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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

#91

Post by callinyouin »

davezatch wrote: post #57
plink wrote: post #7

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards had some influence over the drafting of the legislation and said he was "pretty comfortable" with where the law stood... "You know when you come into the country that you can be asked to open your suitcase and that a Customs officer can look at everything in there." Evidently, severe brain damage is no hindrance to securing a commissioner's appointment in New Zealand.

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?

IMO it's the breadth and depth that is possible with our digital property. It's one thing to search the digital equivalent of some luggage (maybe the contents of a cellphone) and another thing entirely to be able to search through the entirety of one's digital property, which I see as the digital equivalent of authorities searching through your home, your car, and any other property you might own.

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

#92

Post by clubm8 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
rectang wrote: post #8

Is there a SaaS provider specializing in storing encrypted images of phones? The idea being that before you travel, you upload the encrypted image and wipe the phone, then after passing through customs you restore.

> 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.

>That sounds like willfully evading customs, which is a serious crime.

Do you have any citations or evidence that choosing to back up this line of thinking? I'd love to read more about the specifics of how downloading legal data from the internet suddenly becomes illegal if you could have carried it across the border.

For example, if once in NZ I pull down new music onto my device from my iTunes cloud library to replace what I listened to on the plane, is this "evading customs"?

Please provide citations to the specific law(s) I'm breaking by doing so, and how downloading the legally purchased music would be any different from a PC image.

Thanks!

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

#93

Post by daemin »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #53
no1youknowz wrote: post #11

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.

But that looks awfully suspicious, so they might ask you for passwords to your online social media accounts etc.

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

#94

Post by ixwt »

exabrial wrote: post #59

I expect a new feature of phones to include plausible deniability mode pins soon, where you type in a certain pin and it unlocks to a faux account that shows you texting your mom about broccoli recipes.

I highly doubt a company such as Google or Apple will be doing this themselves into their phone OS.

I could see this happening in a privacy oriented Android image though.

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

#95

Post by aikah »

maxxxxx wrote: post #54
ryandrake wrote: post #16

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.

How do you do this with an Android device without spending hours restoring it?

> How do you do this with an Android device without spending hours restoring it?

There are plenty of backup tools available on the internet, this isn't really a problem with Android. Personally that's what I do each time I travel abroad. Both because I might loose my phone/laptop and because on can never be sure what software/content is legal(or not) in this or that country.

Some people got jailed abroad for content/software that would be deemed legal in my home country, on their computer.

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

#97

Post by craftyguy »

maxxxxx wrote: post #54
ryandrake wrote: post #16

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.

How do you do this with an Android device without spending hours restoring it?

The only thing I can think of is to make a full backup of /system, /data (and /sdcard) with something like TWRP, move it to a small, encrypted usb drive (bonus points if the partition on the drive is hidden and there's a legit partition as a decoy). Then you just have to restore from your backup, which you would already have locally. Save the backup elsewhere before you leave home if you don't want to lose everything if the usb drive is lost.

That is all a major pain in the ass and, as others have pointed out here, those that want to do harm are likely already doing this. I wouldn't expect normal folks to be able to do this, nor should they have to in order to preserve privacy.

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

#98

Post by komali2 »

>"It is a file-by-file [search] on your phone. We're not going into 'the cloud'. We'll examine your phone while it's on flight mode," Customs spokesperson Terry Brown said.

They will see my genitals and the genitals of many other people. Not sure how not going accessing my off-phone backups is supposed to be better.

This is a shame, my partner and I have been spending the last couple months seriously considering new Zealand as a new home, after we tire of SF, specifically because we felt that legally it was going down a better path than the USA.

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

#99

Post by artursapek »

yholio wrote: post #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…

You should write a blog post explaining how to set this up in a little more detail.

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

#100

Post by lemming »

tokyodude wrote: post #63
maxxxxx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do this with an Android device without spending hours restoring it?

Or even iOS. Just downloading all the apps takes many hours on a fast connection. Restoring 2FA is also a PITA

And when I travel, I usually stay at hotels which means crappy internet.
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