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New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

radionz.co.nz

41–50 of 647 posts

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> before you travel, you upload the encrypted image and wipe the phone, then after passing through customs you restore That sounds like willfully evading customs, which is a serious crime.

I'm not so sure it's that clear. (I'm not a lawyer) If you can lawfully download a phone image over the internet while in the country and you can lawfully enter the country with no or limited digital information on your person then I don't see how backing up your phone in a different country (where New Zealand has no jurisdiction) and legally downloading the backup in New Zealand is evading customs. Another (presumab…

Neither am I a lawyer, but the key part is if you're (a) doing this as a regular security precaution or (b) doing it specifically to evade customs. If it's the latter, it's probably illegal. If it's being done for legal reasons, it's legal.

Something I've noticed those of us who work with computers having difficult with when it comes to the law is the way intent changes the legality of an action. Wiring money to person X is generally legal, unless done so for the purpose of acquiring illegal contraband. At that point, both the illegal acquisition and the wire become illegal.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#42
post #39

I really want phone makers to allow me to unlock into separate enclaves on my phone. I.e. If I use 1234 as my unlock pin, it goes to my normal phone. If I use 5678 instead, it unlocks to a separate user account with its own notifications, pictures, apps, etc., similar to a truecrypt hidden partition.

But then you'll find yourself in a situation where you could possibly be lying to the customs officers.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#43
post #3

Dual boot with one clean system and one actually in use that switch depending on the password given :) ?

Anybody knows if there are existing ready libraries for setting this up on Mac / iPhone?

Doubt it, and surely must be really hard to create given the how closed the OS ecosystem is. But I'd love such thing!

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#44
post #2

Not that I ever had are reason to go there, but we can officially strike NZ of the list of places I'll be visiting. I hope this sort of malarkey doesn't become the norm. This seems rife for abuse. If you have good enough information to demand to rifle though someone's phone or computer, you have good enough information for a damn warrant.

Given the abusive way special courts can be set up as rubber stamps that never deny warrants, a warrant would do nothing to make me feel better about this.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#45
post #39

I really want phone makers to allow me to unlock into separate enclaves on my phone. I.e. If I use 1234 as my unlock pin, it goes to my normal phone. If I use 5678 instead, it unlocks to a separate user account with its own notifications, pictures, apps, etc., similar to a truecrypt hidden partition.

It can turn out like this -

Officer - Do you have multiple pins on your phone?

You - (if you say) No

Then you lied to an officer. They can also find it out.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#47
> The new requirement for reasonable suspicion did not rein in the law at all, Mr Beagle said. > > "They don't have to tell you what the cause of that suspicion is, there's no way to challenge it."

This makes me particularly uncomfortable. There should be reasonable grounds.

> Border officials searched roughly 540 electronic devices at New Zealand airports in 2017.

That does seem low, out of what I assume is hundreds of thousands of travelers. With that said, it still doesn't sound reasonable.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#48
I hope the spread of this sort of thing helps push forward general implementations of owner customizable Views and associated triggers of our systems and data rather then the long standing default of binary access/no access. All the technical foundations for this exist right now, and in the case of Apple in particularly they've already got it all together in every modern iDevice. They've got a well hardened and integrated HSM, data siloing and per-file class based hierarchal encryption ("Data Protection"), large amounts of sensors, biometric readers capable of discerning multiple inputs, and an interface amenable to adaption so that even regular users could intuitively understand a View system. Plus for mobile there is an entirely non-security related aspect which is growing in the public consciousness: our limited attention and mental focus budget.

With all that what I'd like to see is a simple interface to create arbitrary numbers of custom Views with associated triggers. The default one would be as we have it now: everything you load is visible at all times after unlock. But then you could create a new one, and select which apps (and in turn associated data in that app silo) appear and which preferences are accessible, then have a "This view will be made active when..." with nice UI for various key conditionals (time, geography, speed, network connection, biometrics, and/or password). It'd then be easy to ensure that while traveling between locations only maps, ride hailing and airline apps would be available for example. If anyone stole the device, or for that matter compelled it in any other way, none of my financials or private info would be available. I couldn't even be compelled to do it at that location, it'd be genuinely out of my control, backed by the same hardware crypto system providing standard FDE. This isn't even about government fully or even in large part, in dangerous parts of the world just as modern device net locks reduced the value of stealing a device a spread of "tourists and the like literally cannot be made to transfer money or the like on the street" could reduce the incentives for certain crime.

And again it'd be a very grokable common sense feature for the attention issue too. These days information overload and things trying to grab for some of our mindshare is a huge source of stress. I'd love if my devices, rather then always being a matter of adding on, started being able to actively help me subtract instead. I could compartmentalize work apps to only even "exist" away from home, no temptation or notifications even show up. And vice versa, entertainment distractions vanish as I enter certain locations. "Willpower" is something of a limited resource too and in practice often comes down to essentially planning ahead to avoid temptations in the first place, not going to the grocery store when starving for example. Our digital devices should be, at our individual direction, automatically helping us as humans. I think that'd be a valuable next step anyway, but the fact that vastly more powerful and user friendly coercion code type systems could be made widespread too would also be helpful in taking back some of the privacy digital can also take away.

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