[tor-project] U.S. border crossing guide

Tom Ritter tom at ritter.vg
Fri Mar 17 21:49:53 UTC 2017


On 17 March 2017 at 15:05, David Fifield <david at bamsoftware.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 01:35:30PM -0500, Franklin Bynum wrote:
>> == If you are a U.S. citizen ==
>> The government has to let you in. They can, however, detain you for
>> questioning and search you and your property.
>
> If you want one person's account of what that's like, I (a U.S. citizen)
> wrote about my experience being detained at the border in 2013 for not
> answering questions. I was in secondary for around seven hours and in a
> cell for most of that time.
>
> https://www.bamsoftware.com/writing/mia-cbp.html



I have a couple of questions:

At BH EU 2012 (http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-eu-12/bh-eu-12-archives.html
) I asked Marcia and Seth about the "If you're a citizen they have to
let you in" because they explicitly didn't mention it in their talk.
They said they used to believe that, but they had recently reviewed
the case law and found that what they thought it was based off was not
as strong as they thought (something about Puerto Rico...)  Now I see
they have reversed and are stating that confidently again in their
2017 guide. Do you happen to know anything about this, why they may
have changed their mind? Any new case law or something? (bcc Seth in
case he wants to weigh in public or privately...)

Secondly: In David's account he talks about being threatened with the
remarks on his profile and so on, as well as being told he must answer
the questions. At what point (in the actual event or hypothetically)
would he get standing for Bivens claim? Would he have standing for
being lied to and tricked/threatened into talking? If not, would he
have standing if they marked his file and it resulted in detainment
upon a subsequent reentry a) if he didn't cooperate or b) if he did?

-tom


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