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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

#221

Post by ineedasername »

graedus wrote: post #205
neya wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to break your encryption. Trust me, if you live in a country that has crap laws, they will actually extract the password from you: https://xkcd.com/538/ Edit I'm not saying it's a bad idea to encrypt your drives, just that it doesn't save you from someone determined..

If I'm understanding vbezhenar correctly, the implied step after uploading the encrypted file to a cloud storage service is to securely delete it from the computer you're carrying. Then, the authorities won't know that there is anything to beat out of you with their $5 wrench.

Yeah, but you still get beat with the $5 wrench. And if it was going to work in compelling you to give the password, it will still be pretty effective getting you to provide access to the cloud storage and the encryption password to it.

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

#222

Post by stale2002 »

cmurf wrote: post #211
stale2002 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is about western countries. The vast majority of western countries will not literally torture you to death, in order to get rando citizen's phone passwords. Encryption works great for this usecase, that almost everyone in this thread will be using it for. People being tortured for their personal phone password by a rando border guard in basically any country, just isn't something that happens, despite what…

How long can you be detained? And under what conditions? More than a few hours will get the vast majority of people cooperating. I suspect they could detain you for 24 hours, or even several days, but I don't know what the legal limit is for detaining a citizen at the border of their own country. And for quite a lot of other people, even not being personally detained, but having to acquire new devices is inconvenient…

> How long can you be detained? And under what conditions

The answer is not very long. I'd call "a couple days" to be not a big deal, and not at all equivalent to being tortured to death, like the person I was responding to was implying would happen.

So yes, encryption does work, and all that will happen to you is that you could be moderately inconvenienced.

But even that I would expect to be rare. Most border security would just look at your computer, or whatever, not find anything on it (because the thing you show them just looks like an empty computer), and move on their way.

The narrative that I was responding to was this idea that technology solutions can always be bypassed, by torture or something, therefore technology solutions are worthless. And that's just not true.

An extremely effective technology solutions to an incompetent border guard that is interrogating you is for all your devices to just appear like there isn't anything on them, like a new factory default computer that you just bought.

A guard will just look at that, not see anything, and then move on to the rest of his crappy job.

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

#223

Post by fopen64 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #165
DoreenMichele wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most parts of the world, sex workers don't exactly have strong human rights protections. In a poor country, it's generally worse. A relatively wealthy, privileged person going someplace poor for sex is probably doing it because it facilitates doing rather nasty things in a way that is comfortable for them. They don't need to be ugly about it. Someone else will be ugly about it on their behalf while making them fee…

This. Anyone who thinks they are targeting people visiting Amsterdam's red light district, or Nevada's bunny ranch, needs to read more. This is about people seeking underage sex in countries where it is more accessible than in Canada. Thailand, Vietnam, all of south america ... a single male with no family ties, returning alone from such countries should expect some attention at the Canadian boarder. They are looking…

Puritanism reloaded

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

#224

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

saagarjha wrote: post #120
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #59

Is it legal to take steps to intentionally frustrate any future searches that may be done against the device by border agents, in cases where the is no other crime being covered up? For example, having a trusted remote party encrypt your data, and that party will only decrypt it once you've cleared customs?

Why wouldn’t this be legal?

IANAL, but in the U.S., maybe something like "conspiracy to obstruct justice".

I know even less about Canadian law, so I have no idea on that side.

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

#225

Post by tomcam »

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…

OK so that search is NSFW

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

#226

Post by wepple »

angott wrote: post #214
vbezhenar wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're THAT worried, then securely reformat disk and reinstall OS just before travel.

Yes, that’s something we can do as HN readers, but good luck explaining that to the average lawyer or paralegal.

Instructing then how to power wash their chrome book and then simply login with their you okey again is achievable

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

#227

Post by stale2002 »

ineedasername wrote: post #221
graedus wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm understanding vbezhenar correctly, the implied step after uploading the encrypted file to a cloud storage service is to securely delete it from the computer you're carrying. Then, the authorities won't know that there is anything to beat out of you with their $5 wrench.

Yeah, but you still get beat with the $5 wrench. And if it was going to work in compelling you to give the password, it will still be pretty effective getting you to provide access to the cloud storage and the encryption password to it.

How does the low paid border security drone even know you have a cloud storage account?

What country do you live in that has to worry about people being tortured to death on a frequent basis?

This stuff just doesn't happen often, despite what a silly XKCD comic would lead you to believe.

Encryption actually works pretty damn well, for basically all usecases that a normal person would come across.

The world is not a James Bond spy move.

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

#228

Post by belorn »

vbezhenar wrote: post #180
dontbenebby wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a grad student I worried about this, since I was required to keep study participant data and student data confidential. Sounds like this lawyer arrived at the same plan I did: Refuse the request, file a lawsuit, and contact the media when released to shame the government that saw fit to violate my rights.

Encrypt the data (probably easiest way is to use encrypted 7z archive), memorize the password, upload the encrypted data into any cloud storage (e.g. Google Drive) and don't care about disclosing anything on your devices.

For work data such as the lawyer in the article I would recommend go one step further and not having the password in the first place. You can achieve this by for example having the server admin at work remotely unlock the device at request, have hardware tokens at trusted locations, or software that provide similar effect. No amount of $5 wrench or legal threats can change the situation as it not in your hand to give them access, and you can helpfully give the path forward for the officers to follow. Even better if you have a written company policy with you which spells out that employees don't have capability to unlock devices during travel.

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

#229

Post by JustSomeNobody »

I remember signing documents that said I (basically) would not allow anyone access to my work phone or laptop. This would put me in quite a pickle if work council wasn’t immediately available I would think.

Glad I don’t travel for work outside the US.

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

#230

Post by [deleted] »

vbezhenar wrote: post #198
pmorici wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a great idea. You have no reason to believe deleted and cached copies aren’t lingering on you disk unprotected.

If you're THAT worried, then securely reformat disk and reinstall OS just before travel.

[deleted]
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