are looking for ways to protect themselves. Buddington says people seem much more concerned about privacy than they were five or 10 years ago.
“The government already has massive speeds of personal data and uses them badly. The government already has countless surveillance technologies and uses them, ”explains Solove. “We are already in a constitutional crisis. It seems that this administration will push as far as it can until they are arrested. ”
