Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

radionz.co.nz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 647 posts

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

#121

Post by grkvlt »

jackhack wrote: 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…

Lets not get too excited. There were about 40 million passengers transiting NZ airports last year, according to Wikipedia.[0] The article says roughly 540 devices were searched in the same time period. That's 0.00135% or basically a dozen people per million being searched.

That hardly seems like totalitarian overreach. In fact it seems quite restrained and pretty reasonable - and presumably must be intelligence led, since I rather doubt they are doing this at random...!

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_i...

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

#122

Post by WaylonKenning »

jackhack wrote: 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…

Riddle me this - what is the alternative? Don't look at a phone? Why do we look inside suitcases? Why have the concept of customs?

We search things across borders for things our country does not want. We don't want drugs. We don't want fresh fruit (which will trip up more people than drugs).

We don't want child porn. And if a phone is a container for that content, we want to be able to explore the container.

Of course, there's a million different ways around this. Get burner phones. Store content in the cloud. Have seven firewalls. Whatever. But that doesn't change the concept of inspecting things across a border to make sure things we don't want, don't come in.

And if that's a totalitarian purgatory, then name a country (or external border for the EU) that isn't a totalitarian purgatory.

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

#123

Post by natch »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25
natch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I agree with your "not too bad" assessment. But your list is incomplete without considering the violations of third parties who have shared items in confidence that are now on the local device. So: 4) All third parties (meaning people other than the traveler) who have their privacy violated in the process must be informed immediately of the full details of the privacy violation. Which communications, pictu…

> All third parties (meaning people other than the traveler) who have their privacy violated in the process must be informed immediately of the full details of the privacy violation This isn't a requirement when e.g. police search an office and so wouldn't seem appropriate in this case. NDAs, explicitly or implicitly (through statute), tend to exempt courts, regulators and law enforcement.

I think you're thinking of cases where there is a search warrant and the potential harm to third parties has been weighed against the needs of the investigation, which should be predicated on a robust assessment that determines that this particular case justifies the harm.

I don't think leaving the decision up to the agent at the point of entry, or basing it on some kind of random selection, is as robust as a good quality court issuing warrants. Though I'm contradicting my point elsewhere in this discussion about being generally skeptical of such courts.

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

#124

Post by gruez »

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…

>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

booting into a 50 GB partition on a 512GB SSD isn't suspicious?

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

#125

Post by LeonM »

> "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.

What files are they looking for on the device?

I mean, it's not like a terrorist will have a plan_to_place_bomb.doc file on their device, so what's the point? What file could there possibly be on any device that will threaten the security? And how is scanning devices going to prevent you from downloading that file after you go through customs?

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

#126

Post by berbec »

clubm8 wrote: post #110
NegativeLatency wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s impossible ... to prove Not after they subpoena this HN comment. ;)

>Not after they subpoena this HN comment. ;) Anyone subpoenaing this comment would discover I post on HN exclusively over Tor :)

I'm behind three proxies!

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

#127

Post by craftyguy »

WaylonKenning wrote: post #109
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.

Some material that can be stored on your phone is not permitted into New Zealand, like child pornography. If you had that stored in your suitcase, it can be discovered, and a prosecution started. If you had that stored in your phone, it can be discovered, and a prosecution started. Phones aren't magical parts of your brain, that can cross borders without being inspected. There's no digital 'diplomatic pouch'. Just be…

Well, for one, it's a gateway into services/data that are not being brought into the country. I don't store a complete directory of all my contacts in my suitcase, why should the government be able to collect that from my phone? My phone can connect to my email and retrieve information, no one would print out their entire inbox and carry it in a suitcase...

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

#128

Post by grkvlt »

mseidl wrote: post #66
davezatch wrote: post #57

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?

Also there could be explosives/drugs and other stuff in Luggage. What is the threat of shit on my phone?

Your `/docs/plan-to-hijack-airnz-plane.txt` file might be seen as slightly dodgy?

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

#129

Post by clubm8 »

komali2 wrote: post #98

>"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…

>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.

What made you think this? Have you been keeping an eye on the news regarding NZ?

For example, they allowed American billionaire Peter Thiel to obtain citizenship despite not meeting the residency requirements:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&...

Unsurprisingly, countries where laws can be bent or broken by the rich tend to not respect individual rights.

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

#130

Post by eesmith »

gdhbcc wrote: post #86
plg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think you should read that as: "Which countries have laws which allow border inspectors to demand usernames/passwords to online services?" Those which do demand it are a subset of those which can demand it.

Your sovereignty argument is such an extreme interpretation of the question that it's almost certainly not what plg had in mind - if plg did have it in mind, then I find it hard to believe that question would have been asked in the first place.

Consider the question "what countries on border entry can draw and quarter entering citizens?" Your viewpoint seems to be that the correct answer is "all of them", yes?

Post reply on HN