Those Damned Canadiens eh?!
They are pretty scary eh.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2016 10:37 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Attention All Journalists: US Border Patrol
Agents Can Search Your Phones
Attention All Journalists: US Border Patrol Agents Can Search Your Phones
Published on
Thursday, December 01, 2016
by
Columbia Journalism Review
Attention All Journalists: US Border Patrol Agents Can Search Your Phones
by
Trevor Timm
New York marches in solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Nation. (Photo:
Karla Ann Cote/cc/flickr)
Award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker Ed Ou, who has covered the
Middle East for over a decade, has worked under threat as a journalist in
almost too many countries to count. Authorities in Turkey, Egypt, Somalia,
Djibouti, and Bahrain have arrested or detained him at some point in his
career. But he always assumed working in the United States would be
safe-until last month.
The story that follows-first reported in The Washington Post today-is a
stark reminder that the US government has eviscerated press freedom and
privacy rights at the border. Journalists have been stopped or detained in
the past, and thousands of travelers have their electronics confiscated each
year.
Ou, a Canadian citizen who is living temporarily in Canada after a long
stint in Egypt, travels to the US often. He has friends and family here, and
he regularly vacations and attends work events and conferences here. On
October 1, he scheduled a routine flight into the country again, he told me
in an interview.
He was on assignment with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, working on
a long-term project about the health care system for indigenous people in
North America. As part of his reporting, he scheduled a trip to cover the
protests in Standing Rock, North Dakota, where Native Americans have been
protesting the building of an oil pipeline that threatens the water supply
on their land.
As Ou attempted to go through security at the Vancouver International
Airport for his flight to Bismarck, he was flagged for extra screening by US
Customs and Border Patrol. Because he's traveled to various Middle Eastern
countries over the years, he says he's often flagged when entering the US,
but usually he simply explains he's a journalist and they let him go on his
way.
This time was different. It all started, Ou said, when he put his Nexus card
into the reader (Nexus is the Canadian equivalent of Global Entry, so he can
go through security lines faster; it means he had already been vetted by
customs officials.) "I got an immediate flag to go to secondary screening
and I got the SSSS on my boarding pass," he told me. SSSS is the dreaded
symbol that marks someone as being on some sort of list.
He was interrogated at the airport for the next seven hours, had his cell
phones, personal diaries, and documents confiscated, and was denied entry to
the country.
He immediately told the border agents that he was a photographer and
filmmaker. He was on assignment for the CBC, he told them, but he also works
for Getty Images. His photography has appeared in The New York Times,
Harper's, Time, The Guardian, and many other publications. He's
coveredextremist groups and volatile political situations in a variety of
countries.
"I had offered to show them press accreditation or put them in contact with
my editor," he told me. "There was no doubt that they knew I was a
journalist."
"The first question they asked me was 'When was the last time you were in
Iraq?'" He hadn't been to Iraq in over a year, and had been back to the US
many times since then without issue. "At this point in time, it's still
pretty routine, since I get this all the time. My first thought was 'I'm
back in the US so I don't have to hide that I'm a journalist. I don't need
to be ashamed of that fact.' So I was completely straightforward and
honest."
He explained to me that in the Middle East, he and his colleagues are
regularly detained under false pretenses. As a result, he often attempts to
downplay his profession there. In North America, he assumed, "I can proudly
claim I'm a journalist and not worry about anything."
He soon learned that was not necessarily the case. He said he was taken to a
room and given a list of every country he'd visited in the past five years
and told to write down everything he'd done in those countries and all the
extremist groups he'd been in contact with. He explained that documenting
extremists groups was often a part of his job. By now, he'd missed his
flight.
"Then they asked my why I was going to Standing Rock and why I was so
interested in that. They wanted to know the people I was going to meet, what
I was going to cover."
Border agents, according to Ou, said they wanted him to consent to a search
of his phone "because they wanted to make sure there weren't pictures on my
phone of me posing smiling with a dead body."
This is when Ou started to get angry. "I thought, 'Oh my god.' The first
thing that came to my mind was [journalist] Jim Foley-my colleague and my
friend-who was killed in Syria. So I started to put the pieces [together] in
my head. Maybe they think I'm a militant who went to fight for ISIS and came
back?"
He had three phones with him, two iPhones and an Android. They all were
encrypted and turned off, which Ou says he "does by reflex when I go over
any border." (This is good advice for any journalist.) He adamantly refused
to unlock his phones, telling them "I'm a journalist and have sources to
protect. I'm not going to open my phone for you, or anyone for that
matter-not the cops, not the US border patrol, or the Russian or Chinese or
Iranians. It's just something I don't do."
As Andrea Peterson noted in the Post, "If Ou had already been inside the
U.S. border, law enforcement officers would have needed a warrant to search
his smartphones to comply with a 2014 Supreme Court ruling. But the
journalist learned the hard way that the same rules don't apply at the
border, where the government claims the right to search electronic devices
without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing."
After they took his phones and SIM cards into another room, Ou says they
started going through his checked bags. Then they read and photocopied his
personal journals against his wishes.
Five hours later, he got his phones back and noticed the SIM cards had been
tampered with. Ou said they finally told him, "You or someone that sounds
like you is on a persons of interest list." He immediately said he'd do
whatever he could to clear it up. "But then they said they couldn't tell me
anymore because it's classified," Ou explained.
Ou was officially denied entry into the US by border agents, and he says
they recommended that he not try to enter again. It's still unclear what the
official reason was for denying him entry.
As the ACLU has documented in detail, the US watch lists that prevent all
sorts of people from entering the country are a due process-free nightmare,
in which everything is kept secret from those affected and often there is no
meaningful way to challenge it. Ou's case is particularly egregious, given
that it should have been obvious to US authorities that he was a journalist
who was attempting to protect his sources. (This is not the first time this
has happened to a journalist, either.)
The ACLU is also representing Ou. ACLU staff attorney Hugh Handeyside said:
"Ed's experience is yet another sign that the government is exceeding its
power and using the border as a dragnet to gather intelligence on innocent
people. Targeting journalists for these kinds of abusive border searches can
prevent important reporting on government activities and weaken public
discourse."
At a minimum, the US government owes Ou an apology and a complete
restoration of his travel rights. In the larger picture, this is a stark
reminder that journalists need to do everything possible to protect
themselves and their sources when traveling over any border-including into
or out of the United States.
C Copyright 2016 Columbia Journalism Review
Trevor Timm
Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of the
Press Foundation. He is a writer, activist, and legal analyst who
specializes in free speech and government transparency issues. He writes a
weekly column for The Guardian and has also contributed to The Atlantic, Al
Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy Review, PBS MediaShift, and
Politico. Follow him on Twitter: @TrevorTimm
Skip to main content
//
. DONATE
. SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER
Thursday, December 1, 2016
. Home
. World
. U.S.
. Canada
. Climate
. War & Peace
. Economy
. Rights
. Solutions
. #NotNormal
. #NoDAPL
. Bernie Sanders
Attention All Journalists: US Border Patrol Agents Can Search Your Phones
Published on
Thursday, December 01, 2016
by Columbia Journalism Review
Attention All Journalists: US Border Patrol Agents Can Search Your Phones
by
Trevor Timm
. 3 Comments
.
. New York marches in solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Nation.
(Photo: Karla Ann Cote/cc/flickr)
. Award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker Ed Ou, who has covered
the Middle East for over a decade, has worked under threat as a journalist
in almost too many countries to count. Authorities in Turkey, Egypt,
Somalia, Djibouti, and Bahrain have arrested or detained him at some point
in his career. But he always assumed working in the United States would be
safe-until last month.
. The story that follows-first reported in The Washington Post
today-is a stark reminder that the US government has eviscerated press
freedom and privacy rights at the border. Journalists have been stopped or
detained in the past, and thousands of travelers have their electronics
confiscated each year.
. Ou, a Canadian citizen who is living temporarily in Canada after a
long stint in Egypt, travels to the US often. He has friends and family
here, and he regularly vacations and attends work events and conferences
here. On October 1, he scheduled a routine flight into the country again, he
told me in an interview.
. He was on assignment with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
working on a long-term project about the health care system for indigenous
people in North America. As part of his reporting, he scheduled a trip to
cover the protests in Standing Rock, North Dakota, where Native Americans
have been protesting the building of an oil pipeline that threatens the
water supply on their land.
As Ou attempted to go through security at the Vancouver International
Airport for his flight to Bismarck, he was flagged for extra screening by US
Customs and Border Patrol. Because he's traveled to various Middle Eastern
countries over the years, he says he's often flagged when entering the US,
but usually he simply explains he's a journalist and they let him go on his
way.
This time was different. It all started, Ou said, when he put his Nexus card
into the reader (Nexus is the Canadian equivalent of Global Entry, so he can
go through security lines faster; it means he had already been vetted by
customs officials.) "I got an immediate flag to go to secondary screening
and I got the SSSS on my boarding pass," he told me. SSSS is the dreaded
symbol that marks someone as being on some sort of list.
He was interrogated at the airport for the next seven hours, had his cell
phones, personal diaries, and documents confiscated, and was denied entry to
the country.
He immediately told the border agents that he was a photographer and
filmmaker. He was on assignment for the CBC, he told them, but he also works
for Getty Images. His photography has appeared in The New York Times,
Harper's, Time, The Guardian, and many other publications. He's
coveredextremist groups and volatile political situations in a variety of
countries.
"I had offered to show them press accreditation or put them in contact with
my editor," he told me. "There was no doubt that they knew I was a
journalist."
"The first question they asked me was 'When was the last time you were in
Iraq?'" He hadn't been to Iraq in over a year, and had been back to the US
many times since then without issue. "At this point in time, it's still
pretty routine, since I get this all the time. My first thought was 'I'm
back in the US so I don't have to hide that I'm a journalist. I don't need
to be ashamed of that fact.' So I was completely straightforward and
honest."
He explained to me that in the Middle East, he and his colleagues are
regularly detained under false pretenses. As a result, he often attempts to
downplay his profession there. In North America, he assumed, "I can proudly
claim I'm a journalist and not worry about anything."
He soon learned that was not necessarily the case. He said he was taken to a
room and given a list of every country he'd visited in the past five years
and told to write down everything he'd done in those countries and all the
extremist groups he'd been in contact with. He explained that documenting
extremists groups was often a part of his job. By now, he'd missed his
flight.
"Then they asked my why I was going to Standing Rock and why I was so
interested in that. They wanted to know the people I was going to meet, what
I was going to cover."
Border agents, according to Ou, said they wanted him to consent to a search
of his phone "because they wanted to make sure there weren't pictures on my
phone of me posing smiling with a dead body."
This is when Ou started to get angry. "I thought, 'Oh my god.' The first
thing that came to my mind was [journalist] Jim Foley-my colleague and my
friend-who was killed in Syria. So I started to put the pieces [together] in
my head. Maybe they think I'm a militant who went to fight for ISIS and came
back?"
He had three phones with him, two iPhones and an Android. They all were
encrypted and turned off, which Ou says he "does by reflex when I go over
any border." (This is good advice for any journalist.) He adamantly refused
to unlock his phones, telling them "I'm a journalist and have sources to
protect. I'm not going to open my phone for you, or anyone for that
matter-not the cops, not the US border patrol, or the Russian or Chinese or
Iranians. It's just something I don't do."
As Andrea Peterson noted in the Post, "If Ou had already been inside the
U.S. border, law enforcement officers would have needed a warrant to search
his smartphones to comply with a 2014 Supreme Court ruling. But the
journalist learned the hard way that the same rules don't apply at the
border, where the government claims the right to search electronic devices
without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing."
After they took his phones and SIM cards into another room, Ou says they
started going through his checked bags. Then they read and photocopied his
personal journals against his wishes.
Five hours later, he got his phones back and noticed the SIM cards had been
tampered with. Ou said they finally told him, "You or someone that sounds
like you is on a persons of interest list." He immediately said he'd do
whatever he could to clear it up. "But then they said they couldn't tell me
anymore because it's classified," Ou explained.
Ou was officially denied entry into the US by border agents, and he says
they recommended that he not try to enter again. It's still unclear what the
official reason was for denying him entry.
As the ACLU has documented in detail, the US watch lists that prevent all
sorts of people from entering the country are a due process-free nightmare,
in which everything is kept secret from those affected and often there is no
meaningful way to challenge it. Ou's case is particularly egregious, given
that it should have been obvious to US authorities that he was a journalist
who was attempting to protect his sources. (This is not the first time this
has happened to a journalist, either.)
The ACLU is also representing Ou. ACLU staff attorney Hugh Handeyside said:
"Ed's experience is yet another sign that the government is exceeding its
power and using the border as a dragnet to gather intelligence on innocent
people. Targeting journalists for these kinds of abusive border searches can
prevent important reporting on government activities and weaken public
discourse."
At a minimum, the US government owes Ou an apology and a complete
restoration of his travel rights. In the larger picture, this is a stark
reminder that journalists need to do everything possible to protect
themselves and their sources when traveling over any border-including into
or out of the United States.
C Copyright 2016 Columbia Journalism Review
/author/trevor-timm
/author/trevor-timm/author/trevor-timm
Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of the
Press Foundation. He is a writer, activist, and legal analyst who
specializes in free speech and government transparency issues. He writes a
weekly column for The Guardian and has also contributed to The Atlantic, Al
Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy Review, PBS MediaShift, and
Politico. Follow him on Twitter: @TrevorTimm
