General Info

December 20, 2011.

Protect Yourself from Intrusive Laptop and Phone Searches at the USA Border.

EFF's New Guide Helps Travelers Defend Their Data Privacy.

San Francisco. Anytime you travel internationally, you risk a broad, invasive search of your laptop, phone, and other digital devices. Including the copying of your data and seizing of your property for an indefinite time. To help travelers protect themselves and their private information during the busy holiday travel period, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a new report today with important guidance for safeguarding your personal data at the U. S border.

Thanks to protections enshrined in the USA Constitution, the government generally can't snoop through your laptop for no reason. But the federal government claims those privacy protections don't cover travelers at the USA border, allowing agents to take an electronic device, search through all the files, and keep it for further scrutiny. Without any suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever. For business travelers, that could expose sensitive information like trade secrets, doctor-patient and attorney-client communications, and research and business strategies. For others, the data at risk includes personal health histories, financial records, and private messages and photos of family and friends. EFF's new report,"Defending Privacy at the USA Border: A Guide for Travelers Carrying Digital Devices," outlines potential ways to protect that private information, including minimizing the data you carry with you and employing encryption.

[url]https://www.eff.org/press/releases/protect-yourself-intrusive-laptop-and-phone-searches-us-border[/url]

For Defending Privacy at the USA Border: A Guide for Travelers Carrying Digital Devices:

[url]https://www.eff.org/wp/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-travelers-carrying-digital-devices[/url]

To take the border privacy quiz: [url]https://www.eff.org/pages/border-search-quiz[/url]

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One good thing about this newbie is that he has paid the annual fee to Jackson, enabling him to pm, right?

[QUOTE=FurryFriend;1229116]I got the same message. Why can't he just post it publicly?[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Marconista;1229448]One good thing about this newbie is that he has paid the annual fee to Jackson, enabling him to pm, right?[/QUOTE][QUOTE=Westcoast1;1229621]McDon, those are about the most descriptive reports I've read. Great work. Newbs please read McDon's reports as an example, and please make your first post a full Field Report (ala McDon) , rather than a question for the board members.[/QUOTE]In addition newbs, along with your FR, please feel free to post a pic or two: your girl, your hotel, or anything you found interesting that you might think the rest of us might be interested in.

This time in Tagaytay. Check it out at [url]http://www.globalnation...n.n-tagaytay[/url]

Hope I got the link right.

[QUOTE=Slippery; 1230171]This time in Tagaytay. Check it out at.

[url]http://www.globalnation.n.n-tagaytay[/url]

Hope I got the link right.[/QUOTE]From January 2009 to mid-June 2010, 204 contractors were killed in the war in Iraq. During the same period. 95 foreigners were killed while visiting the Philippines. Mongering and residing in the Philippines is not without risk. Each individual should carefully weigh the benefits of cheap sex against the cons of being murdered, robbed, beaten or extorted.

The Philippines' main attraction for foreigners is the wide availability of cheap sex with young women. Of course, this is offset by the filthy contaminated crime ridden environment, lack of human rights for foreigners, corruption and absence of public safety. Foreigners will continue to be murdered in ever increasing numbers because these crimes are rarely solved and they have no voice or clout in the country. If mongers want the discount priced sex badly enough they must accept that being targeted for extortion, robbery and murder is part and parcel of the deal.

Foreigners need to take responsibility of their own safety and stop looking at the Philippines as some kind of adult Disneyland. It's more like visiting a giant slum like District 9 in search of prostitutes. Everyone around you is a potential threat. They all want something from you and that includes any 'family' you happen to marry into. If things go bad your local family might just decide that a dead foreigner is worth more to them than one who cuts them off. Don't think even for a minute that being old, crippled, or crazy is going get you any mercy from them. In the end the only thing that matters to them is money.

[QUOTE=Chocha Monger;1230201]. <SNIP> . Foreigners need to take responsibility of their own safety and stop looking at the Philippines as some kind of adult Disneyland. It's more like visiting a giant slum like District 9 in search of prostitutes. .[/QUOTE]This is a gross exaggeration Chocha. Guys who stay in AC or in Manila city (Malate, Ermita, Binondo, Tondo and even parts of Pasay) might understand what you are saying, but for those of us who live in Ortigas Center or Makati or parts of Cebu and Davao, we would disagree.

Living in such an area (as I do) is like living in the middle of any large city in the world with very modern, built-up areas, and certainly NOT a giant slum. There are women of all variety still available. No need to go into a "slum" to seek prostitutes or any other woman here.

However, I agree wholeheartedly with your premise that the Philippines is NOT "some kind of adult Disneyland". Those who arrive with the idea that they are in Disneyland are doomed to all manner of likely disappointments.

I am picking up on a few things in the Manila thread and commenting here as they are more 'General' than they are 'Manila'.

Chocha Monger posted a link to an interesting short Philippines YouTube clip: [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuAxPr96qs[/url] About Constitutional Reform and Presidential Government (as it is here in the Philippines) versus a Parliamentary style government. It got me thinking about the connection between style of Government and corruption.

Transparency International (TI) has just released its 2011 Corruption Perception Index rankings of 183 countries. The Philippines ranks at 129, meaning that there are 128 countries perceived as less corrupt, and 54 as being more corrupt. That's just a little better than it has been in previous years. Perhaps NoyNoy's anti-corruption efforts are having an effect, albeit small?

Using the CIA World Fact Book website: [url]https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html[/url] I have looked at the types of Governments that run the so-called least corrupt countries. Of the 20 least corrupt 16 are democratic governments headed by a Prime Minister usually selected by the ruling party and confirmed by the parliament, or endorsed by a constitutional monarch. One in the top 20 has a President (Switzerland) but elected by the assembly and not by popular vote of the people. Two have Chancellors (Germany and Austria) elected by a federal assembly and one, Hong Kong, has a CEO selected by Beijing. None have leaders selected by vote of the people.

To save some of you looking up the reference the least corrupt countries per the TI listing are in order: New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Singapore, Norway, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, Luxemburg, Hong Kong, Iceland, Germany, Japan, Austria, Barbados, United Kingdom, Belgium and Ireland.

The first country listed with a President selected by people's choice is Chile (ranked 22) then the United States ranked 24).

In the Philippines, like the United States and other presidential governments elected by the people, it is money that selects the candidates that run for president and which buy or trade off the votes necessary to select the president. It is money that talks and not the man / woman best qualified to lead, chair and direct a country. And it is voters responding to issues that best affect them personally, and not necessarily best for their country. Am I being cynical here? It seems to me a parliamentary type of Government selects a leader that is better qualified to lead its country its own population by free Presidential vote.

I can also relate well to Gangles posting, again in the Manila forum under the heading of "Serious Corruption" where he says:

[QUOTE=Gangles; 1229815]Not long ago, a Bill was introduced into the US congress which would make the use of Aspartame illegal because of its known harmful effects. The industry, with deep pockets, unleashed a bunch of lobbyists, with equally deep pockets. Enough congressmen were bought off to make sure that the bill did not get to the floor of the House. That is, money crossed hands with the result that lives of people are put at risk, for increased profits of big business.

Now that is what I call corruption. But then thinking back to my time in the US, I realised that that is actually the way that the US congress is run. By big business. There are thousands of lobbyists working full time in and around the congress, manipulating the process and system of government.

Now that is serious corruption.

The Philippines is amateurish in comparison.

G[/QUOTE]KongKing

[QUOTE=Slippery; 1230171]This time in Tagaytay. Check it out at.

[url]http://www.globalnation.n.n-tagaytay[/url]

Hope I got the link right.[/QUOTE]This link did not work for me, is this the same story below?

[url]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45788414/ns/world_news/[/url]

CM, you sound like a bitter and sour man.

I have never felt personally endangered while I have been in the Phils, including in some squatter areas.

The only places where I have been nervous about my personal safety were in the Bowery in NY City, the Bronx, and some parts of SE Washington DC.

The only place that I have been held up at gunpoint and cleaned out of my possessions was in Washington DC, a couple of blocks from the White House, and one block from the Australian Embassy.

Don't be so afraid.

I hav spoken before about westerners living in fear. It looks like you are a classic case.

G.

[QUOTE=Chocha Monger; 1230201]From January 2009 to mid-June 2010, 204 contractors were killed in the war in Iraq. During the same period. 95 foreigners were killed while visiting the Philippines. Mongering and residing in the Philippines is not without risk. Each individual should carefully weigh the benefits of cheap sex against the cons of being murdered, robbed, beaten or extorted.

The Philippines' main attraction for foreigners is the wide availability of cheap sex with young women. Of course, this is offset by the filthy contaminated crime ridden environment, lack of human rights for foreigners, corruption and absence of public safety. Foreigners will continue to be murdered in ever increasing numbers because these crimes are rarely solved and they have no voice or clout in the country. If mongers want the discount priced sex badly enough they must accept that being targeted for extortion, robbery and murder is part and parcel of the deal.

Foreigners need to take responsibility of their own safety and stop looking at the Philippines as some kind of adult Disneyland. It's more like visiting a giant slum like District 9 in search of prostitutes. Everyone around you is a potential threat. They all want something from you and that includes any 'family' you happen to marry into. If things go bad your local family might just decide that a dead foreigner is worth more to them than one who cuts them off. Don't think even for a minute that being old, crippled, or crazy is going get you any mercy from them. In the end the only thing that matters to them is money.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Red Kilt;1230210]Living in such an area (as I do) is like living in the middle of any large city in the world with very modern, built-up areas, and certainly NOT a giant slum. There are women of all variety still available. No need to go into a "slum" to seek prostitutes or any other woman here.[/QUOTE]Too right RK. You read the dramatic nonsense spouted by the likes of CM and that weirdo who posts on the other thread and you begin to wonder if they are describing the same country that you and I have lived in for years. Then you remember that both are spouting from soapboxes constituted from piles of rotten hidden agendas and neither have much real 'on the ground' experience of the country they purport to describe and deride. Nobody would deny that this country has some big problems to address but what society doesn't and this includes so-called first world nations. I would feel safer walking the meanest street in Manila than any inner city ghetto road in the US and has Manila experienced the social unrest, riots and looting that affected large area of so called civilized London last summer?

The truth is that the majority of foreign ex-pats living here have quiet, uneventful lives spent in leafy, quiet, attractive sub-divisions or condo developments with friendly if inquisitive neighbors (the unofficial barangay police) and the only disturbance to their idyllically peaceful lives being the strident calls of the occasional balut seller. Is it any wonder that I go out looking for some excitement!

[QUOTE=Run Mann; 1230269]This link did not work for me, is this the same story below?

[url]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45788414/ns/world_news/[/url][/QUOTE]Shorter story, same murder. What the MSNBC story does not say is that the victim and his wife had not slept together for 3 years.

I live in a "leafy, gated community," as referred to by CS. My neighbors, most of them Filipinos, are solidly upper middle class, and aside from the odd break-in once every 3 or 4 years, there's no crime that I know of in my village I must live in a different country than the one CM has been describing. The fact is, I live a much better life here than I could afford in the US, and I've yet to spend one day of the eight years I've lived here cowering in fear. I travel routinely to those areas of Mindanao cited as places that Americans are advised to avoid by the US Department of State, and there too, I've been treated with gentiility, respect and genuine interest. I've yet to be extorted, threatened, scammed, cheated or held up, so the factors cited by CM-who sounds like he might never have actually visited this country-must be elusive, or at least must not apply to Mindanao or Manila where I go.

I'm hardly blind to reality. This is a third world country and it's got a long way to go on the road to development. Converesely, it's surely not the crime-ridden warren of corruption painted by CM.

I echo Red Kilt and CS here: most of the expats I know-and like them I know a lot of them-live quiet, uneventful lives and most are reasonably content. Like Gangles, the only place I've ever been mugged was in a developed country; in my case the middle of Paris in the middle of the day, on one of the nicest streets on the left bank.

Clearly, what we need is a more balanced, altogether more accurate picture of the country, and I'm starting to feel that the only ones capable of presenting an accurate portrayal of the reality of the Philippines are those who either live here or who have at least spent a great deal of time in country and have developed a perspective that's not limited to bars and clubs.

GE

[QUOTE=Gangles;1230396]CM, you sound like a bitter and sour man.[/QUOTE]Hey. The job of bitter / sour man is already taken by ME.

It's interesting that it is always the same handful of posters claiming that the Philippines is safe and free of corruption. They always make personal attacks against any poster with a dissenting opinion. The basis of their argument is always the same. If someone has a different viewpoint or experience of the country that poster must be bitter, sour, on an agenda, never visited the country, etc.

Perhaps, the media, law enforcement agencies, embassies, other expats and tourists are part of some dark conspiracy to create false information about foreigners being murdered, robbed and scammed. The reasoning of the clique is if it did not personally happen to them if must not be true. Those 95 foreigners killed in the Philippines between January 2009 and mid-June 2010 never existed. The thousands of Filipinos desperate for a chance to flee their country must be just be bitter sour people. After all, who in their right mind would want to run away from this leafy green tropical paradise where one awakes to the sweet twitter of birds and fresh cool air scented with the exotic fragrance of flowers?

Gaddafi claimed that his people loved him and it was only a few foreign terrorists creating minor disturbances in his country as Libya revolted all around him. It is no surprise that cliques of elitist mongers perceive the reality surrounding them very differently from the masses. In fact, it is to be expected. I guess the reality of foreigners in the Philippines who do not live in protected enclaves dining on fine French cheeses and quaffing 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam really does not count.

I encourage travelers who will not be safely hidden in the 'leafy' Green Zone to research factual information on the politics, crime, corruption and treatment of foreign citizens. Also, take some time to go back over the posting history of those mongers claiming that the Philippines is a paradise. You will find numerous instances of them complaining about the people and the country. Yet, I'm the one who is bitter.

I think that between CM, Red Kilt, CS and I, the whole gamut of perceptions,"facts," biases and opinions has been well covered, so it's probably not necessary to endlessly protract the debate. From my side of the aisle, I'm not trying to portray this, or any other location in the world, as some sort of "paradise." It's a developing country, in many ways a failed state, and positive change-to the extent that it exists at all-is slow, incremental and often invisible. Conversely, it's not a particularly dangerous place for foreigners nor is it a difficult, perilous place to live. I don't doubt the "95 foreigners killed" statistic cited by CM, but I do wonder how many foreigners, during the same period, have been murdered in the United States, a world-leader in handgun deaths. My argument is simply that a more balanced perspective than that offered by CM would be more accurate. I would guess that most of the expatriates who live here are fully aware of the myriad hassles of day to day life; the petty scams, the pollution, the insane driving behavior, the ineptitude of government agencies, and yet have calculated that the benefits outweigh the cumulative annoyances. For some, the equation tilts unfavorably in the negative direction, people within this category are generally contemptuous of the country, and perpetually angry. I have no idea why they remain here or, if tourists, why they continue to return. Speaking strictly personally, at this stage of my life, I seek primarily tranquillity, and I doubt that I could long remain in a place that prompted a continual state of anger. To continue on a purely personal note, I have a nice life with which I'm reasonably content, and that's why I stay.

GE