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Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

cbc.ca

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Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#121

Post by sc11 »

LeonM wrote: post #99

I have asked this question before, but never really got a satisfiable answer: why do governments (not just USA/canada) spend these resources to check data physically at a border? It's not like you need to 'smuggle' any form of data physically. I mean, any data considered to be dangerous (like terrorist attack plans, atomic bomb designs or political inside information) can be accessed across borders via the internet.…

It's often just security theatre meant to please the law & order voter base more than anything else. They might catch some minor criminals but as you said, if you really want to "move" data across a border, there are plenty of ways to do so without physically carrying a device.

For some goals it can actually be useful, though I'm not sure if this is done during regular border checks or just in the context of asylum requests or similar: Accessing location histories, picture metadata or social media profiles on your device can be a fairly easy way to check that you're not giving them false information about where you're coming from or where you've been. This can be done automatically, so the officer doesn't need to figure out themself what they're looking at.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#122

Post by solipsism »

gruez wrote: post #33
seanalltogether wrote: post #7

> Officers uncovered a customs-related offence during 38 per cent of those searches, said the agency. I really want to understand what kind of digital data is considered a customs-related offence.

I'm more surprised at the 38% true positive rate. If you consider false positives, it would mean that they are shockingly good at profiling and most criminals are dumb enough to leave obvious evidence on their phone, or an overwhelming majority of people have committed a "customs-related offence" so that you could pick anyone and they would be guilty.

it would mean that they are shockingly good at profiling and most criminals are dumb enough to leave obvious evidence on their phone

Your use of the word obvious is not well supported by your argument. Do you have an unstated premise that Border Services only detect "obvious" offenses?

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#123

Post by bobthepanda »

panarky wrote: post #42
shiado wrote: post #15

Many of the services which could be accessible from those devices are American services with data residing on American servers. I wonder if it is possible to use hacking laws as a means of dissuading border agents from looking at devices. A Canadian agent might have jurisdiction in Canada but what if the get charged under the CFAA in the USA for accessing a server they aren't legally allowed to access. Perhaps it wou…

CBSA officers are directed to disable any internet connection and only examine content that is already stored on a device

They are directed to, but what is the penalty for not following directive? South of the border this would mostly result in getting assigned to a desk job.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#124

Post by noarchy »

pjc50 wrote: post #77
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, to be honest, that's probably illegal, but I have never liked trading freedom for security.

People love trading other people's freedom for security. Especially if it has to do with immigration.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, it seems entirely correct, given the prevailing political climate.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#125

Post by deogeo »

claudiawerner wrote: post #22
seanalltogether wrote: post #7

> Officers uncovered a customs-related offence during 38 per cent of those searches, said the agency. I really want to understand what kind of digital data is considered a customs-related offence.

There are cases at the Canadian border in which the investigators search for "boy" or "girl" using the Windows search tools to see if there is child pornography on your device. In other circumstances, they uncover hentai[0] showing characters that appear to be underage - and bringing that into Canada is illegal (in fact, much like Australia and New Zealand, any sexual depiction of fictional minors is illegal, and tha…

It's sickening to think that, despite the ban in Canada, countless innocent anime girls are being abused in Japan every day - many of them children! The UN should apply pressure to get Japan to stop this vile abuse, and import of cartoons into Japan should be banned, as their safety cannot be guaranteed there.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#126

Post by snazz »

dawnerd wrote: post #98
ccozan wrote: post #37

While for a laptop one can use xen ( or grub, or similar ) to default boot into a pretty boring image of, let's say, windows 10, with some fake-but-good-looking documents, photos, etc, I wonder what are the possibilities on a smartphone? Would this be possible on an Android?

That really wont fool them though. EFF recommends against it too.

What exactly is wrong with this approach? It should get you through the border with no further suspicions, since I’m guessing they don’t have the time to be checking for hidden partitions for every traveler they pull over.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#127

Post by noarchy »

dontbenebby wrote: post #68

Why do border services think they can seize a device and send it to a lab? If a border officer suspected I had a hidden compartment in my suitcase could they ship it off to a special lab? I don't agree with (but can see the logic in) them copying data off your HD and trying to crack it later. But I don't understand what legal argument is to be made for arbitrarily seizing property at the border.

>But I don't understand what legal argument is to be made for arbitrarily seizing property at the border.

It looks an awful lot like garden variety theft, to me, which makes me question whether or not we should use their vocabulary here ("seize", versus "steal"). That said, I hesitate to wager on whether or not a court will side with the victim.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#128

Post by gruez »

snazz wrote: post #119
saagarjha wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Chrome OS, this should cause the “your OS is unverified” warning to show up.

Does that mean that every OS file is signed and checksummed like on iOS (correct me if I’m wrong)?

yes, something like this: https://source.android.com/security/verifiedboot/dm-verity

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#129

Post by sandworm101 »

gruez wrote: post #9

>Wright refused, telling the officer both devices contained confidential information protected by solicitor-client privilege. >He said the officer then confiscated his phone and laptop, and told him the items would be sent to a government lab which would try to crack his passwords and search his files. Can this be used to get whatever case(es) he was defending thrown out because solicitor-client privilege was violate…

>> Can this be used to get whatever case(es) he was defending thrown out because solicitor-client privilege was violated or parallel construction was used?

That isn't what this is about. Nobody is talking about what this is really about and it isn't anything to do with him being a lawyer. This guy (1) was traveling alone (2) to a distant (3) and poor (4) country without preexisting business ties (5). Those are all red flags for sex tourism.

I cannot say this strongly enough: I would never say this guy is a sex tourist, nor would boarder services. But they do run a program that targets people who meet certain criteria, criteria that this guy seems to have fallen into. Most famously, a bishop returning from Thailand had his laptop "randomly" searched by this program. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Lahey) There have been other less-pubic successes too. The program is controversial but within the bounds of Canadian law.

So before everyone goes nuts about terrorism and attorney-client privilege, realize that this innocent person was caught up in a program that has nothing to do with those things. Canadians are polite, especially when dealing with sensitive matters. Canadian cops don't shout things from rooftops. Because of the nature of what they are looking for, boarder services isn't going to give any public explanations. They will hold the electronics for some time, as is their right, but they likely regret "randomly" selecting this particular person. In the future they will probably add "not a lawyer" to the criteria.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#130

Post by pooya13 »

Spare_account wrote: post #51
justinclift wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally useless for government sponsored persistent malware.

Can you expand on this? I'm curious and a little Googling didn't yield much

If the bios is corrupt it can corrupt the OS. So that the OS does not really flash it. Or there might be a hardware exploit that makes it look like the bios is being flashed while keeping the corruption or one that injects the corruption after each bios flash. In general if the HW has been modified it would be really hard to detect the exploit.
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