Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by dmurray » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

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.

A couple of people would get beaten with the wrench the first few times it happened, but after a few weeks and a few high profile cases from Fortune 500 employees of "my CIO is the only one with the key", they'd move on to other targets or other methods.

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

#262

Post by incompatible » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #238

stale2002 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 J…

You're not going to be tortured to death, but there are quite a few things that the government can do to make your life miserable.

Maybe also have some relatively uninteresting encrypted files which you can hand over in this situation?

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

#263

Post by jason0597 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

jrandm wrote: post #217

Why doesn't everyone simply refuse to share passwords, as is mentioned numerous times on various Canadian government websites? Basic search finds tons of pages from all sorts of departments https://www.canada.ca/en/sr/srb.html?q=share+password A few samples > 95% [of polled Candians] know not to share their passwords https://www.getcybersafe.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/vds/nln-sft-stck-p/... > don’t share your PIN, password or p…

Because border police have authority

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

#264

Post by webninja » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

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.

Or use Veracrypt with AES25 and a 30+ character password. Good luck NSA trying to break that.

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

#265

Post by Buttons840 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #228

vbezhenar wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Like, leave a private key at home and encrypt your drive with the public key before crossing the border? Yeah, at that point you are powerless to do anything until you are at home.

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

#266

Post by DoreenMichele » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

arminiusreturns wrote: post #259

DoreenMichele wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in my case. I'm for the decriminalization of sex work, among other things. I'm just against raping children and generally mistreating poor people because you think you can get away with it. Keep it among genuinely consenting adults, and I don't care how many, what genders are involved, how you folks agree to get your freak on and yadda. Just one easily findable prior comment by me: https://news.ycombinator.com/it…

Terrorism, children, drugs, or sex; all excuses used for attacking individual liberty. Let's get real here, stuff like this is about control, not about security, and certainly Nota about morality... That's just how politicians package it so the people swallow the poison pill. That said, I feel like people vastly overestimate the similarity of governments of the US and the UKs vassal states like Canada, and that false…

I answered a question about what is so bad about sex tourism and also responded to accusations that being against child rape amounts to puritanism.

If you want to narrowly define Puritanism as against child rape, okay, I will proudly accept that label.

Beyond that, I think you are barking up the wrong tree. I'm not here to discuss politics. I have very little to do with politics. If you think explaining the term sex tourism is some sort of political agenda, agreeing with a particular policy, etc, you are reading in a whole boat load of stuff that isn't there.

I'm a private citizen, not a politician. I'm engaging in discussion on a forum. That's the extent of that.

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

#267

Post by sokoloff » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #136

jandrewrogers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and related edge cases are something that I've always wondered about e.g. where compliance would be illegal. There are a number of scenarios where one can have content on devices that it is expressly illegal to disclose to random border police. Even within a single country, there is a conflict of authority here.

If someone is travelling from country X through country Y with documents destined for country Z, and the government of X wants the documents to reach Z unobserved, this is the usual use-case for a government-of-X diplomatic pouch. (Or, if it’s the Z embassy sending to Z, a government-of-Z diplomatic pouch.) I wonder if you could make the case here that the US government should be ensuring the functioning of its judic…

It is a non-goal of mine to solve this problem only for lawyer citizens of my country.

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

#268

Post by asr » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #215

derefr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is travelling from country X through country Y with documents destined for country Z, and the government of X wants the documents to reach Z unobserved, this is the usual use-case for a government-of-X diplomatic pouch. (Or, if it’s the Z embassy sending to Z, a government-of-Z diplomatic pouch.) I wonder if you could make the case here that the US government should be ensuring the functioning of its judic…

Lawyers are not diplomats. A diplomat is an official representative of their country.

Broadly speaking, I agree with you, but, FYI, diplomatic status is not just for "diplomats." US government lawyers travel on diplomatic passports for official business (eg depositions in other countries). And all lawyers are "officers of the court" and can be, for example, forced to take random cases pro bono if some judge goes a little kooky and demands it. So it's not as far-fetched as it might sound to give all lawyers diplomatic passports for travel.

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

#269

Post by marci » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

graedus wrote: post #208

dorgo wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let the computer you used for encryption and uploading at home.. Take an empty/new notebook/smartphone with you to show at the border? edit: place a big random data file, which looks like encrypted data on your alibi notebook. Refuse to give password and let the government lab try to find the password..

> Let the computer you used for encryption and uploading at home.. Take an empty/new notebook/smartphone with you to show at the border? This is certainly safer, though maybe not possible on the return trip (where you're returning from someplace where you only have access to your laptop). If you need to be this careful, maybe it's best to do your work after livebooting into tails or something like that. > edit: place…

Am realizing that not so long ago, saying that entering a democratic nation was riskyer if, just a few seconds before customs, you had entered in a command line:

   head -c 1000000000 /dev/urandom | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -a > risky.1Giga.file

would have been considered tin-foil-hatty, and now we're just getting use to it

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

#270

Post by p2t2p » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

On Linux, one could use dm-crypt in plain mode with keys on number of flash drives. Good thing about keys, they look like unformatted disks, so you can send flash drives via mail in advanced. Whenever you open a laptop like this without a key inserted, it look like it has no bootloader, no OS. There is no metadata, no nothing.

Get ready to have your devices seized though =).