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

radionz.co.nz

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

#81
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.

Out of curiosity: Is lying to customs officers illegal in New Zealand?

I've lied to a great many people, including police officers on duty. They can't take me in if I wish them "a good day", or can they?

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, I'm unaware of any country where you're entitled to require a court order before they can inspect your belongings when passing through a customs inspection at the border (and almost everywhere they don't need any suspicion of wrongdoing—they could, if they wanted, go through every paper everyone carried in, with the more or less sole limit of diplomatic bags).

> I'm unaware of any country where you're entitled to require a court order before they can inspect your belongings when passing through a customs inspection I agree, but I think historical precedent with books and papers is different from our phones. Note that my process still defaults to allowing the agent a casual search. The traveller simply has the right to call foul and require the agent to produce their reason…

The key difference between searching someones suitcase and their phone is that people don't generally carry their medical and financial records in paper form when they travel.

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

#83
"New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5000 Customs fine"

That headline reads as if it is from some dystopian cyberpunk novel. We've reached the age where governments are conducting "digital searches" at whim without just cause, gaining access to everything that makes you "you", and claiming it's for your own safety.

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

#84
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factory reset and wipe your device before travel, and restore when you get to your hotel. I’m a privacy nut and while this is a disturbing trend there exist straightforward work arounds. EDIT: I do this all the time and it’s not even remotely difficult or a big deal.

>there exist straightforward workarounds Exactly and that’s why this a problem. This law will never catch anyone that actually is troubling for NZ because anyone who is shady, already uses some workaround. Now it will only bother and waste time of people who are serious about their privacy to apply this workaround as well.

Nail on head! This does not increase real security and it is a real privacy violation. Dumb lose lose authoritarianism. Disappointed that smart Kiwis do something so dumb

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

#85
This is an important issue cryptographers and security minded people often overlook: the strongest cryptography is irrelevant if it opens you to such social harassment. What we need is practical cryptography.

I have found practical success by booting from an encrypted Linux partition that has absolutely nothing relevant on it, with a weak password I can always enter when requested by big guys with guns. Unbeknown to them on the same partition there sits another encrypted volume, at some offset from the outer's partition start. If I fail to enter the correct password for the outer partition, Ubuntu drops into the command line of the initrd, that is equiped with all the tools you need to mount the real, offset partition:

  cryptsetup -o 100000000 create boot /dev/sdc3
So instead of having a nice GUI into which you directly enter the uber-secret password, you press enter a few times in the GUI, drop to command line, issue a single command and only then enter the uber-secret password. A mild nuisance in your bootup process, once you get the hang of it.

It's impossible for any court forensic team, let alone an airport goon, to prove there is actually another partition inside the outer encrypted partition, unless you mount common volumes and cross-contaminate. An important caveat is to properly defragment the outer partition and fiddle with the offset and the size of the inner partition to prevent any conflicts, then avoid writing in the outer partition.

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

#86
post #76
post #4

It's troubling to watch one of the most amazing places on earth transform itself into a totalitarian purgatory. Access to physical phone/laptop is only the first step -- mark my words. Big Brother's bureaucrats are never satiated. Next, we will have demands for passwords and unrestricted access to : email, facebook, photo sharing, hacker news posts, social media, etc. I see sudden spike in the market for burner phone…

question: what countries on border entry can demand usernames/passwords to online services?

All countries can demand it. They are sovereign.

Are you asking which countries do demand it?

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

#87

If this becomes the norm, then I can see a startup offering "convincing" email, browser history, social media profiles, photos and telephone call lists to present to customs. Give those pesky 5 eyes poison data of a fictional life via a 2nd phone.

It would probably be easier not to bring a phone and just buy one when you arrive.

I already do this when traveling.

I have my travel phone which I pop a SIM card into when I land, and I have my normal phone which I leave at home. I don't do it for privacy reasons, but just in case I lose a phone, I'd rather lose my crappy Motorola with a few contacts in it and a few chat apps, than my iPhone X with my entire life in it...

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil’s advocate: what _is_ wrong with that logic? If we accept that customs can search our persons or luggage as a condition of our entering a given country, what is it about digital materials that makes them off limits?

Because there is a HUGE difference between the contents of your luggage (some clothes, maybe some souvenirs, etc.) and all of your digital accounts (personal pictures, credit card numbers, access to banking, home address, etc.) I don't really care if the TSA look at my underwear, but I don't want anyone, especially low level employees, having access to every single aspect of my life.

You are classically Missing The Point.

Historically, your luggage would contain personal pictures, credit card numbers, general banking statements, generally personal information, etc. The medium in which this information is stored and carried around has changed.

The need to inspect what you're bringing into the country has not.

These processes didn't originally come about because people wanted to inspect your 5 different pairs of underwear or what personal devices are exploring where the sun don't shine. The people decrying this as some sort of over reach are basically just admitting ignorance to the fact that these processes are just lagging behind how people actually carry and transmit the same information they've been inspecting for nearly a century. It's just a small update to continue doing what border patrol has always been doing.

What's actually problematic is the there's so much information housed together on one device. In border patrol/guard/police in customs/etc attempt to, again, continue doing what they've always been doing that particular advance in policy and process has incidentally lead them at the forefront of a lot of information people used to either keep in their homes or just in their head.

Personally I think this more of a data organization problem than it is a government over reach one. It definitely needs to be discussed. It doesn't need to include tired cries of a 1984-esque future.

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

#89
post #76
post #4

It's troubling to watch one of the most amazing places on earth transform itself into a totalitarian purgatory. Access to physical phone/laptop is only the first step -- mark my words. Big Brother's bureaucrats are never satiated. Next, we will have demands for passwords and unrestricted access to : email, facebook, photo sharing, hacker news posts, social media, etc. I see sudden spike in the market for burner phone…

question: what countries on border entry can demand usernames/passwords to online services?

The EFF might have some resources that answer your question.

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Indeed. It's been a few months I have been looking around for this sort of honeypot booting system, with no results!
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