Is Thai Immigration reading one's phone/computer documents?

[JimmyJ]

At least 1 person in the mega-thread "Rejected entry to Thailand because too many tourist visa" mentioned being asked by Thai Immigration about Facebook/Twitter/social media accounts.

 

Are they going beyond this and looking at the Documents files, Contacts, etc. on electronic devices?

Demanding to be told the passwords to get into them if they're pw protected?

 

Or even worse, walking off with phones/computers for awhile (assumedly to copy the files. And possibly to insert trackers/keyloggers)?

 

The USA is doing some or all of the above  sometimes, and when they do it applies to all entering the country including USA citizens.

 

I've made plans for how to deal with this upon returning from SE Asia to the US. But didn't think I'd have to deal with this upon entering Thailand.

 

Are they simply asking questions about social media? Demanding one's handle, etc.? Or going beyond this to actually looking at the contents of the devices?

 

 

Edited March 18, 2017 by JimmyJ

[blorg]

I haven't heard any cases, no, but just about every immigration anywhere in the world has this right it's more a question of whether they exercise it. It's not just the US, the UK, Australia, etc. are well known for searching through computers and phones as well. I would hazard a guess your likelihood of being singled out depends on how brown/Muslim you look.

 

Thailand had a form asking about social media accounts for a while, I actually saw it when renewing around six months back, but actually filling it out was optional and they seem to since have got rid of it, possibly due to the backlash, I haven't seen it since that one time. They said it was something to do with being better able to find people or relatives if the person got into difficulties but who knows, that could have just been the justification and they wanted to snoop. But I suspect it was just another piece of paper that went into the filing cabinet. Anyway, it was always OPTIONAL, said as much on the form, and I never filled out the social media bits.

[BritTim]

I do not think this is a concern in Thailand at the current time.

[dotpoom]

It is common enough for customs to take away phones and computers and look at their contents if they choose to do so. I see it regularly on those Airport Customs shows on Television.

[ubonjoe]

7 minutes ago, dotpoom said:

It is common enough for customs to take away phones and computers and look at their contents if they choose to do so. I see it regularly on those Airport Customs shows on Television.

I have never heard of it being done here.

[Krataiboy]

Be smart and assume the worst. 

[KamnanT]

Most of IOs I've dealt with seem to have difficulty using their own computers.

[NoshowJones]

2 minutes ago, KamnanT said:

Most of IOs I've dealt with seem to have difficulty using their own computers.

"Like" button not working, but I agree with you.

[IMA_FARANG]

lI was once given a form to fill out asking for my social media and internet addresses by immigration  when I  applied for a visa extension.

I threw it in the trash can and got the requested visa extension anyhow.

No further questions were asked me

Edited March 19, 2017 by IMA_FARANG
Added a coment

[poohy]

54 minutes ago, possum1931 said:

"Like" button not working, but I agree with you.

Like wise i like , seems the like button is now defunct

Sorry, there is a problem

We could not locate the item you are trying to view.

Error code: 2F173/I

 

[55Jay]

Referred to as a "right" held by any Immigration.  I don't agree with that.  It's not a "right".  They are gathering information sources in the event you bring attention on yourself, they can find out about your life, where you are/have been, political views based on forum/facebook comments, etc. 

 

I would resist providing the information to them, and when it was a "thing" here with Thai Immi for a short while, I was never asked, or presented the form to fill.

 

Reserve my personal social media for friends and others I choose.  CBP agent Jones at LAX ain't my friend and neither is the agency he/she works for.  If they want to find out more about me beyond all the stuff they have already, they can get up off their butts and find it themselves.  What's next, providing them the ammo to use at my firing squad? 

[hawker9000]

Facebook?  Twitter?  What's that?

[maxcorrigan]

10 hours ago, blorg said:

I haven't heard any cases, no, but just about every immigration anywhere in the world has this right it's more a question of whether they exercise it. It's not just the US, the UK, Australia, etc. are well known for searching through computers and phones as well. I would hazard a guess your likelihood of being singled out depends on how brown/Muslim you look.

 

Thailand had a form asking about social media accounts for a while, I actually saw it when renewing around six months back, but actually filling it out was optional and they seem to since have got rid of it, possibly due to the backlash, I haven't seen it since that one time. They said it was something to do with being better able to find people or relatives if the person got into difficulties but who knows, that could have just been the justification and they wanted to snoop. But I suspect it was just another piece of paper that went into the filing cabinet. Anyway, it was always OPTIONAL, said as much on the form, and I never filled out the social media bits.

As you said, very much optional, i hardly filled in any details, other than places most frequently visited =Foodland nothing was said, EO just dropped it under her desk somwhere, this was at jomtien emigrationn, next time i had to go the form had vanished!

[elgordo38]

45 minutes ago, hawker9000 said:

Facebook?  Twitter?  What's that?

Its the evolvement of Indian smoke signals. You can go there and rand and rave get things off of your chest beat your chest or beat someone else's chest. What you were just funin me? 

[The Deerhunter]

36 minutes ago, elgordo38 said:

Its the evolvement of Indian smoke signals. You can go there and rand and rave get things off of your chest beat your chest or beat someone else's chest. What you were just funin me? 

It seems to me that most of us just use TVF for that.  555.

[IMA_FARANG]

Don't be paranoid.

Thai immigration has no concern about your internet and social email media.

That is the province of other agencies like GHSQ in the U.K., the NSA in the U.S., and duch agencies.

But what they (Thai immigration) is concerned with is why you keep using a tourist visa to repeatedly enter Thailand  to stay.

They suspect you of working illegally in Thailand.

It is up to you to disprove that suspicion and that suspicion is why they are questioning your repeated visa exempt or repeated tourist visas.

 

[blorg]

@IMA_FARANG THIS thread is about them looking through computers or demanding social media accounts, your post is completely irrelevant, why don't you go moan about repeated tourist visa entries in another thread. Although I would note that if Thailand actually wanted to stop people repeatedly using tourist visas to enter Thailand, IDK they could stop issuing them? Crazy I know!

Or they could implement a "can't be in Thailand for more than 180 days in a year" on a tourist entry rule. The fact that they could trivially implement such a rule (which is the norm in Western countries) if they actually wanted to, but don't, suggests they do NOT want to completely choke off people "living here" on tourist visas.

[andre47]

If a country would demand from me to look at my personal computer files I would never again visit this country. 

[richusa]

Australia and the US are mostly looking into your personal stuff.

Especially in the US, if you have pirated software..5k fine for each program.

 

That's why when I go to the US I delete all that stuff......

[blorg]

13 minutes ago, andre47 said:

If a country would demand from me to look at my personal computer files I would never again visit this country. 

You can scratch pretty much the entire developed world off your list of travel destinations so.

[tonray]

2 hours ago, 55Jay said:

Referred to as a "right" held by any Immigration.  I don't agree with that.  It's not a "right".  They are gathering information sources in the event you bring attention on yourself, they can find out about your life, where you are/have been, political views based on forum/facebook comments, etc. 

 

I would resist providing the information to them, and when it was a "thing" here with Thai Immi for a short while, I was never asked, or presented the form to fill.

 

Reserve my personal social media for friends and others I choose.  CBP agent Jones at LAX ain't my friend and neither is the agency he/she works for.  If they want to find out more about me beyond all the stuff they have already, they can get up off their butts and find it themselves.  What's next, providing them the ammo to use at my firing squad? 

if you don't allow them access to your devices they can legally take them for as long as they need to to crack and download whatever they want to see. This the USA, after 9-11 HomeLand Security was given broad powers. You can decline but then they can detain you and still get access to your stuff as you watch in cuffs. The facts as they stand today.

[andre47]

4 minutes ago, blorg said:

You can scratch pretty much the entire developed world off your list of travel destinations so.

I've been never asked for it.

[blorg]

2 hours ago, 55Jay said:

Referred to as a "right" held by any Immigration.  I don't agree with that.  It's not a "right".  They are gathering information sources in the event you bring attention on yourself, they can find out about your life, where you are/have been, political views based on forum/facebook comments, etc.

You can argue about your "rights" on entry to a country of which you are a citizen. Even if you are a US citizen US CBP do actually have the right to search you at the border, as it is "outside" the United States and the full constitutional protections against warrantless searches do not apply.

 

Ultimately, however, IF you are citizen US CBP cannot actually deny you entry, they have to let you back in. They can however make your day very unpleasant and delay and inconvenience you.

 

The same goes for every other country, if you are British British immigration cannot deny you entry, if you are Australian Ozzie imigration cannot deny you entry, etc. and in these circumstances you can think about your "rights" and standing up for them.

 

If however you are talking about entering ANOTHER country of which you are not a citizen (and I am guessing you are not Thai) you have precisely zero rights and the immigration officer can deny you entry for just about any reason and don't have to justify it. So not a good idea to take a stand based on your supposed "rights" entering any OTHER country other than your home one.

[blorg]

7 minutes ago, andre47 said:

I've been never asked for it.

Yes, because you probably don't look Muslim and/or don't have a history of trying to stay long-term in another Western country on a tourist visa. It is however pretty common with Western immigration to do this, much more common than it is here. If you Google you will find lots of references to this happening with the US/Canada/UK/Australia etc but very few here in Thailand.

So you seem to be taking less of general principled line on this than a "if they do it to ME how dare they do it to ME" principle which to me seems misguided, but up to you as they say.

[55Jay]

6 minutes ago, blorg said:

You can argue about your "rights" on entry to a country of which you are a citizen. Even if you are a US citizen US CBP do actually have the right to search you at the border, as it is "outside" the United States and the full constitutional protections against warrantless searches do not apply.

 

Ultimately, however, IF you are citizen US CBP cannot actually deny you entry, they have to let you back in. They can however make your day very unpleasant and delay and inconvenience you.

 

The same goes for every other country, if you are British British immigration cannot deny you entry, if you are Australian Ozzie imigration cannot deny you entry, etc. and in these circumstances you can think about your "rights" and standing up for them.

 

If however you are talking about entering ANOTHER country of which you are not a citizen (and I am guessing you are not Thai) you have precisely zero rights and the immigration officer can deny you entry for just about any reason and don't have to justify it. So not a good idea to take a stand based on your supposed "rights" entering any OTHER country other than your home one.

Painfully aware of that, mate of mine was put through the ringer at the Tijuana border crossing.  I merely object to the misuse of the word "right" applied to law enforcement.  It's not their "right".  They have been granted authority, not a "right".  

 

The process at US borders is an inspection, not a search.  A search is a specific quest for evidence.  An inspection is broad in nature, but contraband can be used as evidence.

[redwinecheese]

3 hours ago, Krataiboy said:

Be smart and assume the worst. 

In Egypt for example people are stopped at check points and if any political views that they don't like on social media accounts people go to prison for very long time I mean like 10-15 years in prison so, I agree if someone has political views and travel to 3rd world countries including Thailand they should be smart and get rid of their social media accounts.   Screw politics enjoy life.

Edited March 19, 2017 by redwinecheese

[Autonuaq]

i know a few people who have all in the cloud and space like that, do have no references on the machines to it... So I think they only after the dummies .....

 

[blorg]

10 minutes ago, 55Jay said:

Painfully aware of that, mate of mine was put through the ringer at the Tijuana border crossing.  I merely object to the misuse of the word "right" applied to law enforcement.  It's not their "right".  They have been granted authority, not a "right".  

 

The process at US borders is an inspection, not a search.  A search is a specific quest for evidence.  An inspection is broad in nature, but contraband can be used as evidence.

I think this is getting very semantic, they have the "right" in the sense the sovereign country has the right to do this and delegates that authority to the border agents.

 

YOU personally on the other hand do not have any of your American constitutional "rights" once you step outside America and so I see complaining about other countries having the right to search you as misguided. They do have that right, it's their country. You don't have any rights to object to it. Complaining about it is likely to result in an adverse outcome for you.

[Formaleins]

15 hours ago, JimmyJ said:

At least 1 person in the mega-thread "Rejected entry to Thailand because too many tourist visa" mentioned being asked by Thai Immigration about Facebook/Twitter/social media accounts.

 

Are they going beyond this and looking at the Documents files, Contacts, etc. on electronic devices?

Demanding to be told the passwords to get into them if they're pw protected?

 

Or even worse, walking off with phones/computers for awhile (assumedly to copy the files. And possibly to insert trackers/keyloggers)?

 

The USA is doing some or all of the above  sometimes, and when they do it applies to all entering the country including USA citizens.

 

I've made plans for how to deal with this upon returning from SE Asia to the US. But didn't think I'd have to deal with this upon entering Thailand.

 

Are they simply asking questions about social media? Demanding one's handle, etc.? Or going beyond this to actually looking at the contents of the devices?

 

 

I somehow feel that this would probably a little bit beyond the abilities of Thai Immigration. Not exactly MI5 or the CIA, look at their websites, they cannot even get a simple form filling page to work, let alone key loggers and phishing. Besides, they are probably still using Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, that they bought as a pirate DVD down some market for 60 Baht.

[redwinecheese]

Point is that if they look at your social media accounts and find offensive posts as they interpret them against their government whether in Thailand or most 3rd world countries,I think you hear from them " you have big problem mister".  I know people been locked in prison for years because of of posts, tweets and so on.
p.s I never use the term developed countries because a totalitarian regime will never develop.

Edited March 19, 2017 by redwinecheese