New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by woolvalley » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:00 AM UTC

clubm8 wrote: post #115

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.

And how do you restore the phone? I assume you travel with a laptop? What happens when they want access to the laptop?

iPhone + Chromebook / other laptop, wipe everything to factory defaults before encountering customs. Use full disk encryption.

Login to a cloud server that has your backups / restores / setup scripts / data. Preferably encrypt those backups before you upload them to the cloud server.

Only reason why I don't do it more frequently is it's a pain in the ass. I've been fairly impressed with iOS's backup restoration system recently.

Only had to log in to a specific set of services for everything to be back to normal.

This system is definitely a great way to test your backup restores!

Also: Don't use email for any semblance of secure communications.

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

#502

Post by hippich » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:04 AM UTC

wild_preference wrote: post #257

Happened to a female friend flying from Toronto to visit me in Mexico. Because she had a connecting flight in US, a US agent went through her phone. (Classic mistake of entering the US unless absolutely neccessary) Guy was reading her Tinder messages and accusing her of being a prostitute. He brought up some saucy messages and would say things like “girls don’t do this kind of stuff for free...” Finally handed her ba…

Perhaps on the rise of #metoo it is time to bring up such stories in the media and let these generally unknown bullies at the border face same consequences as famous people as well?

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

#503

Post by voltagex_ » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:12 AM UTC

woolvalley wrote: post #501

clubm8 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you restore the phone? I assume you travel with a laptop? What happens when they want access to the laptop?

iPhone + Chromebook / other laptop, wipe everything to factory defaults before encountering customs. Use full disk encryption. Login to a cloud server that has your backups / restores / setup scripts / data. Preferably encrypt those backups before you upload them to the cloud server. Only reason why I don't do it more frequently is it's a pain in the ass. I've been fairly impressed with iOS's backup restoration syste…

Do you always stay at places with high bandwidth available?

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

#504

Post by voltagex_ » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:15 AM UTC

bacon_waffle wrote: post #440

yayana wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bringing a blank phone with you isn't really a problem, but getting a local SIM can be.

> getting a local SIM can be. I just picked up a new one for a work project at the local supermarket yesterday - $1NZD.

Which provider? I noticed (too late) that the airport SIMs have special overpriced plans. I'm used to paying ~$10/GB for data in Australia, it seems to be about double that in NZ without going on a plan.

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

#505

Post by navs » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:17 AM UTC

What if most of your information is online, in some cloud platform and you don't have the app installed on your phone?

My iPhone isn't logged into any cloud services and the only apps I have installed are Google Maps and Gmail. I don't log into my Apple account and don't have the Dropbox app installed. Much of my data is stored in an S3 bucket. Simply giving an officer my phone means I'm surrendering my Gmail account and local phone data i.e. contacts and reminders. Not terribly worried about that. To really investigate my digital presence they'd need access to my Dropbox, AWS account, personal email etc. Can they request that information despite not having any trace of it on my phone.

How deep do they go?

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

#506

Post by flukus » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:25 AM UTC

bacon_waffle wrote: post #440

yayana wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bringing a blank phone with you isn't really a problem, but getting a local SIM can be.

> getting a local SIM can be. I just picked up a new one for a work project at the local supermarket yesterday - $1NZD.

In Australia they have to record the details of the person buying the phone, but suffice it to say that relying on someone making minimum wage at a supermarket to enforce national security isn't particularly effective.

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

#507

Post by ilrwbwrkhv » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

Is there no legal recourse for us? I understand one can travel with a burner phone or backup, wipe, restore etc but if one wants to travel without doing something a drug dealer would do, is there anything else that can be done?

Is there no collective legal recourse for us?

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

#508

Post by geoffmunn » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:28 AM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #405

DoreenMichele wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, the motive there was probably he found her hot, would hit that, was aggravated at reading her Tinder messages and finding her even more hot because of it and was pissed off that there was no way in hell he would ever get a shot at being with her, so he felt some need to piss all over her, blame her for making him hot and bothered with no immediate means to get relief, yadda. This is an essential element of sit…

That’s sexual harassment. But then who’s gonna police the police?

I dunno, the coastguard? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk4yyqXi8Xc

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

#509

Post by dvcrn » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:42 AM UTC

jliptzin wrote: post #233

This happened to me driving from the US into Canada with my significant other on a short vacation. After some routine questioning, the agent asked for our phones and passwords. Naturally, I hesitated and wanted to know why he needed to go through our phones. He didn't give a reason, but said if I refuse they'd hold us until their forensics team cracks the phone password anyway. I wanted to make a bigger deal about it…

This is terrifying, I had no idea this kind of practice is already in place! In Asia, so far I never got asked for my phone and equipment, but now I wonder what the best way is to handle this. Killing my phone and restoring after entering is one way, but for a laptop that's more annoying unless you live in the cloud. Might still be a good practice to have your devices in a state where you could easily wipe and restore them in no time.

If I randomly got asked to do that, to be honest, I would rather turn around and go back instead of taking the risk that they maybe find something out of my past that can get me intro troubles.

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

#510

Post by rstuart4133 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:43 AM UTC

As others have noted this is easy enough to thwart if you prepare, it will only catch the unsophisticated. So they aren't going to catch terrorists with this, but it probably will catch a few people intending to work while on a holiday visa.

But it would be nice if the phone manufacturers made it easier to side step.

Android is close already: it has multiple users. If it allowed you to hide a user (so you had to type in a name, for example), it would be mostly there.

One thing I really wish they would provide is a decent backup service, ie something that allowed you to backup everything on the phone, to an encrypted binary blob. Mainly I want this because having a backup that allows me to restore my data if the phone gets destroyed would help sleep easier at night, but of course it also solves this problem too: backup the phone to a hidden cloud account, factory reset it, restore it on arrival.