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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

#521

Post by woolvalley »

voltagex_ wrote: post #503
woolvalley wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No I don't, so I might be not doing a full restore. If I'm on vacation, I might only install a few apps and risk my vacation photos being snooped on by customs coming back. Or I might pre-download installer packages and if I'm very paranoid verify their hash values online later.

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

#522

Post by bigiain »

crispyambulance wrote: post #58
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…

> I see sudden spike in the market for burner phones. ANd a long-term opportunity for a company that can create a "burner" social media profile. I am sure that some folks will try those things and it may work for a while, but the way things are going, it's not going to matter whether you bring your device, a burner, or nothing at all. All it will take is one more 911-like crisis and inevitable fear-mongering. Then, y…

I have spare factory-reset phones and laptops for family/friends who visit - in case they choose to travel without devices.

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

#523

Post by paranoidrobot »

sorenjan wrote: post #511
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…

Android supports multiple user profiles on the same device. Maybe being logged in to a stripped down dummy account when crossing the border would be enough? I'm guessing the storage is encrypted on a per user basis, so as long as the customs officer isn't aware of it it even a device clone should leave your actual data safe.

If it's a random officer on the side of the road, then this might work.

If it's at a border crossing, assume that they're using forensic tools to dump your entire phone, which will bypass any user-profile shenanigans you might try to do.

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

#524

Post by rdtsc »

ALittleLight wrote: post #488
patmcc wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It ruined the vacation for me, and I've stopped visiting Canada because of how disgusted I felt afterwards. I don't blame you for this at all, but I will say this is bi-directional; as a Canadian, when I travel to the US, I get the same bullshit questioning and phone snooping on occasion. The current controversy on border crossing is that, despite marijuana becoming legalized in Canada shortly, if you admit to smok…

Now I want to go to Canada repeatedly just to get them to try to decrypt my phone. "You know, I don't recall the darn password. I'll just go have a seat while you do your thing." I'd be interested to know if they could!

It would be interesting. However those people can vindictive and if you fall in their crosshairs they can ruin your life. I wouldn't mess with them just because at least.

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

#525

Post by paranoidrobot »

bigiain wrote: post #517
Kadin wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on when it happened. There have been times when there have been workable exploits that have been used by law enforcement agencies. There's a fairly high-profile Israeli company that specializes in finding or buying zero-day exploits and reselling them in script-kiddie form to law enforcement agencies at high prices.

I wonder if random power tripping border security goons get to use zero day exploits just for kicks?

It'll be built into the forensic analysis software they're using.

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

#526

Post by bigiain »

dumbfounder wrote: post #240
nemo44x wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until they get more efficient at it. This kind of thing can be highly automated with software that only has to within a tuned degree of certainty determine who else needs additional screening. You can tune this precisely on how many humans you have around at a given time and can facilitate the "Enhanced search" of the devices.

Has anyone taken a steganographic approach to this? Just have a bunch of pictures of cats (or something more believable, like porn) in a partition, then you overlay sensitive data (encrypted). So you don't have a mysterious partition that is easily found. Obviously you can't store a ton of data that way though. You could even take the same approach with the program itself, hide it inside something else. (I imagine it…

As a "stupid thought experiment" that's a fun thing to consider. (Somewhere I've got a proof-of-concept perl script that steganographically embeds PGP encrypted messages into an image of the FBI logo and posts them to Twitter. I would not ever actually use it in anger... I still have the private key for all my test/gag posts, just in case I ever need them...)

But if you're _actually_ crossing a border into a country where there's internet access, why would you risk carrying any data that you wouldn't put on a postcard across that border? If you need it, download it after you've got there.

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

#527

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

bigiain wrote: post #517
Kadin wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on when it happened. There have been times when there have been workable exploits that have been used by law enforcement agencies. There's a fairly high-profile Israeli company that specializes in finding or buying zero-day exploits and reselling them in script-kiddie form to law enforcement agencies at high prices.

I wonder if random power tripping border security goons get to use zero day exploits just for kicks?

The exploits come in a nice box (physical box with phone connectors), and sadly, the answer could be yes at the bigger checkpoints (depends on whether they shelled out $$$ for the box).

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

#528

Post by bigiain »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #263
grkvlt wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

While I know they have such imbecile laws, I just avoid visiting this country.

Sadly, if your username implies Australia instead of not-in-Kansas-anymore - we're almost certain to get even stupider laws than this fairly soon...

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

#529

Post by rdtsc »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #466
refurb wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian who has gone both ways dozens of times, I’ve definitely gotten a much tougher treatment by the Canadian side. I had to bite my tongue to not say “I’m a citizen, you have to let me in.”

this comment made me sad. i am a south asian national, i do have a canadian tourist visa and was hoping to go watch F1 in 2019 in Montreal. reading all of this is probably going to change that plan :/

Keep in mind that people who cross the border without any incidents don't usually bother posting about it. I wouldn't alter your plans just based on a few comments here at least.

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

#530

Post by davidzweig »

wutbrodo wrote: post #341
rhacker wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there one? Are you looking for: * Don't leave the country? * Refuse and have the phone cracked anyway? * Refuse letting go of the phone and get arrested?

I would say "don't go to Canada", but I'm not sure how common this is across the world. Does anyone have a sense of how common this draconian approach is? I have a US passport and have been to about 25 countries on six continents and have never experienced this, but borders see such mind bogglingly high numbers pass through that I wouldn't say I have a robust set of data points.

I've been to probably 60-70 countries on a UK passport. The only unpleasant border experiences I recall were in Israel, UK, France, and the USA. (Rude and intrusive).
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