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

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

#271
post #168
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigration : the government's favorite scape goat.

Let's be clear, it's not just the government but a large chunk of media and voters using immigrants as a scapegoat.

As much as they may like to, I've yet to have armed agents of CNN et al demand to search my electronics.

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

#272
post #248
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your advice to mail ahead your secure computer is not good. Mailed electronics are just as susceptible to search, if not more so, as what you keep with you. I think the reality we have to grapple with, regardless of rights violated, is that if you want to cross a nation border, it's best to assume that all nations involved will end up with a copy of all the data (hopefully encrypted) you move across that border. In t…

It's much easier for a policeman to demand the password to decrypt data when he has you in custody at customs than when it is searched by the mailman. You're confusing "not perfect" with "not good". There's an old saying: when outrunning a bear, you don't have to be the fastest guy, you just have to be faster than the slowest guy.

> It's much easier for a policeman to demand the password to decrypt data when he has you in custody at customs than when it is searched by the mailman.

is that really true? I would expect that they can just perform hardware tampering when you're not present when searching in mailed items, but given that customs might use racial profiling to target you at airport, you may be better off mailing the computer securely, such as using tamper-proof or tamper-evident stickers/bags.

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

#273

> 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 really want to understand what kind of digital data is considered a customs-related offence. Photo of someone smoking a joint in a legally (at the state level) operated dispensary. A pirated MP3 or video file. There's all sorts of minor "customs violations" that would come into view looking through a device that frankly, aren't serious enough to warrant the violation of privacy.

They are looking for what is called "objectionable material". I don't know about Canada but in Australia it would be importing porn, any CP-like looking things (say porn with young Asian females that look like children and they have no means to check their age) and so on. I don't know full definition but basically they can add and remove stuff to this "objectionably material" list. Possessing data listed there is a crime. Recently, in New Zealand the shooter video go onto that list.

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

#274
post #33

> 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.

That's precision, not true positive rate.

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

#275
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe they put a keylogging device between the keyboard ribbon cable and the motherboard? Say this device exfiltrates keypresses via a radio and a government agency, knowing where you work or live, can then pick up the data wirelessly. It’s a bit sci-fi, but well within the resources of any of these governments.

Security goes beyond technical means. Sometimes it also involves keeping an eye out for flower delivery vans.

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

#276

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.

Can't you just use a tool like 'shred' to securely delete the file(s) ?

Encryption is a better solution, always. It’s easier to forget a passphrase and render the key useless, especially if you’re using a SSD where the controller has no obligation to actually overwrite a cell that you’re trying to shred.

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

#278
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.…

This might partially answer your question...

I had my laptop searched at the border once. It was my work laptop. They told me the same thing, if I didn't share the password they would confiscate my computer.

It felt wrong that they should be able to search my computer, but I also felt bullied because I was going to need my computer the next day if I wanted to work and I think most people, including my boss at the time, would not see a problem with the search, so I let them search.

All they did was open up Windows Explorer and do a search for *.jpg. Then she looked up at me and said, "What kind of images am I going to find on your computer today?"

I don't remember what I said, but basically it took about 30 minutes for Windows to display all the results. She looked through them all and then I was free to go. I got the impression that they were looking for child pornography, but I don't know that for sure.

Either way, it was a pretty innocuous search, but this was also about 10 years ago. From what I understand, they now pull all the files off your computer and index the contents. They likely have a list of keywords that it searches against immediately and then it's indexed for when they add more keywords later.

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

#279
post #56
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a reality tv show that follows the Canadian border patrol, in the couple episodes I’ve seen the agents have found emails about the person crossing actually going for work when they say for tourism or visiting family.

I watch that show too much and it seems there is nothing they can't search or if they can't get access to they'll confiscate and send the device to some lab in Ottawa. If the intent of the show is to portray them as *ssholes then mission accomplished.

US Customs has the same power, within 100 miles of all borders. It's rarely used, but this means they have nearly unlimited search abilities over about 65% of the population.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/who-lives-in-border-p...

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

#280
post #235

Just set a duress password https://github.com/rafket/pam_duress https://github.com/jcs/login_duress

Pretty sure this can count as lying to / misleading a boarder agent.

Is "now, listen, you knew what we meant" a valid response, though?
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