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fne8w2ah @lemmy.world

2d ago

Swiss officials not following EU use of burner phones for US travel

Swiss officials not following EU use of burner phones for US travel

36 comments

That's like saying Mexico isn't following EU use of burner phones. The Swiss are not part of the EU, so why are they being compared to them?
- Because, while Switzerland is not part of the EU, it follows many of its regulations. Maybe even most of them.
  In this particular case, I happen to know that the inofficial rule is indeed to have burner phones for travel into the us in some cases. But you're never supposed to have unencrypted data on your phone or laptop in any case.
  
  Switzerland is not en EEA member (Norway and Iceland) and adopt EU regulations on a case by case basis. EEA members are obliged to adopt as default in national legislation, but have the option to decline, but it often comes with consequences.
  There are some EFTA (Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Iceland) deal with the EU but no idea how that works.
  Edit: But you are correct, Switzerland do follow most EU regulations.

Given the current state on the US arriving with a burner phone, or even a clean one, would at least get you interrogated, and at worst deported to Guantanamo. Better leave something innocuous on the phone that makes it look used.
- That would look suspicious too...
- My employer gives everyone in management a cell phone. At least once a quarter someone from management has to travel across the border to do site visits and the like. Most people will only carry the work phone when traveling because of CBP and TSA inspections.

Ad usual the Swiss government confirms itself as the most pathetic weak coward state in Europe, following a track record of "neutrality" in WWI, with the Nazis and now again with the us regime.
Remember: when shit hits the fan, good luck find sympathy with your neighbors.
An embarassing moment for all european countries and people who fought and died for democracy. 👏
- Being neutral goes two ways.
  
  Neutrality in the face of evil is indistinguishable from evil

Switzerland, however, seems to be taking a less confrontational approach. The message seems clear: Switzerland has no interest in provoking Washington.
WTF? Simply not taking your regular phone is "confrontational" and a provocation?!?
- Trump's fellow billionaires will soon need somewhere to hide their super profits. That's what Switzerland is all about.
- Switzerland going the "appeasement" route with fascists, as per usual.
  
  They have to store their gold somewhere
- Everything is provocative if your dick is orange.

Not exactly a huge surprise as Switzerland is not part of the EU. I bet they don't follow India or Australia's government policies either! Such savages.
Switzerland has no shortage of cyber professionals, so either hardened and encrypted devices, or no one traveling with direct access to confidential data via their devices, likely both, is the obvious situation here.
- Hardened and encrypted devices don't matter for shit when you're forced to unlock them. Not having direct access to confidential data like you proposed is much better. But better not even have a way of accessing it that could be detected.
  
  Yes, and the Vienna Convention is what outlines that Swiss or any other country's diplomatic officials don't have to do that with work devices.
- Is it? Obvious, I mean? To IT guys, sure. But I know from experience that IT guidelines are usually just another set of rules to be broken by users, most of the time on purpose or out of (willful) ignorance 😅
  
  It doesn't help that plenty of places still follow old IT guidelines that are bad, so they all get lumped together. E.g. change password every 45 days, can't BT the last 10, must have 4 characters different, and we don't have a password manager.

Good way to plant false information imo. Say this is definately really your phone so that when they spy on you then you can feed them all kinds of nonsense.

I wonder what they'd do if the phone refused to turn on and there aren't any ports to plug into.

Big mistake.
- It doesn't mention what the current directive is. Swiss government – being common people doing a special job, compared to EU officials – are usually more practical in such things.

What precisely can be stolen from those officials in the first place? Oh no, you’ve discovered our large banking system with rich people money!
- The concern is that even encrypted communicatons, intercepted via the heavily Chinese-tapped US telecommunications company networks, can be used to gain access to other systems. Unencrypted data, sure, that's a legit concern. China can likely read every SMS sent to any US phone number and no one seems to care at all. Things like downgrade attacks, other man-in-the-middle attacks, and skimming SMS 2FA codes are likely possible with poorly defended systems.
  If the data it's encrypted, then it's more about the paranoia that China is collecting everything and planning to decrypt later with quantum processors. Not exactly a huge and urgent worry, but one day they will crack how to decrypt what they collect and will have a record of everything said online.
- It would be the Panama papers all over again
- Normal countries should start doing this too just for US visitors so we can find out who really killed JFK.
  
  https://youtu.be/unPpGww2IBc - We think the CIA killed JFK because of Satire and Homophobia

36 comments