[HN Gopher] Moscow police officers stop people, request their ph...
___________________________________________________________________
Moscow police officers stop people, request their phones to read
their messages
Author : mudro_zboris
Score : 590 points
Date : 2022-03-06 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| asats wrote:
| Also, 11446 people have been detained so far, according to
| OvdInfo.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The Police in Canada are telling people flying FCK TRUDEAU flags,
| that they are now banned on Parliament Hill.
|
| https://twitter.com/i/status/1500153323495866372
|
| He wants to pass Bill C36 and Bill C11 that would further monitor
| the internet and censor information. This is a western country
| not Russia. I think people need to get back to fighting this
| Authoritarian bend.
| [deleted]
| haunter wrote:
| 8 hours ago on HN: "Send a text message about Ukraine to a random
| Russian mobile number"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30575738
| [deleted]
| jasinjames wrote:
| You could call this the _Address Unknown_ [1] approach. An
| excellent and quick (<30 minutes) read, but probably not an
| appropriate tactic to use against a random Russian citizen.
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Unknown_(novel)
| vletal wrote:
| Yeah. With a message which literally says "use Telegram to
| overthrow Putin"...
| tgv wrote:
| Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea in this context.
|
| - But I got spammed by some idiot in Ohio.
|
| - Unlikely. To the gulag. Next!
| ck2 wrote:
| Vaguely reminds me when US offered a bounty for turning
| people in in Iraq so people would turn in their neighbors
| they didn't like despite them not actually being guilty of
| anything.
|
| Whole lotta people ended up in gitmo that were actually
| innocent that way.
|
| This is obviously going to be a very dark decade for Ukraine
| but less obvious is how bad things are going to get in Russia
| if they can pull the curtain over it like this.
|
| Worst thing US did to Iraq invasion protestors domestically
| was put them on the "no fly" list which is abusive but
| trivial in comparison.
|
| I wonder who is waiting in the wings after Putin and if they
| are going to be better or worse.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Even Russia will not be able to imprison everyone :)
|
| Although maybe that action will suddenly motivate SMS
| companies to find ways of actually dealing with SMS spam
| properly.
| arein3 wrote:
| You should check out how gulag worked
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| I don't think your comment makes any sense. Yes gulags
| imprisoned a lot of people, actually a lot of heavily
| educated individuals but still it was not the majority of
| the population.
|
| What Russia in that case would do they would probably
| either implement some spam detection or just flat out
| disable SMS messaging in the country.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Welcome to 2020 Belarus, the beta version of Russia 2022
| Brian-Puccio wrote:
| While I'm super opposed to this, people from the West and
| especially Americans shouldn't forget that the NYPD has for years
| used programs like Stop and Frisk [0] and subway bag searches [1]
| that were seen as valid crime/terrorism fighting policies. The
| idea that the state shouldn't randomly stop people to search them
| has been and still is strongly supported by a decent chunk of the
| population.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-
| frisk_in_New_York_C...
|
| [1] https://www.nyclu.org/en/cases/sultan-v-kelly-et-al-
| challeng...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ipnon wrote:
| Stop and frisk was so controversial it was ended by popular
| demand. One upside of America is that privacy invading policies
| have a way of correcting themselves if the electorate is
| sufficiently outraged. The proposed changes to Section 230
| being shut down are another example of the powers that be not
| ruling absolutely.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The "electorate" made up of the majority has never been
| sufficiently "outraged" by the conduct of police with respect
| to minorities.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| These are not at all comparable.
|
| The stop and frisk program was directed towards reducing gun
| crime. This is a crime that is understood to be a negative for
| society.
|
| Moscow is trying to reduce dissent over an invasion of another
| country.
|
| Do you not see the difference here?
| FpUser wrote:
| >"The stop and frisk program was directed towards reducing
| gun crime."
|
| Anti terror laws and powers are abused and applied to a
| general population. The declared goals and real intention /
| outcome are 2 different things.
|
| >"Do you not see the difference here"
|
| Yes and no. There is less fig leaf in case of Russia telling
| people fuck you and your freedoms but either is still deeply
| disgusting.
| efuquen wrote:
| What does the reason the police are doing it for matter?
| Isn't either action an egregious violation of privacy?
| Sometimes society has allowed these things for emergency
| reasons, but stop and frisk was a program that was instituted
| for many many years. I can't understand how you can view the
| forced cell phone search as a clear violation of rights but
| defend stop and frisk, other than one is happening in evil
| Russia and the other happened in the US.
|
| People talk about stop and frisk in such an abstract sense,
| because it happened in poor minority neighborhoods, so most
| people talking about didn't have to go through. Imagine
| strangers being able to legally frisk your whole body for no
| apparent reason. It is such a huge violation of personal
| space and privacy and it's so demeaning, especially when you
| know it's being specifically targeted at your community.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Stop and frisking for guns is not getting into a thought
| crime type situation where what you say, are writing
| matters.
|
| Asking to reviews your phone is.
|
| One is a much more serious invasion of privacy in my view.
|
| This is clear generally. We ALREADY walk through metal
| detectors at airports. We walk through body scanners. We do
| NOT expect to have to turn over our phones (unless going
| through a country border perhaps and if I expected it I'd
| just have a blank phone for that).
|
| So we have already made the distinction here and it's not
| unreasonable (even if you don't agree that removing an
| assault weapon from a felon with a restraining order is
| different from going through someone's phone messages).
| mellavora wrote:
| > Do you not see the difference here?
|
| Are you claiming that when the Russian cop asks if he can see
| your phone, he says "Excuse me, this is to reduce dissent
| over an invasion of a foreign country?"
|
| The difference I see is that for the US case you accept the
| stated purpose ('reduce gun crime') and ignore the outcome as
| felt by the person on the receiving end, and for Russia, you
| reverse these.
| Brian-Puccio wrote:
| So the ends (gun crime reduction) justified the means (stop
| and frisk, subway bag searches, etc.)?
| megous wrote:
| That's how it works with most things. If you ride somewhere
| with a tank and shoot at something, it makes a difference
| if you're "defending your country" vs "invading".
|
| If you shoot at someone, it makes a difference if your goal
| is to stop him from shooting you, or if you're trying to
| kill him to steal his car.
|
| Ends justify means. Though ends need to be justified, too.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| These are different levels of privacy invasion, at least in
| the US.
|
| Going through a phone to check what you are thinking /
| saying is seen as more intrusive. So even in a stop and
| frisk, going through someone's phone would not generally be
| justified.
|
| The rules here are very clear. In particular, even in a
| terry stop police generally are not authorized to seize /
| search your cell phone. But they can pat down your outer
| clothing for weapons.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > subway bag searches
|
| You can legally refuse a subway bag search, leave and enter the
| subway through another entrance. I've done so a few times, and
| the officers just roll their eyes and act like you're being
| unreasonable.
|
| Stop and Frisk was a TERRIBLE rights violation though and we
| should never bring it back.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Bring it back? You act as if minorities are still not
| routinely stopped and harassed more than non minorities.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I'm not acting like anything. Stop and Frisk as a policy of
| NYC was ended by the last mayor. I believe I describe it as
| "a TERRIBLE rights violation". Why would you think I'm
| minimizing anything similar?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Stop and frisk might have ended. But...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/nyregion/nypd-arrests-
| rac...
|
| Meet the new boss...
| wslh wrote:
| You cannot compare these two levels of violence. Or if you
| compare them you should add a [fractal] distance between them.
|
| There are a lot of issues in USA (and many other countries
| around the world!) But here you can see that the world doesn't
| know how to respond to one country attacking a neighbour in
| another continent in XXI. Which is very concerning taking into
| account we are in a world with very advanced (and expensive)
| weaponry and bureaucrats who just warm their seats.
|
| It is obviously not enough to tweet or TikTok... all the
| respect to HN where we learn, and have great and deep
| discussions oriented to action, even if they are oriented
| mainly to startups. Startups are just an example of confronting
| and transforming realities.
| Brian-Puccio wrote:
| > You cannot compare these two levels of violence. Or if you
| compare them you should add a [fractal] distance between
| them.
|
| I didn't intend to. Just that the land of the free isn't so
| free when police are charged with randomly (or not so
| randomly) searching people.
| mellavora wrote:
| > You cannot compare these two levels of violence. Or if you
| compare them you should add a [fractal] distance between
| them.
|
| > There are a lot of issues in USA
|
| Why can't you compare? A number of people in minority
| communities are concerned that US stop-and-frisk stops are
| used to incarcerate them, kill them, or rob from them. What
| is the difference?
|
| https://www.africanamerica.org/topic/civil-asset-
| forfeiture-...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-11-12/stop-a.
| ..
| efuquen wrote:
| > You cannot compare these two levels of violence.
|
| The comparison is between two things, the police forcing you
| to give them access your phone for no explicit reason, or the
| police forcing you to allow them to physically and invasively
| search your whole body for no explicit reason. You are
| conflating that comparison with a bunch of other things
| happening external to the specific actions the police are
| allowed to do.
|
| The reasons why both are happening doesn't mean you can't
| objectively compare whether what the police are doing is
| acceptable outside of the larger situation that is causing
| them to do it. The question is if one seems unacceptable,
| shouldn't the other be too? If you want to talk about levels
| of violence between these two, stop and frisk certainly seems
| to be something closer to approaching physical violence, or
| at least the greater potential for it, then searching your
| phone.
| wslh wrote:
| You CAN compare oranges to apples.
|
| Your argument is completely valid except there is a missing
| [postmodern?] point at a meta level: you are changing the
| focus of a terrible event that should be solved at a global
| scale to an event that could be handled at a local scale,
| AND in US it should be much simpler than in Russia.
|
| In US you have a lot of ways you can do that and I am
| always amazed that the US democracy is failing at a basic
| level when I compare with righteous US people who achieved
| amazing stuff in the US past. If you don't show your mobile
| founds you can protect you by the law.
|
| In Russia there are much fewer options and civilians are
| risking their life at an amazing level. Law does not exist.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So how can the people who are targeted - mostly
| minorities - use "Democracy" when the majority either
| doesn't care about the mistreatment of minorities or even
| cheerlead it? Not to mention that politicians are afraid
| of blowback from police unions and the majority who
| support them since people don't get stopped for "driving
| while White".
| wslh wrote:
| I don't have the answer but I think there are enough
| creative people in US to find it and advance the state of
| the art in politics. Event if it is not in US it can
| happen anywhere.
|
| I also think that the statement "software is eating the
| world" have not touch politics enough but will happen.
| Not talking about FB and social media in general.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Well thats one easy way to alienate the police - they will have
| most knowledge about actual events in ukraine and i bet many have
| family and friends there. This might backfire on putinists.
| mmaunder wrote:
| I'd say this signals intent, but reeks of incompetence, a lack of
| preparation, a lack of capability, and desperation. I'd say
| overall this is a good sign. They aren't able to effectively
| engage in mass surveillance and round up dissidents en masse.
|
| This is also the finest example of the shortcomings of biometric
| security I've seen: all they need is part of your body, and it's
| a password you can never change.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| Obligatory XKCD[0].
|
| While them not being able to just use your face or fingerprint
| makes it harder for them to just unlock your phone, when you
| consider that what they're doing is already illegal, are you
| _really_ willing to suffer the potentially highly unpleasant
| consequences for not unlocking the phone for them?
|
| So unless you're someone prepared to suffer potential
| consequences for making a stand on principle, using a password
| instead of biometric access is probably not going to change the
| outcome here.
|
| For those prepared to make such sacrifices, yes, pay attention
| to operational security such as not using biometrics.
|
| [0]: https://xkcd.com/538/
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| This is quite effective to create an atmosphere of mass fear.
| np- wrote:
| This video itself is likely meant for Russian consumption. The
| Russian government doesn't need it to be 100% effective, it's
| far easier if people get scared and self censor, refraining
| from mentioning anything about the war, knowing in the back of
| their heads that this could happen to them at anytime.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Even rely of dedicated people to pressure others before the
| police even comes now.
| ushakov wrote:
| Mediazona reported that Russians who are leaving country are
| being questioned using the same tactics at airports
|
| https://zona.media/article/2022/03/02/border
| rurban wrote:
| that was march 2. as of march 5 you cannot leave the country
| anymore. you have to cross the border now illegally.
| twelve40 wrote:
| wow, where do you get this bullshit from? amazing!
| arez wrote:
| you can't leave russia anymore even when you're russian? Do
| you have a source for that?
| hanklazard wrote:
| Relatedly, I wonder what percentage of Russians leaving the
| country are planning to attempt emigration.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You can safely assume that those that are leaving right now
| are abandoning their lives behind them and will try to
| rebuild somewhere else. These are not holiday goers.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It is likely to be a significant number, and recent events
| will heighten a problem that has been in motion since the
| breakup of the Soviet union and, leter, EU and NATO
| expansion. A lot of Russians want to be European.
|
| https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/migration-
| dilemmas-h...
| aaron695 wrote:
| amelius wrote:
| What if your battery is dead?
| tromp wrote:
| Then hopefully police won't charge it up a few percent for you.
| Also, most people prefer keeping their phones charged so they
| can use it...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| This seems like the inverse of the Doomsday machine - once anyone
| knows about it, it's useless.
|
| If I know I'm going to leave the country, I'll back up my phone
| to Google Drive (or wherever), factory reset my phone, and leave
| nothing for the investigators. If they'd kept this surveillance
| under wraps, they might have found something. Now, everyone knows
| to clear their phone before crossing the border (and the ones who
| don't know probably don't have anything worth finding on their
| phones).
|
| Of course, this could just be a tactic to increase queue times at
| the border.
| akomtu wrote:
| Upon arrival, Google will lock your account until you log in
| from the original location.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Then you could email the data to a foreign friend. Hell, you
| could encrypt it and post it on a file sharing website. It's
| pretty trivial to store smallish data like this these days.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Nothing to hide right?
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| Time for ephemeral messaging?
| marcodiego wrote:
| AFAICS non-circumventable ephemeral messages is incompatible
| with user-controlled system.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| > AFAICS non-circumventable ephemeral messages is
| incompatible with user-controlled system.
|
| Unless the ephemeral part refers to the user's own side of
| the conversation, i.e., delete messages from _my_ history
| some time after I read them. Together with a secure storage
| that prevents messages from being easily recovered from
| memory dumps, this protects the user in scenarios of devices
| being captured by the adversary, exactly like this one.
|
| AFAIK is what Signal advertises for it's timed messages;
| Telegram, OTOH, advertises its self-destructing messages as
| something magical that works even for the other side.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Time to escape Russia.
| wtmt wrote:
| This kind of behavior shouldn't be surprising in places and
| situations where freedoms and rights either don't exist or aren't
| respected by the authorities.
|
| Just a few months ago, the police in the city of Hyderabad, India
| (where companies like Google and Microsoft have a large presence)
| were stopping and searching people's phones to check for messages
| related to drugs on WhatsApp. This was their way of addressing
| drug trades, and even one of the top officials said that it's not
| illegal when people cooperate and hand over their phones. [1]
|
| If you're on the streets and the police stop you in such places,
| you'd be better off unlocking and handing over your phone. People
| spoiled by western TV shows may talk about probably cause,
| privacy, rights etc. (which may exist on paper in these places
| too), but you'd be in a lot of trouble if you're not very rich
| and know powerful people. These checks can also take an ethnic or
| other angle where only certain people are stopped.
|
| I'm not saying that everybody should turn over their phones and
| that it's futile to fight, but there are no instant solutions for
| such issues for many people.
|
| [1]: https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/hyderabad-cops-are-
| ill...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| There should be a second account you could log in to on phones
| when you use a special access code.
|
| This second account could have an innocuous looking call
| history and social media profile.
| zo1 wrote:
| effable wrote:
| Apart from violating privacy, instilling a culture of fear
| thereby impacting people's right to free speech and free
| organization, which is a cornerstone of democracy, making
| people fearful of saying anything against the government or
| the police even in private conversation, nothing whatsoever.
| coldtea wrote:
| Apart from power abuse, privacy, estaablishing a police
| state, and fucking over democracy, none...
| bbarn wrote:
| I hope that you're trolling, but since that's pretty
| uncharacteristic on this site, I'll answer you seriously.
|
| Individual privacy, to start. The concept of probable cause
| to search someone is a concept found in most modern
| governments. Your communications to other parties privately
| are none of the government's business. It's an authoritarian
| measure that assumes guilt without suspicion. As others say,
| it will often have a racial or cultural component too, and at
| the very least a class one. People that look and act like the
| police would tend to be less subject to searches.
| largbae wrote:
| In the US, it's the fourth item in the Bill of Rights, but
| that's just a piece of paper, nothing worth fighting for...
| coffeefirst wrote:
| A series of revolutions were fought to prevent this kind of
| abuse.
| avidiax wrote:
| Are they pulling over passing Bentleys the peruse the phones
| of those inside? If one of these cops sees another cop
| passing, do they check their phone? Do they go into the
| senate and check senator's phones? Do they go to the
| financial district and look at trader's phones for signs of
| insider trading?
|
| This is at least profiling or a discriminatory style of
| policing. They go to areas that have "those people" (whatever
| that means for this context) and do their policing there,
| avoiding the rich & powerful.
|
| It's also a digital strip search in the street. If this is a
| valid style of policing, why not just digitally search
| everyone's phones NSA-style? Could it be that NSA-style
| wouldn't be discriminatory enough (a rich person might get
| caught)? Could it be that the psychological effects on the
| policed population are one of the motivations?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| https://thewire.in/tech/kashmir-police-vpn-smartphone-checki...
|
| been there. done that.
|
| you simply cannot refuse. i have tried that and have marks on
| my back to prove it. you hold your head down while a dumb
| illiterate Sepoy goes through your phone and there is
| absolutely nothing you can do. don't try to act smart because
| they will see that as a sign that your are their enemy and by
| that point, your goose is cooked. they label you a terrorist
| and jail you sans recourse.
|
| there are 12 year olds who are in jail for "waging war against
| india" and the circumstances are not much different. there is a
| concept of "preventive detention" whereby the police and the
| security aparatus is authorised to arrest and hold you behind
| bars BEFORE you commit a crime or even if they think you might
| or had but they have no evidence of it and they can still get
| you. no habeas corpus, no hearings, no chargesheets, no trial.
| you are condemned unheard and the judiciary can all but cheer
| for the police.
| hughrr wrote:
| I was asked this in London in 2016 outside Embankment tube. I
| declined and impolitely suggested that the officer should piss
| off or arrest me. He didn't take the matter any further after
| eyeing up the probability that I'd sue them.
|
| The point is really that a lot of people are intimidated and
| compliant and will hand a device over when requested. This is
| never a good thing. Even if you're legitimately a victim, you
| shouldn't even let them at your stuff.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Was that drug related? What was officer's motivation/aim if
| you know by any chance?
| hughrr wrote:
| I wasn't party to the reason but you're probably right.
| gruez wrote:
| >The point is really that a lot of people are intimidated and
| compliant and will hand a device over when requested. This is
| never a good thing. Even if you're legitimately a victim, you
| shouldn't even let them at your stuff.
|
| That's addressed by the OP
|
| >People spoiled by western TV shows may talk about probably
| cause, privacy, rights etc. (which may exist on paper in
| these places too), but you'd be in a lot of trouble if you're
| not very rich and know powerful people. These checks can also
| take an ethnic or other angle where only certain people are
| stopped.
|
| There's a strong legal system (eg. due process, habeas
| corpus) that protects you in uk. No such system exists in
| Russia. Similarly, if you tried pulling this in china, and
| you're a Uyghur, that's just going to end up with you in a
| reeducation camp.
| logifail wrote:
| > There's a strong legal system (eg. due process, habeas
| corpus) that protects you in uk
|
| Sometimes the authorities appear to have the law on their
| side, examples included people detained under the Terrorism
| Act(s)[0] and those who are singled out by the police under
| "stop and search" powers[1]
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-
| greenwal...
|
| [1] https://www.statewatch.org/media/documents/analyses/no-
| 105-u...
| pm90 wrote:
| > The point is really that a lot of people are intimidated
| and compliant and will hand a device over when requested.
| This is never a good thing. Even if you're legitimately a
| victim, you shouldn't even let them at your stuff.
|
| Did you read the parents comment? Resistance might work in
| the UK but in places like India, unless you're well connected
| the police can make your life miserable.
| hughrr wrote:
| It doesn't always work in the UK though. If I wasn't white
| and middle class and looked poor then the outcome would be
| different.
|
| Really most people don't have the ability to defend
| themselves from this and the police know that.
|
| The problem is that this is where the downward spiral
| starts.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yup. ICO investigations into this practice:
| https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-
| ico/documents/2617838/ico...
|
| and https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-
| ico/documents/2620095/ico...
| madaxe_again wrote:
| The U.K. isn't "such places". There are plenty of places
| where the cops are so indemnified and corrupt that it'd make
| your head spin. You have little choice but to go with the
| shakedown (it's often a bribe they want), unless you are
| prepared to go to jail and face unknown consequences on a
| point of principle.
|
| I've been there, I've done that, I keep a EUR50 in my
| passport when travelling in those parts, it's acceptable
| identification if it's what they're after, if it isn't, it
| was in there accidentally.
| goldenkey wrote:
| This ^. You know what's up.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| yeah bribes are very common and still quite dangerous, if
| they think you have more to offer you may find yourself
| with an after-hours follow-up visit... after one bad
| experience I try to have a decoy answer available to the
| "where are you staying" question.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I would only do that if I had something on my phone that
| carries heavier punishment than bribing an officer.
|
| I think it's a mistake to think that as a foreigner you can
| just do as the locals do when it comes to bribery. It could
| end very badly. Doing it to avoid some inconvenience is a
| bad idea.
| waffleiron wrote:
| I recently had a passport check within Schengen that wasn't
| on list of temporary exceptions [1]. I did not have it in me
| to say no even when I knew it was very likely illegal. I
| might not have gotten officially arrested, but they would
| have likely taken me off the train and thus having to buy a
| new ticket and lose 2 hours of my day.
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/policies/schengen-
| borders-...
| derriz wrote:
| In many European continental law countries - notably France
| but many others, you can be asked to present a national
| identification card (or passport, if foreign) by
| police/government security at any time and are expected to
| be able to comply. This is independent of Schengen or
| border control - it also applies to residents of the
| country going about their normal business.
| waffleiron wrote:
| This was Germany, where the same is true. However it's
| not allowed to use that as a stand-in for a border
| control. European Regulation is quite explicit on
| internal Schengen borders:
|
| > 23(a) the exercise of police powers by the competent
| authorities of the Member States under national law,
| insofar as the exercise of those powers does not have an
| effect equivalent to border checks; that shall also apply
| in border areas. Within the meaning of the first
| sentence, the exercise of police powers may not, in
| particular, be considered equivalent to the exercise of
| border checks when the police measures:
|
| > (i) do not have border control as an objective;
|
| > (ii) are based on general police information and
| experience regarding possible threats to public security
| and aim, in particular, to combat cross-border crime;
|
| > (iii) are devised and executed in a manner clearly
| distinct from systematic checks on persons at the
| external borders;
|
| > (iv) are carried out on the basis of spot-checks;
|
| This check likely broke both 23(a)(i) and 23(a)(iii), as
| at the first train stop past the border everyone was
| asked to present ID.
|
| [1] Regulation (EU) 2016/399 of the European Parliament
| and of the Council of 9 March 2016 on a Union Code on the
| rules governing the movement of persons across borders
| (Schengen Borders Code)
| derriz wrote:
| What you've described may not necessarily be the
| "equivalent to the exercise of border checks".
|
| That depends on what would have happened had you not
| complied. In France if you are unable to produce an
| acceptable ID, you're taken to a police station where
| you're held until your identity is established. Once
| established, you'd have been allowed to go your way.
|
| It would only constitute "the exercise of border checks"
| if the response to your non-compliance was to escort you
| back to the country where you boarded the train.
|
| I'd be surprised if that's what generally happens. One
| instance I observed on a train going through Switzerland
| involved an English-speaking student. It took a while but
| after some discussion and the police making a few phone
| calls seemingly to their satisfaction, warning her to
| carry appropriate ID in future.
| waffleiron wrote:
| >It would only constitute "the exercise of border checks"
| if the response to your non-compliance was to escort you
| back to the country where you boarded the train.
|
| Not true according to the regulation:
|
| > 'border control' means the activity carried out at a
| border, in accordance with and for the purposes of this
| Regulation, in response exclusively to an intention to
| cross or the act of crossing that border, regardless of
| any other consideration, consisting of border checks and
| border surveillance;
|
| Note, it covers "response to crossing a border" and
| includes "border surveillance".
|
| edit:
|
| For full context:
|
| > 'border checks' means the checks carried out at border
| crossing points, to ensure that persons, including their
| means of transport and the objects in their possession,
| may be authorised to enter the territory of the Member
| States or authorised to leave it;
|
| > 'border surveillance' means the surveillance of borders
| between border crossing points and the surveillance of
| border crossing points outside the fixed opening hours,
| in order to prevent persons from circumventing border
| checks;
| mvdwoord wrote:
| As long as two hours of your time is worth more to you then
| maintaining basic civil rights... you deserve neither.
| Especially in schengen countries.
| waffleiron wrote:
| You are saying that because of my action (not refusing a
| illegal check) I don't deserve basic civil rights?
| Seriously...
| yulker wrote:
| The implication isn't that you personally don't deserve
| them, but rather that any rights you think you deserve if
| you're not willing to stand up for them will likely be
| taken from you in time.
| ab_testing wrote:
| Try doing the same while being black in the US. Being
| arrested would be the best outcome that you wish would happen
| to you.
| stickfigure wrote:
| This is utter nonsense.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| mdoms wrote:
| You need to get some perspective bud.
| CAPSLOCKSSTUCK wrote:
| Funny to see how delusional the replies to this are
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > even one of the top officials said that it's not illegal when
| people cooperate and hand over their phones.
|
| Would this not be the case in the US?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| My ex-girlfriend is Canadian and made a hop in the US on her
| way to visit Mexico. US agent in the airport insinuated that
| she was a prostitute or being sex trafficked and made her
| unlock her phone to prove otherwise. He read messages on
| Tinder and various messenger apps and made ridiculous
| comments about the content of some messages. "Ok, ok. It
| looks like you're a good girl."
|
| Since checking phones is legal, when you try to complain
| about it, it's like trying to find someone who cares that a
| cop made rude remarks when he pulled you over.
|
| It's a great system.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This is a bit different though, because it is at a border
| crossing - where your rights are explicitly curtailed.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| True. Just blows my mind how people get treated.
| durnygbur wrote:
| War torn Russia, India?! In 2021 I was stopped by criminal
| police in Germany and they demanded to unlock all my
| smartphones, then dedicated personnel arriving in separate car
| browsed each of them. Once they discovered that I have multiple
| smartphones on me they went nuts and were certain I'm their
| target. Apparently transiting through Germany by car and
| stopping during the night in center of one major city
| associated me with some criminal group active nearby. I knew
| that had I refused, they'd virtually confiscate all devices.
| After all they refused to identify themselves. Screw you
| Kriminalpolizei Dummkopfs, you wasted your useless time and
| resources on me.
| detritus wrote:
| Wasn't this also A Thing not that long ago with people flying
| to America?
| dan1234 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised - their ESTA form has a mandatory
| question which requires applicants to list all their social
| media accounts.
| chki wrote:
| Maybe this is different from country to country but when I
| open the ESA Website it says that this is an optional
| question that might become mandatory in the future.
| dan1234 wrote:
| Looks like it was optional until 2020, then became
| compulsory.
|
| https://usaestaonline.com/esta-social-media-question
| cicciop wrote:
| Throwaway account, but this is very much like the "member
| of the Nazi party" question: of no practical value
| (border guards don't know the entire Nazi membership
| archive by heart, of course) unless they need to throw
| the book at you for some other perceived slight (i.e.
| involved in some political protest that is not an actual
| crime? HE LIED ON ENTRY FORM, IMMEDIATE EXPULSION!).
|
| So if you don't plan to commit crimes or otherwise
| confront the authorities, you can leave that blank, or
| use throwaways. Just don't give your real info, because
| they _will_ use it to analyse you for real.
| itronitron wrote:
| A few years ago I ordered some items from a small online
| shop located in an east-of-central European country. A
| few days before I received the package I noticed that one
| of the recent searches on my linkedin account was from
| someone in that country's customs office. Not sure if
| they were bored and curious or working through their
| customs protocol.
| sva_ wrote:
| I went through ESTA last winter and it was optional.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think at the moment there is the soft problem of delays
| in results or potential rejection for unknown reasons.
| You also don't have to tell them who you're staying with
| either but a rejection can be pretty devastating so there
| is a strong incentive to give more than what is
| explicitly required. It was clear such encroachments on
| civil liberates were coming so I've never done anything
| on my social accounts that would upset the establishment,
| so even in my own case it has had a chilling effect.
| sva_ wrote:
| If my memory serves me right, it was mandatory to mention
| the first address I went to, but social media was clearly
| marked as optional. I put GitHub, it worked fine.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| My point is that it's unknown if not stating it would
| impact the application so people would err on the side of
| caution and compliance.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Which by itself is a pretty good reason to _never_ travel
| to the USA.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| You think this is unique?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Does that matter? It's disgusting.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| It kind of does when you are using it as a silly
| "whataboutism".
| jacquesm wrote:
| You mean like you did? Agreed, that's silly.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| The fact that you asked rather than shared a link or
| something, combined with the fact that most of the replies
| seem to not even comprehend the differences between the TSA
| and CBP/ICE makes me suspect this is a bunch of bs.
| detritus wrote:
| I'm not American and haven't been there in 38 years and I'm
| not a cyborg plugged into the internet with infinite,
| instant recall, but a cursory Google informs me that I'm
| not entirely delusional (/or a foreign agent spreading
| misinformation), as this was indeed a cause of concern
| about 8 years ago:
|
| https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/foreign-travelers-
| soc...
|
| Whether it was actual policy or not, I'll leave to you to
| work out.
|
| As for the format of my response, I was genuinely not 100%
| sure, so felt it respectful to post thusly. Does that
| satisfy your needless suspicion?
| kawsper wrote:
| Yes, TSA can ask you to unlock your phone and automatically
| grabs data from it, on iOS you can get around the automatic
| grab by pair locking your device:
| https://arkadiyt.com/2019/10/07/pair-locking-your-iphone-
| wit...
|
| EFF also have a nice guide called "Digital Privacy at the
| U.S. Border" (PDF):
| https://www.eff.org/files/2018/01/11/digital-privacy-
| border-...
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I've never once been asked to unlock my phone at a TSA
| checkpoint. How common is this?
| farmerstan wrote:
| Happened to my wife's close friend as she crossed the
| border. They found years-old texts between her and her
| ex-bf joking about marrying for a green card and she was
| denied entry into the US and given a 10 year ban for
| immigration fraud even tho she had been living there
| under H1B (which was close to expiring) and had to fly
| back to her home country with just the clothes in her
| suitcase. Her sister who was a citizen had to sell all
| her things for her. It was a disaster.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Common enough for the EFF to have an article about it.
| akamaka wrote:
| The EFF article never mentions the TSA once.
| mdoms wrote:
| https://www.eff.org/issues/travel-screening
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Given that the only TSA reference in that article also
| mentions the Bush administration, I would hope there is
| more up to date information now. I wonder why EFF has not
| updated a top level issue page in so long.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The article may not mention the TSA by names but if you
| were in doubt about the entities that you could encounter
| at the US border then probably the article wasn't meant
| for you anyway.
| akamaka wrote:
| Maybe the parent poster means US Customs and Border
| protection? That's different from the TSA which could
| potentially search you leaving the country, or on
| internal flights.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fair enough, for travelers the distinction is useful so
| let's spell it out: TSA: the guys that mess around in
| your luggage, make you throw away your water so you can
| buy new bottles at 5x the price as well as your
| nailclippers. CBP: the guys that check your passport and
| possibly your fingerprint, take your picture and invade
| your privacy as much as they feel like.
|
| Both of these can be found at US airports with
| international flights(and most countries have
| equivalents). Going on an international trip you will
| encounter both, for a domestic flight you will only deal
| with the TSA.
|
| The EFF article is aimed exclusively at people crossing
| the border so it about the CBP, not about the TSA. If you
| never leave the USA or never travel to it then you will
| encounter none of this.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Uhh... you're a sample size of one?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Nah, he's a US citizen that understands the TSA is the
| entity that handles security for flight boarding, and has
| no relationship with ICE handling security at the border.
| Some other people in this thread seem to be okay
| conflating the two, but I'm not sure that's very helpful
| --- everyone knows that border controls for all countries
| are massively more strict that controls for domestic
| travel.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| colechristensen wrote:
| To be clear this is about going through customs as you
| enter the country through an airport, not domestic
| flights. I'm not sure if that organization falls under
| tsa or not.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Happened to me.
|
| Went to secondary to get more information on my trip,
| then just routinely searched my bags and electric
| devices. I was allowed into the country after they got
| more information.
| gruez wrote:
| >on iOS you can get around the automatic grab by pair
| locking your device
|
| Not really? In the same guide it says
|
| >If you later want to remove this restriction you can
| Remove -> Profiles... in Configurator, analogous to step
| 15.
|
| Basically, you're just hoping that the minimum wage
| employee at the TSA doesn't know about removing the
| profile.
| rawling wrote:
| Isn't that a step that has to take place on the paired
| laptop?
|
| Earlier the article says
|
| > This setting controls when someone can remove the
| profile from within the phone itself. If it's left as the
| default value of "Always" then anyone with access to your
| unlocked phone could remove the pair lock (which would
| defeat the entire purpose). You can either set it to
| Never to never allow removing the profile, or With
| Authorization and set a password to allow removing the
| profile with the given password (this might be useful to
| remove the pairing restriction if you do lose access to
| your laptop).
| [deleted]
| b3morales wrote:
| That step can't be performed from a computer that's not
| already trusted by the iOS device. I.e., it can only be
| the one it's pair-locked to.
| hereforphone wrote:
| Yes. What people don't understand is that much (maybe most) of
| the world is like this.
| 3np wrote:
| If we rephrase that to be "the world is like this where most
| people live", then, yeah.
| [deleted]
| zyphr wrote:
| True, more and more countries are doing this.
|
| https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/tsa-electronics-rights/
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| "you'd be better off unlocking and handing over your phone"
|
| You would in the short term, if you're a coward and unable to
| stand up to this kind of abuse. In the long term, if everyone
| stood up to this abhorrent behavior, it would stop.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| You sound just like the people who are telling others to stop
| doing their jobs in the name of ethics.
|
| Yeah in a better world we could all just not be "cowards" and
| stand up against unjust searches, but most of us don't want
| to spend couple nights in lock up over this kind of shit.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Everyone is a warrior at their keyboard. In real life, a
| quick mention of the metaphorical wrench and everyone
| complies.
| ada1981 wrote:
| Are there any mods where I can input a dummy password which
| opens a dummy iOS with boring messages and limited info /
| photos?
| pmorici wrote:
| Seems like a simple solution would be to carry two phones. If
| you are stopped hand over the clean one keep the real one out
| of sight.
| amelius wrote:
| Or install a second OS.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| In your mind how does this scenario play out?
|
| Are you just living in the "second OS"? Meaning you don't
| actually use your phone while you are outside? Or are you
| going to just casually reboot your phone and boot into the
| "second OS" while the officer is standing there demanding
| your phone?
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I believe there are some setups where one password
| unlocks your normal OS and user accounts and another
| password unlocks your phone under a second user with no
| indication of a second available.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Sounds like a simple way to end up getting much greater
| scrutiny in a room somewhere for at least few hours.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| This "simple" solution would make my life way more
| complicated. Not to mention expensive.
| veganhouseDJ wrote:
| I only travel with my backup phone with a fresh re-install.
|
| The main thing is it is nice to get away from the main
| phone on a trip and enjoy the trip. Losing it would not be
| the end of the world.
|
| All these other aspects you get for free.
| amelius wrote:
| Your second phone could be an old Nokia 1110.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I still have to pay for a second cell phone account, keep
| it charged, and use up a pocket carrying it everywhere.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| have you heard about body searches? where will you keep
| your two phones?
| pmorici wrote:
| Doesn't sound like that is what is happening here. Don't
| let perfect get in the way of good enough at least in the
| short term.
| tromp wrote:
| Buying two (smart) phones and running simcards on both sounds
| complex and expensive.
|
| Simpler would be a 2nd way to unlock the phone into a fake
| user account...
| testesttest wrote:
| I have done this with my laptop for years traveling
| internationally. If you don't press the right key at the
| right time you are greeted by windows.
| Yoric wrote:
| I seem to remember that Android supports multiple user
| accounts, no?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| squarefoot wrote:
| I would dare to say this can backfire because it means they're
| losing control and are forced to exercise repression in sunlight,
| which will further fuel discontent among Russian people.
| grumple wrote:
| Isn't there some sort of tooling that can be used in these
| situations? Like a "public search mode" app that encrypts your
| data but makes the phone look clean otherwise?
| therusskiy wrote:
| to people asking how police chooses to arrest / inspect people:
|
| police arrests you if you try to be a "leader" - shouting,
| organizing others, or if you have a poster, or stand out in some
| other way. If there are no such people they arrest at random to
| keep everyone scared.
| pixiemaster wrote:
| I wonder when our Operating systems get some kind of ,,dual boot"
| mode which can be used up hide private info, while being
| undetectable by even more than cursory examination.
| teddyh wrote:
| VeraCrypt has that:
|
| https://veracrypt.fr/en/Plausible%20Deniability.html
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Doubtful it will ever come as a standard. Mainstream operating
| systems are developed in US and things aren't that bad there.
| And when they start to become that bad there will be
| legislation to prevent such features.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Androids support multiple users and encrypted storage. Or you
| can reset your phone and restore it from cloud storage. Or use
| your second finger for biometric unlock, and lock up the phone
| on failing with your index finger.
| lqdc13 wrote:
| Not even dual boot. Just depending on the password/pattern
| entered, log in as a different user. It's possible to do in
| Android as an app. I've been meaning to write one, but it seems
| like lots of work and upkeep.
| g_p wrote:
| What you describe might be almost achievable using Android
| work mode, and an open source tool like Island - you can have
| a second instance of apps (like WhatsApp or signal or
| telegram) independent of the first instance, and you can turn
| work mode off if needed.
|
| If your adversary knows about work mode though and checks if
| it's available, this won't help you much.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Apps that may have sensitive information could have a dual-
| mode: if you open the app, you only see your "public" content,
| and if you do some gesture that you configured (like drawing
| some shape on the screen but without a "lock screen"), you see
| the full contents.
| pixiemaster wrote:
| nice!
| djbusby wrote:
| Web based services? Only use incognito mode? (Firefox on mobile
| can be configured to use Private mode by default)
| g_p wrote:
| Android phones can implement multiple user profiles at OS
| level, and these can at least provide security against cursory
| visual inspection.
|
| Ideally you'd use credential derived encryption for each user's
| storage area on the device, and avoid leaking the number of
| profiles on the device. The UX for that is "hard" - even a
| single login screen that (with a naive implementation) accepts
| 1 of N PINs would be vulnerable to a timing attack as the PIN
| is tested against each "profile".
|
| There's a few gotchas around carrier services like SMS and
| voice calls (do these go only to the main user account?), but
| maybe in future you could see an eSIM per profile... Doesn't
| protect you against a colluding mobile operator though -
| ultimately it all comes down to your threat model.
| [deleted]
| tapia wrote:
| That would be possible if our phones wouldn't be all locked up
| by the manufactures and instead we could install the OS we
| wanted... One can dream
| miloignis wrote:
| I've been daily driving the Pinephone Pro and other then
| super sort battery life because no support for suspend yet
| (~3 hours) its been great! Actually usable and quite a bit of
| fun. Not recommended to anyone who's not fully confortable
| installing their own linux distros and using workarounds,
| though. The future you dream of is coming!
| fsflover wrote:
| There is also Librem 5 as an alternative.
| miloignis wrote:
| If you can get one! I preordered in 2018 and haven't
| gotten mine yet, while for approximately the same amount
| of money and less time I have also ordered, received, and
| used 3 different Pinephone editions.
| fsflover wrote:
| See here about delivery progress:
| https://forums.puri.sm/t/estimate-your-
| librem-5-shipping/112.... Every time Purism can get the
| CPUs, they deliver another bunch of the phones. (I'm also
| waiting for my phone).
| tapia wrote:
| I really hope so! I might get one of those to start playing
| a bit.
| awb wrote:
| Seems like a really slow, cumbersome technique to monitor people.
| The one officer was rapidly scrolling looking for who knows what.
| No one can read or even scan text that fast, so I guess looking
| for photos?
|
| At the human level there are probably plenty of low-tech
| techniques to keep yourself safe like deleting messages or using
| coded language.
|
| It's sad to watch Russia descend into totalitarianism.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| It's just to scare people in compliance.
| f311a wrote:
| He just looking for familiar icons in Telegram.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| It's a perfect approach for intimidating people.
| cobby wrote:
| First, they were looking if the person is subscribed to
| specific Telegram channels. It is quite easy to quickly scan
| list of channels looking for specific logos.
|
| Second, it is supposed to intimidate others and force the to
| unsubscribe from telegram channels that post alternative view
| on current events. Hence, effectively blocking people from
| getting info.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| "...descend (deeper) into totalitarianism."
| Qem wrote:
| Thought the same. Can't they just do NSA-like bulk collection
| and search, like US does with Xkeyscore? Once you automate it,
| no need to search phones one by one.
| stirfish wrote:
| I bet airport security could be sped up too. A stranger
| sticking their thumbs down your waistband sends very strong
| message. The more you automate, the less personal the
| experience becomes.
| twelve40 wrote:
| That's because it's not a technique to monitor people. What's
| conveniently omitted here is that this was done during the
| protests (hence the riot gear) that they are trying to stop.
| While illegal, there is certainly crazier shit you can watch
| from protests in other countries.
| permalac wrote:
| Descending?
| jdrc wrote:
| in one way totalitarianism is more organized (and worse) than
| kleptocracy
| sharken wrote:
| It should serve as a very vivid lesson on what happens when you
| keep the same leader for too long.
|
| Russia will only prosper when Putin is gone, which is at least
| 10 years from now.
| MrDisposable wrote:
| I'm afraid when Putin is gone (he's not immortal), our
| "elites" will fall to their knees begging to get their seized
| assets back. And they will bring offerings in exchange for
| that: unilateral demilitarization and nuclear disarmament.
|
| Also, I predict that Russia may be allowed to sell its oil
| and gas again, but the proceeds will not go to Russia: they
| will be directed towards rebuilding Ukraine.
| viktorcode wrote:
| I guess it's a clumsy attempt to proactively prevent anti-war
| protest by detaining potential protestors.
| stirfish wrote:
| >Seems like a really slow, cumbersome technique to monitor
| people
|
| I agree. I wonder how many times they found what they're
| looking for?
|
| Maybe slow and clumsy is part of the goal. It's a deliberate
| interruption that signals someone is paying attention. They
| probably have all sorts of classified network capture whatever,
| but that's not visible. It's the difference between your boss
| monitoring your email, and your boss sitting down at your desk
| and scrolling through your email.
| therusskiy wrote:
| It is meant to intimidate others. They can't possibly jail
| everyone, but they can scare them by arresting several
| thousands.
| speed_spread wrote:
| It's just a cheaper way to jail everyone. Nation-wide house
| arrest, virtual panopticon. Poof, you've all jailed yourself.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah it seems more like a fear/Stasi technique than they're
| actually reading the messages.
| [deleted]
| gregoriol wrote:
| They already did something like "jail everyone" in the last
| century, it's not impossible for them to play by the same
| book again...
| fivea wrote:
| > They already did something like "jail everyone" in the
| last century, it's not impossible for them to play by the
| same book again...
|
| Let's rephrase it then: Putin can't jail everyone and still
| expect to have any semblance of support.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think we're past the "support" department. He doesn't
| care any longer and he will probably start cutting off
| all western influences soon and go back to old Soviet
| techniques to scare the populace into compliance. He sees
| the west as "destroying" the superior Russian culture and
| he's trying to get back to that. You are going to start
| seeing a lot more people being disappeared in the Soviet
| Union in the coming months as the West's universal
| shutting off Russia from the world economy.
| ruined wrote:
| presuming you are in America, it is worth reflecting that
| the US currently has a larger prison population than any
| other place in the world has ever had, both in terms of
| total number and per capita.
|
| does it feel like "everyone" is in jail? does it feel like
| you are not able to live your life? does it feel dangerous
| to act certain ways, or do certain things? do you think the
| people in prison mostly deserve it, or do you think their
| imprisonment is mostly unjust? do you think they're mostly
| criminals? have you ever felt in danger of incarceration?
| would you be afraid of police searching your phone if you
| were stopped in the street? do you think if the police
| killed you, it would be seen as legitimate?
|
| whatever your answers, consider there are people also in
| this country with different answers to those questions
| Teever wrote:
| There has to be some sort of law of the internet that on
| a long enough timeline the political conversation will
| converge on modern American politics.
|
| As a non-American that's probably my biggest irritation
| with the internet. Beyond the inane Facebook arguments,
| beyond the cesspool of comments on modern news websites,
| hell even beyond the Youtubers hawking stupid services, I
| have to say the single most irritating thing about the
| internet is that someone somewhere is waiting with bated
| breath to turn the conversation into some diatribe on the
| state of modern American society and the historical
| context in which it arose.
|
| The article is about Moscow, not America. If you don't
| anything to say about Moscow don't feel nervous and start
| talking about America the one thing you can talk about.
| Don't sweat it, just sit this one out and let other
| people talk about the subject at hand. Listen and think
| about what people are saying about Russia and then the
| next time there's a conversation about Russia you will
| have something relevant to say about it.
| vanviegen wrote:
| This does seem to happen a lot, but one might also read
| it as putting international developments into a local
| perspective. That's a sensible thing to do, wouldn't you
| agree?
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| This tactic is used by trolls to distract from the real
| issue. It puts people on the defensive rather than
| discussing the actual topic. "Whataboutism" at its best.
| ashwagary wrote:
| It's not always whataboutism, sometimes it's just a
| comparison.
|
| Americans have this strange habit of expecting their
| "enemy of the day" to operate under a different standard
| than they do. These comparisons put things in perspective
| for people temporarily blinded by jingoism.
| User23 wrote:
| The term "whataboutism" is a tell for intellectual
| laziness at best. Considering multiple particular cases
| to draw general conclusions is basic ratiocination. You
| might as well just call the person you're talking to a
| "chud" instead and be done with it.
| gafferongames wrote:
| If you cannot defend a subject without resorting to
| whataboutism, I would say this instead is intellectual
| laziness.
| sofixa wrote:
| Sometimes it's not even a troll distracting, sometimes
| it's a stupid American who can't not talk about his
| unique experience - you see this often on Reddit, someone
| from a country will complain about something specific
| there, and an American will show up to say "that's
| nothing, here at Whatever, TX, it's even
| worse/better/bigger/cooler/etc."
| gafferongames wrote:
| But usually it's trolls
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
| fivea wrote:
| > There has to be some sort of law of the internet that
| on a long enough timeline the political conversation will
| converge on modern American politics.
|
| The Soviet Union already invented that strategy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroe
| s
| ashwagary wrote:
| It's fair to point out that the 4th amendment doesnt
| exist for the 2/3rds of Americans that live near an
| international border.
|
| We banned many Muslims and checked phones during
| peacetime, imagine what would happen if we were at war
| with a country near one of our borders.
| t_mann wrote:
| Nobody's saying the present US justice system is perfect,
| but if you seriously think it compares to Stalin's
| Gulags, or the psychological effects they've had even on
| people who weren't directly affected, you're unhinged.
|
| Whether Putin can or will create anything comparable is
| open, but the historical precedent is there. And he has
| expressed his affection for the Soviet system on many
| occasions, calling its demise one of the 'greatest
| tragedies of the 20th century'.
| [deleted]
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Whataboutism is whataboutism. We aren't talking about the
| USA here. I've never been stopped by a cop and asked to
| look through my phone. I have no fear of that happening.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| > Seems like a really slow, cumbersome technique to monitor
| people.
|
| No, it is a terror approach. Random people will get the news
| and panic about being the next to be catch in a police round-
| up.
| Daniel1Rosen wrote:
| This is the fight against unauthorized rallies. The majority of
| Russians support the actions of the police. Russians don't want
| war, they want guns taken away from their borders.
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| > It's sad to watch Russia descend into totalitarianism.
|
| Descend INTO? Excuse me, but what part of Russia isn't already
| totalitarianism?
| koonsolo wrote:
| They still had some independent news, up until now. They
| still could access a lot of website, up until now.
|
| Their borders are still pretty open, no? Just watch as they
| will close them down soon.
| grishka wrote:
| > Their borders are still pretty open, no?
|
| Some people I know are leaving (though panic is never a
| good thing). Some told bizarre stories of how they were
| questioned at the border. And yes, some were asked to
| unlock and hand over their phones.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah I just read some interviews with Russians fleeing to
| surrounding countries and they were afraid Putin had lost
| it and was returning to Soviet era tactics and the
| complete police state.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Yes and no. If you get too popular or too annoying, a
| bullet one morning will greet you on your way to work, many
| cases like that. Or some fabricated case and 10 years of
| hardcore ural prison.
|
| The borders are open all right, no reason to close them.
| People opposing the regime are going away, the best
| possible outcome for dictator. No need to waste a lot of
| time and manpower on finding dissent if it just disappears
| on their own. And so population becomes a bit more docile,
| ignorant or even cooperating.
|
| This was happening in former communist countries too - not
| everybody who spoke up against the regime went to jail.
| Some were just thrown to western Europe and forbidden to
| come back.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Some were just thrown to western Europe and forbidden to
| come back. "
|
| The active and popular rebels only.
|
| The common dissident, was not free to leave, he had to
| shut up and work.
| koonsolo wrote:
| You have a weird way to tell history. People behind the
| iron curtain had no way to go to the west, and everybody
| wanted to. That is why they closed the borders.
|
| When all young ambitious people leave, your country goes
| even more to shit than the shit it's already in. Of
| course they block the borders!
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah I think he has decided in his old age to just say
| "fuck it, we're going back to the Soviet Union"
| throwaway290 wrote:
| quadrangle wrote:
| > You can publish news and analysis that denounce the
| government and call for it to stop the war
|
| So you say, but:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/03/05/1084729579/russian-law-
| bans-j...
|
| Oops, so much for being okay with publishing and
| protesting. It's now criminal to call it a "war" even if
| you don't take a position against it.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Does China have a law against mentioning Tiananmen? Ah
| yes, there is no need for it, because no one knows and
| those who know do not dare speak. _That 's_ what
| totalitarianism is.
|
| Besides, focusing on the word 'war' is a straw man. You
| want the discussion to refocus on it without considering
| whether my point would stand had the word not been used.
| Here it is, slightly expanded: there is independent and
| oppositional media that honestly criticizes the
| government, tirelessly points out that elections are
| invalid, etc. It legally operates offline and online. Is
| that possible with your definition of totalitarianism?
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| The use of "war" to describe the situation in Ukraine is
| not a straw man. Words mean things. How we discuss things
| informs our overall thoughts on the matter, this guiding
| our action or inaction.
| geden wrote:
| Eh? They've passed a law which means that if you even call
| the war a 'war' you face 15 years in jail.
| FpUser wrote:
| They are heading straight to totalitarianism, yes. But up
| until few days ago they were not there yet. They were
| (may be still technically are) authoritarian to a various
| degree.
| azinman2 wrote:
| > You can publish news and analysis that denounce the
| government and call for it to stop the war. You can go on
| the streets and protest your own government without fear of
| being flattened by tanks.
|
| Except you can't. If you call it a war, you risk 15 years
| prison sentence. Protests must be previously approved by
| the government, which isn't happening and thus why they're
| arresting people.
| ben_w wrote:
| With the caveats that I can't make a good judgment about a
| foreign country just from the news, that I have no training
| in political science or law, and that linguistic treadmills
| make it easy to lose track of how strong a word is from one
| year to the next...
|
| One can have greater and lesser forms of a thing, and
| "totalitarianism" does not need to be a boolean -- worse
| forms of it don't need to be rendered termless by lesser
| forms.
| im3w1l wrote:
| > Totalitarianism is a form of government and political
| system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws
| individual opposition to the state and its claims, and
| exercises an extremely high degree of control and regulation
| over public and private life. It is regarded as the most
| extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. In
| totalitarian states, political power is often held by
| autocrats, such as dictators and absolute monarchs, who
| employ all-encompassing campaigns in which propaganda is
| broadcast by state-controlled mass media in order to control
| the citizenry.[2]
|
| A country can be non-democratic without being totalitarian.
| mejutoco wrote:
| How?
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| By not being totalitarian. Totalitarianism is the extreme
| end of the spectrum where the party or individual
| attempts to control the totality of social, economic and
| political life. You can have non-democratic forms of
| government which allow significant social, economic and
| even political freedom, as long as it's expressed within
| certain bounds. Modern day China being a good example.
| Mao's China however was avowedly totalitarian and
| probably the second most extreme expression of
| totalitarianism there's ever been, after Cambodia under
| the Khmer Rouge. Is Putin's Russia totalitarian? Not yet,
| but it's certainly heading that way.
| mdoms wrote:
| Countries like Thailand are run by military juntas but
| are by no means totalitarian.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| When there is more dissent, totalitarianism becomes more
| palpable.
| starkd wrote:
| It was all somewhat veiled before. Russia has now dropped any
| pretentions to being anything other than a totalitarian
| state.
| jl6 wrote:
| I disagree on a technicality, just because I think words
| should mean something. They haven't dropped pretensions.
| They are still pretending there is no war, pretending that
| everything is fine, pretending that fair elections will be
| held, ...
|
| The propaganda is strong and it's not clear to me that the
| veil is becoming more transparent.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| I've always been fascinated by the lengths authoritarians
| go to legitimize their actions. When no one is fooled,
| why do they do it? I would be interested to read a book
| analyzing the value of authoritarian propaganda.
| random314 wrote:
| You would be surprised at how often ridiculous arguments
| become valid arguments through continuous repetition as
| the insane arguments start to collect tiny bits and
| morsels of supporting anecdata over time.
|
| In India, I recall laughing at the so called "love jihad"
| conspiracy theories that claimed that massive number of
| Muslim men are conspiring to wed hindu women to convert
| them to Islam. But now, this is a hot button election
| topic and anti-miscegenation laws are being passed and
| married couples are being harrassed and forcibly
| separated. The marital data contradicts this conspiracy
| but no one gives a shit.
|
| It's worth noting that anti-semitism in nazi Germany
| emerged after 1920 on the basis of 2 separate absurd
| conspiracy theories. Jewish complicity with the allies
| and racial origin theory around the sunk island of
| Atlantis. It took only about 10-15 years for this theory
| to be bought by an entire nation.
| macintux wrote:
| U.S. politics has fallen victim to this in recent years.
| macintux wrote:
| Orwell talked about the receiving end of such propaganda
| (link found earlier today on HN):
|
| > The nationalist not only does not disapprove of
| atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a
| remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For
| quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived
| not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald.
| And those who are loudest in denouncing the German
| concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very
| dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in
| Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933,
| involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually
| escaped the attention of the majority of English
| russophiles. Many English people have heard almost
| nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews
| during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused
| this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In
| nationalist thought there are facts which are both true
| and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so
| unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not
| allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other
| hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be
| admitted as a fact, even in one's own mind.
|
| https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
| foundation/orwel...
| mpol wrote:
| When everybody knows, everybody knows. It doesn't mean
| anything has to happen or change.
|
| Down here when children break something and the parents
| ask "Who did that?", they will often reply "It was
| already like that". With a bad excuse like that everybody
| knows the children broke it. Strangely enough, almost
| always the discussion comes to an immediate end with
| that, except the parents will have a certain smile like
| "I have been fooled here".
|
| There are sometimes even court cases that are hopelessly
| lost and this happens. The lawyer is pressured to do
| anything he can, and comes up with such bizarre stories,
| that lawyers and judge will know how the situation is.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I think the idea is that it strengthens over time and
| helps to build a sanitized history. When a new generation
| of people have internalized this national story, then
| that can then be leveraged by those in power to justify
| crackdowns and explain away periods of hardship.
|
| In the case of a single party dictatorship, I think it
| also exists to show party members what the approved line
| is, which allows local authorities to operate with some
| degree of autonomy, as long as they can tie it back to
| the general narrative the leadership wants to promote.
| This can be used as a way of allowing some degree of
| variation in governance while still providing the party
| leadership with plausible deniability if a policy fails
| (or the ability to claim ownership if it succeeds).
| sofixa wrote:
| > When no one is fooled, why do they do it
|
| People are fooled though. There are people in and outside
| of Russia who firmly believe the Russian narrative. (If
| you don't believe that, check the recent manifestations
| in Serbia)
|
| Not the type of book you asked for, but i can recommend
| Propaganda by Edward L. Bernays. A hugely influential
| (series) of book(s).
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| They still have some personal freedom to do things. I think
| that will start changing soon as Russia (well Putin) has
| decided to become and International pariah and return to
| Soviet era tactics and politics. I'm not sure Putin even
| cares how much of the population supports him any longer. I
| think he is rather fond of fear tactics and the old Soviet
| police state where neighbors spied on and reported on
| neighbors.
| quadcore wrote:
| _Seems like a really slow, cumbersome technique to monitor
| people._
|
| On the contrary, this is evil genius. Once the rumour spread
| that happens, people stop communicating about the war.
|
| _At the human level there are probably plenty of low-tech
| techniques to keep yourself safe like deleting messages or
| using coded language._
|
| 99.9% of the population wont take any risks (e.g. even
| receiving text messages about the war). They will closely
| monitor their phone and block anybody who dont do the same.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Another thought is, OK, you deleted all your texts. Then,
| walking around, a text comes in, and seconds later a cop asks
| for your phone..
|
| Fear, as you say, is the purpose.
| fivea wrote:
| > Fear, as you say, is the purpose.
|
| I would add that multiple aspects of Putin's attack plan
| for Ukraine relied heavily on its ability to instill fear.
|
| Putin's regime expected Zelenski to flee at the sight of
| Russia's military at the border, they expected border
| cities to promptly fold at the sight of Russia's army, they
| expected Ukraine's army to surrender once Russia's army
| gained some ground, they expected all NATO and neighboring
| countries to stay quiet and did nothing when threatened,
| implicitly or explicitly, by them.
|
| But thankfully their bluff was called, and Putin's regime
| was exposed as the fascist paper tiger they are.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Russia might be poor, especially now, but most young people
| have seen using two or more phones. Burner bumdphone is not
| a difficult concept. Someone needs to drop a stock of old
| lineageos/android phones in there.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Won't they pat you down for phones though? I mean burner
| phones are kind of an obvious thing these days.
| de_Selby wrote:
| Exactly, it's an overt message that what you say is being
| watched, so watch what you say.
| MrDisposable wrote:
| This isn't monitoring. This is to send a message that dissent
| will not be tolerated.
| duxup wrote:
| It's probably more intended to intimidate than anything else.
| formvoltron wrote:
| retrac wrote:
| > If they don't want to be shot down then.. don't fly!
|
| There would be no gentleman's agreement to stick to dogfighting
| in the skies over Kiev. If the Russians can't effectively win
| against NATO air power in the air, they'll try to blow it up
| when still on the ground. The risk of spiraling escalation
| there is great.
| pydry wrote:
| Shooting down russian planes is a shortcut to nuclear war. Is
| that what you want?
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I think they should keep it on the table. Russia is in no
| position to negotiate and the sooner they relies their
| position is untenable, the better.
| op00to wrote:
| Russia has nuclear weapons. They are always in a position
| to negotiate.
| megous wrote:
| Strategic nuclear weapons are not there to fight a war. At
| this time, they are there to end the world and to scare the
| opponent from using theirs.
| odiroot wrote:
| Rubber hose cryptanalysis in action.
| VictorPath wrote:
| therusskiy wrote:
| did they do that to find what political views people have?
| [deleted]
| pengaru wrote:
| Papers please
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Apple and Google need to let users have easy-to-setup duress
| passwords.
| shmde wrote:
| In a complete different tangent. In Bangalore and Hyderbad, two
| metros in India. Traffic police stop people on bikes,
| pedestrians, cars and harass the people to unlock their phone and
| see their whatsapp chat and search in weed, ganja so that
| anything related to it shows up and they can impose a hefty fine.
| Acab.
| [deleted]
| kingcharles wrote:
| We now need Apple and Google to add a feature to their respective
| mobile operating systems that allows two different passcodes to
| open two different profiles on the same phone.
|
| That way you can give nice Officer Dibble here your sanitized
| passcode and he can see all the messages to your Grandma, photos
| of that cute puppy you downloaded from Unsplash, and your latest
| Candy Crush high score, and not the Signal and Telegram apps you
| have open to your friends in Ukraine.
| dorgo wrote:
| It would be convenient. But with current android you can just
| use a police friendly profile when leaving home. Maybe event
| automate it with rules?
| steelframe wrote:
| > We now need Apple and Google to add a feature to their
| respective mobile operating systems that allows two different
| passcodes to open two different profiles on the same phone.
|
| Then they won't know when to stop beating you.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| squidwardeffigy wrote:
| throwaway290 wrote:
| The military is away. The cops will be tired of doing this kind
| of silly and obviously pointless job very soon.
|
| Seems like a good time for the Green revolution? Would it have
| the same tangible support from the West as the Orange revolution
| had, or will the West be afraid of angering CCP with what Xi
| might consider a coup in his newest satellite state?
| koonsolo wrote:
| Stasi 2.0
| dragonwriter wrote:
| more like Cheka, what, 4.O.
|
| The Russian Federation and/or USSR have been doing it since
| long before the Stasi existed.
| ftth_finland wrote:
| One is almost tempted to join a chat group with a suggestive name
| that is full of legal, but very, _very_ disturbing images.
| 1_player wrote:
| Enjoy wasting your time and wellbeing by being incarcerated,
| having to find a lawyer, testify and then being released
| because that chat was actually legal.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I think you are assuming the said images are legal in Russia
| ftth_finland wrote:
| Obviously, but care would have to be taken as even non-war
| related images may be illegal in Russia.
|
| 'Tis not a friendly place.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| As opposed to in the West, where they do that through the
| telephone company and you don't even know about it.
| woodruffw wrote:
| In legal parlance, we call that a "court-ordered warrant."
|
| The US has had a medley of surveillance scandals over the
| years, but none of them involved _anything_ nearly as drastic
| as what's shown in the video.
|
| Edit: drastic for regular American citizens and residents.
| America's foreign surveillance is inexcusable.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2013/06/13/191226106/fisa-court-
| appears-...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Why would America's foreign surveillance be inexcusable?
| asveikau wrote:
| When the founders of the country said human beings were
| born with inalienable rights, do you think they meant that
| noncitizens are not?
| _moof wrote:
| Probably? The founders didn't even give American women
| the vote. Let's not go pretending they had some expansive
| notion of what the word "human" means.
|
| FWIW I agree with your basic point--rights are rights, no
| matter who you are--but if you try to find that idea in
| anything "the founders" did, you're going to be extremely
| disappointed.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| It is not unreasonable to assume whatever the US is doing
| abroad, they are doing domestically - and that such activity
| just has not come to light as of now.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This shows a complete lack of insight into how the phone
| company interacts with your phone, what they can and what they
| can't do. The reason the guards target the phones is precisely
| because the phone company doesn't have access to this data.
| They can at best read SMS, but not whatsapp, telegram and a ton
| of other popular messaging apps which use strong crypto and
| bypass the telco in case of WiFi connectivity.
|
| Telco's see plenty, but your phone sees a whole lot more.
| BasDirks wrote:
| lgleason wrote:
| This is not surprising. What is more worrying are all of the
| people in the US(and a large part of the west) who seem to think
| that communism and the Russian revolution are great things while
| actively supporting the eroding of our rights. For example, no
| due process, Mob justice etc. etc. etc.. This is a glimpse into
| our own future in the west if we don't actively push against
| totalitarianism in all forms, not just when it benefits us.
| (edited to correct spelling)
| mercy_dude wrote:
| woodruffw wrote:
| To the best of my knowledge, there is no section of the PATRIOT
| Act that includes a backdoor on every cellphone for every
| domestic message. That would go even beyond the wildest
| accusations of domestic dragnet surveillance.
| javert wrote:
| > "there is no section of the PATRIOT Act that includes..."
|
| DHS often flouts the law. (You aren't wrong, but I'm just
| saying.)
|
| > That would go even beyond the wildest accusations of
| domestic dragnet surveillance
|
| I definitely would not agree with that.
|
| They might not quite have this level of surveillance, but
| they're probably not too far away, either. And there will be
| actors within the bureaucracy pushing to increase
| surveillance as far as they possibly can.
|
| The US Federal bureaucracy is grossly out of control and
| serves its own interests, which aren't those of the citizens
| or the states.
|
| When you look at tax policy in particular, you see that the
| states are effectively colonies of the Federal government and
| bureaucracy.
| gruez wrote:
| I think "back door and they read every message covertly" that
| the parent post was referring to SMS messages only. In that
| respect I think he's correct. I do agree that the wording is
| a bit strange/misleading, because it kind of suggests that
| your Signal messages could be read as well.
|
| > In late 2001, the NSA was authorized to monitor, without
| obtaining a FISA warrant, the phone calls, Internet activity,
| text messages and other communication involving any party
| believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other
| end of the communication lay within the U.S.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(.
| ..
| woodruffw wrote:
| The NSA program in question was terminated in 2007, when
| that part of the PATRIOT Act expired and wasn't reapproved.
|
| To be clear: law or not, the NSA's program was an
| unacceptable breach of civil liberties. But it is not
| comparable in domain or in historical context to Russia's
| domestic surveillance.
| duxup wrote:
| And nobody is at risk to be jailed for opposing a war.. or
| just calling it a war.
| revscat wrote:
| Americans are free to publicly protest the government, but
| not businesses.
| egberts1 wrote:
| you seem quite sure ... about US-based businesses not
| being free to publicly protest against war in form of
| denial of services: Google is littered with many
| corporations doing exactly that and issuing press
| releases to that effect.
| waffleiron wrote:
| Except if it's Israel's war.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-
| BDS_laws_in...
| duxup wrote:
| > but not businesses.
|
| They seem to be able to do that.
| bdowling wrote:
| I'm the video, a "police officer" furiously flicks through a
| phone.
|
| How is he doing that with gloves on?
| quadrangle wrote:
| I guess you've never bought touch-screen-compatible gloves...
| they are the norm now, even cheap gloves from a dollar-store as
| well as higher end ones. It needs to have material that is
| conductive.
|
| Random link I found for you https://www.everprogloves.com/how-
| do-touch-screen-gloves-wor...
| jotm wrote:
| Don't even need those, screens work alright with cheap/thin
| gloves.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Because being returned your phone with the fingerprints of a
| police on it as a bonus, could backfire in a spectacular way
| for the agent
| jotm wrote:
| "Furiously" probably because the touch input is not as
| reliable, but it does work. Modern touchscreens are quite good,
| I was surprised at how well the work through various fabric.
| cm2187 wrote:
| This is just a low tech version of what the EU and US lawmakers
| have been trying to pass against end-to-end encryption.
| rs999gti wrote:
| > Canada
|
| https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/edd-ean-eng.html
| moistly wrote:
| That's examination when crossing the border and you've given
| them cause to suspect you're breaking the law; and is done with
| wifi turned off so that they aren't reading your social media,
| email, etc. They are typically looking for evidence of child
| sexual abuse, money laundering, undeclared goods, and false
| identification. About 1 out of 10000 travellers have their
| device examined and of those, about a third turn up evidence of
| illegal activity. So bottom line, not at all comparable to
| what's going down in Russia.
| ianpurton wrote:
| Android allows you to have multiple users. So you can have 1 user
| for private activity and another for day 2 day activity.
|
| If you need to unlock your phone to show someone, unlock the day
| 2 day account.
|
| It's not fool proof but might fool someone who is not aware of
| the feature.
| MrDisposable wrote:
| If you have a phone with stock or close-to-stock Android, this
| is a great feature.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's kind of sad how unpopular this feature is, because it's
| great for those "lend me your phone real quick" scenarios. You
| can add a "guest mode" button to your lock screen on many
| (most?) Android phones to create a throwaway user account.
|
| That said, the cops will probably not take a smartphone without
| contents at face value. You've got to add some realistic enough
| (fake?) texts at least, or be careful to only communicate about
| protests, homosexuality and other banned subjects through your
| alternative user account.
|
| Unless you have something to hide, trying to mislead armed
| officers of an authoritarian regime this way may not be
| advisable. They'd probably be fooled by simply carrying around
| a second phone, though, because most people only carry around a
| single phone. Do your revolutionary talk through an old banged-
| up second hand device, and talk about other stuff using your
| fancy phone.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| The feature is disabled in many Android phones, especially
| budget models. And then samsung has its usual secure folder
| nonsense
| MrDisposable wrote:
| They also do this in airports, to people flying out of the
| country (e.g. to Armenia, which is an extremely popular
| destination among IT people right now).
|
| Their approach is working. We've configured our "watercooler"
| chat to auto-delete messages after 24 hours, and deleted all
| history.
|
| I didn't comb through my private messages yet, but that
| increasingly seems like a good idea.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You guys should leave some fake ones in there with fake people
| to make it look like you haven't been deleting stuff.
| [deleted]
| paganel wrote:
| A hammer (or the threat of it) will always defeat the best
| encryption algorithms.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Only with physical access to the owner.
| ada1981 wrote:
| I'd like a mod where if I enter an alt password that the phone
| opens, but it's a dummy Os, functional but with no real messages
| or accounts.
|
| So, my Normal pin is 1234 but if I enter 5678, phone unlocks to a
| dictator safe mode.
| LecroJS wrote:
| From someone else who shared it here:
|
| https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress
|
| So insane that something like this isn't available natively on
| all of our phones
| marcodiego wrote:
| Time to make plausible deniability more user-friendly.
|
| See https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress
| newsbinator wrote:
| This would be great for MacOS.
| KVFinn wrote:
| They are also checking phones of people leaving Russia. Even as
| of four days ago my friend had her phone taken for almost 90
| minutes. She did get through eventually and wasn't stopped. She
| cleared most of her messages and browser history, deleted VPN
| apps, and general stuff, but didn't fully reset the phone.
|
| This was via flight, I'm not even sure there are international
| flights still available as of today though. Is it still possible
| to fly out of Russia right now?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Yes, just not on a Russian airline.
| aasasd wrote:
| By the way, Kevin Rothrock is the host of the podcast 'The Naked
| Pravda' from Meduza, which is one of the main independent news
| outlets in Russian now--created by former staff of Lenta.ru after
| that came under ownership of an oligarch and became pro-
| government. 'The Naked Pravda' is in English and serves the
| audience who would like to know about Russian affairs from people
| closer to the ground. In fact, it's quite worthy even for those
| who speak Russian and have other news sources.
|
| https://meduza.io/en/podcasts/the-naked-pravda or
| https://meduza.global.ssl.fastly.net/en/podcasts/the-naked-p...
|
| Also perhaps https://meduza.io/en and
| https://meduza.global.ssl.fastly.net/en for text--though that has
| much less material than in Russian, and I can't personally vouch
| for it.
|
| As a gentle reminder: after being declared a 'foreign agent' and
| losing risk-averse advertisers, Meduza lives on direct
| contributions from readers. Given both the devaluation of the
| ruble and the financial sanctions (as Meduza is not incorporated
| in Russia), these contributions will likely shrink, and we might
| lose one of the last outlets with actual good journalism.
| abc789654567 wrote:
| awillen wrote:
| I recommend following him on Twitter at
| https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock, as well as this list, which
| features his account plus a number of other high-quality
| accounts reporting on what's happening in Ukraine:
| https://twitter.com/i/lists/1467909429534380034
| aasasd wrote:
| As for the events in the tweet: guess it's time to dust off my
| trusted Nokia 1200.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > By the way, Kevin Rothrock is the host of the podcast 'The
| Naked Pravda' from Meduza, which is one of the main independent
| news outlets in Russian now
|
| That's ironic because Meduza is apparently based in Latvia:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meduza:
|
| > Meduza (Russian: Meduza, lit. 'jellyfish')[2][3] is a
| Russian- and English-language independent[7] news website,
| based in Latvia.
| aasasd wrote:
| Another such shocker is that WikiLeaks is not based in the
| US.
| jimothyhalpert7 wrote:
| How is that ironic?
| aix1 wrote:
| Russia is a regime where reporting things that disagree with
| the official govt line is punishable by 15 years in
| prison[1]. It is not at all surprising that an independent
| news outlet reporting on and for Russia would choose to be
| based in a different, but nearby jurisdiction.
|
| [1] https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-invasion-russia-
| passes-la...
| abc789654567 wrote:
| >Russia is a regime where reporting things that disagree
| with the official govt line is punishable by 15 years in
| prison.
|
| Yes, sure, in a democratic country it's absolutely
| impossible that a person reporting things that disagree
| with the official govt line may spend even a single day in
| prison.
|
| Julian Assange can confirm.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| I'm not sure why you worded this in such a combative
| manner? It is undeniably true that any government
| comprised of humans will move to conceal or shut-up
| inconvenient sources of truth that make their actions
| look bad.
| williamtwild wrote:
| Assange is a puppet of Russia
| abc789654567 wrote:
| >Assange is a puppet of Russia
|
| Sure. As well as Snowden and Manning. And anybody else
| who disagrees with the official govt line. They all are
| Russian actors. That's how democracy works.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| In the US plenty of news agencies have reported on leaked
| information that the government wasn't fond of without
| being imprisoned. The case with Assange is a bit special
| as he sought out and helped people steal and release
| information that they were not permitted to release.
|
| If he made an effort to truly remain separate from the
| sourcing of information, as most reputable reporting
| agencies do, then he'd likely not be in prison.
|
| Look at the release of the Pentagon Papers.
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