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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

#641
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't. They'll just keep the phone and send you on your way. You might be lucky if you get it back in 4 months likely never.

In civilized countries stealing is against the law...

Civilized countries just call it something else, like "civil forfeiture", and then make it the "law".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...

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

#642
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…

Note that this requires using dm-crypt in plain mode, which allows only one passphrase, doesn't perform any passphrase mangling or salting, and performs no passphrase checking on decryption. It requires one to re-enter exact parameters, and an improper passphrase will happily give bunk data. Secondly, high-entropy data is evident at even a courtesy glance - normal computer and filesystem operations do not produce hig…

True, but the default parameters of cryptsetup are quite secure with a high entropy password and they are seldom changed. A volume opened with the wrong password will fail to mount with no ill effects, you would just crypysetup delete and then re-create it again with the right password. I've addressed at length the other issues above, initializing an encrypted drive with random data is a widely recommended countermeasure against attacks that exploit the way the filesystem allocates sectors, VeraCrypt does it by default and many graphical setups for Linux offer the option for encrypted drives.

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

#643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug traffickers hide their drugs in an encrypted partition? No sane criminal would bring illegal electronic data with him on a physical device... He'll just download it when he gets there.

No smart criminal would. There are lots of dumb criminals, though.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/27/suspected_dark_web_...

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

#644
post #563
post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that entering Canada is a little less of a problem and that it's only become more of a problem due to pressure on the Canadians from the US to beef up their border security or else. The more strict checks seem to apply both to Canadians and non-Canadians. And entering Canada, the law is not actually suspended at the border and its vicinity .. unlike some other places. That said I've travelled dozens…

> And entering Canada, the law is not actually suspended at the border and its vicinity So police in Canada can demand your unlocked phone at any point, not just at the border?

Well, possibly. My point is that in Canada, at least on paper "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.". Now obviously this is always work in progress and there are situations where asserting your rights is a problem, but people should follow up on these incidents and they do have recourse. Unlike some other places.

http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check...

"The context of the search, and the activity that brings a person into contact with the state, can have an impact on the person’s reasonable expectation of privacy."

...

"The degree of personal privacy expected at borders, where travellers expect to be searched, is lower than in other enforcement situations (R. v. Simmons, [1988] 2 S.C.R. 495 at page 528; Monney at paragraph 34; R. v. Jacques, [1996] 3 S.C.R. 312 at paragraph 18).

The expectation of privacy is reduced in the school setting in relation to the responsibility of teachers and other school authorities to provide a safe environment and maintain order and discipline in the school (M.(M.R.)).

Prisons carry a decreased expectation of privacy (Weatherall; R. v. Conway, [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1659). However, the lowered expectation of privacy within a prison does not allow the seizure without a warrant of bodily samples taken as part of a medical examination (R. v. Dorfer (1996), 104 C.C.C. (3d) 528 (B.C.C.A.))."

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

#645
post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that entering Canada is a little less of a problem and that it's only become more of a problem due to pressure on the Canadians from the US to beef up their border security or else. The more strict checks seem to apply both to Canadians and non-Canadians. And entering Canada, the law is not actually suspended at the border and its vicinity .. unlike some other places. That said I've travelled dozens…

I don't know about that. They were a royal pain in the 90's if you had a bus of high school students. I remember them grabbing a couple of girls (didn't even talk to them first) and taking them away while not allowing the adult counselors to be with them. That lasted about an hour and the girls were crying when they returned. They also kept a group of buses their for multiple hours. I'm not even sure what they were l…

I entered Canada a couple of times in the 90s and it was basically cursory look at my passport + have a nice a day. Something like 5 seconds. Today I am a Canadian citizen and overall the experience is much worse than it used to be in the 90s or even 10 years ago.

Which border crossing had those incidents? So those girls were on the bus with you, they came back crying, and you have no idea why? Is there more context here?

Just sort of to tie this in to current events, some guy just drove into Canada without stopping the other day: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/driver-who-skipped-...

Now by luck police spotted the vehicle in Vancouver and tried to pull it over.

If someone tried this sort of stunt going the other direction what do you think would happen?

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

#646
Oh, you feel how does time really fly reading that. How can so many changes happen in such a short amount of time ??

I traveled all around Europe, South East Asia and US/Canada only ~5 years ago with all my hard drives (and as such, a copy of all my pictures, documents, but some movies and music too), and most of the time, the fact that I carried 4 or 5 2.5"hard drives on me was just considered funny, once I explained that it was hard drives with work & personal stuff on it.

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

#647
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can "download" crappy, not very effective guns. And you still need to obtain the ammo (the actually lethal part) the old-fashioned way. I would very much be surprised if it becomes possible for drugs or explosives any time within my lifetime. Chemistry and physics just don't work that way.

I thought so too, but then I googled "3d print drugs" and "3d print explosives". I think google doesn't censor results based on location? So you should see the same results. Edit: To save your time and avoid polluting your search history: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/you-could-soon-be-man... https://all3dp.com/custom-shaped-explosives-us-navy-3d-print...

Thanks, that's quite interesting.

Still, you do need very specific input materials for both processes.

In the case of the latter, you basically need a spool of explosive string. You're not so much printing an explosive as you are shaping an explosive into a desired form. I'm sure it's still very useful, but I don't think it's a particularly big game changer in the "smuggling things into a country" field.

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