Live data from Hacker News

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

cbc.ca

301–310 of 483 posts

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

#302
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 tim…

>it was a pretty innocuous search

You and I disagree wholeheartedly there, that's an extremely invasive search.

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

#303

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…

That's what I think. The "think of the children!!!!111" eats civil liberties and does not solve the underlying problem.

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

#304

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.

Unless that disk had a low-level factory wipe afterward, some amount of that data will still be on the disk somewhere, and law enforcement has all the tools needed to recover it.

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

#306
post #277

This is one problem asking for a sass solution. What services exist to help this situation?

if a solution were to be created, could the company be held liable for obstruction of justice via aiding and abetting?

I guess this could be taken care of with an extended terms of service which lay out how the product shouldn't be used to prevent search and seizure by government officials...

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

#307

I think there could be a market for backup/wipe/restore services. Very feasible for phones leave minimally needed contact info during travel. For laptops keep the is on device and user data on external pulled and put in checked luggage. Security's annoying but lazy. Edit: removable storage on mobile could get popular as a privacy feature.

I imagine an service which makes an image of your system and launches it as a remote VM that you can access or store to an encrypted external disk.

If your encrypted disk gets through then you can restore your data or boot from it.

If not then you can remote into your machine in the cloud or download the image if you have access to a fast connection at your destination.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but it is likely that it does so indirectly by creating demand for actual CP Until there is evidence of that, it seems strange to say that's a conclusion at all, or that it's likely. In fact, Patrick Galbraith's work on how users of fictional CP actually interact with their materials suggests exactly the opposite: they have developed a form of sexuality for the representations themselves - the more fictional, the mo…

Perhaps what you suggest is true. I don't pretend that I have done tons of research on this; I only say that it is not inconceivable to me that fictional CP increases demand for real CP. > do we apply this standard elsewhere in society? If there is a demonstrable link between them, sure. The same way real CP is illegal because it creates demand, which causes more CP to be made. Remember, owning CP does not directly h…

> The same way real CP is illegal because it creates demand, which causes more CP to be made. Remember, owning CP does not directly harm anyone.

The possession of real CP in most places isn't illegal because it creates demand, but because in order for its creation it required the actual abuse of children, and it's a violation of their privacy. Arguments against possession nowadays rely on two factors: the risk of harm (which is frequently not justified) and the violation of privacy. The second is a direct harm. CP is more often than not accessed for free in ways where the original uploaders have no way of knowing how many people consume the material - in the same way that Usenet posts circulate, and in an even more opaque way to BitTorrent. You can't see how many seeders you have on CP sharing sites. Paying for it is dangerous, so most consumers tend to coast on what they can find for free.

>No, because video games and videos are completely different things. People who play violent video games don't do it because they like watching violence, they do it because they like playing video games.

They are different, but the argument could also be made that comic books (in which lolicon hentai is most often published) are different to videos, and Japanese visual novels (which are branded and appreciated as games in their own right) which contain virtual CP are different to videos too. Yet we also would suppose that most people who play violent video games select violent video games for a reason over other non-violent games. The violence is an allure just as much as playing the video game is. For what reason, I don't know - perhaps to experience the limitless world of the imagination, or a break from life. Either way, people who read underage hentai don't do it because they like the idea of children being abuse, they do it because they can find a way to engage their erotic desires in a fictional world - but again, they must also have some reason to select lolicon over other content, and that's accounted for in the history of the status of women in Japan and the concept of moe. We can abstract away from video games and violence too; what do you think about movies that show violence, comic books that show disgusting levels of violence and pain, anime that shows violence...

>They're not being punished for something they might do, but that they did do.

Then the law is unjust - we would be punishing a victimless crime if we outlaw possession of things which cause no harm. Evidently the crime itself can't be located in the mere fact of the violation, since presumably it's a crime for other reasons. If it's a crime because "the viewer might do x, y, z" then it's punishing someone for something they might do through the creation of a law which punishes something they did do. It's simply adding another layer of explanation and indirection to the process, it doesn't automatically add any more justification. That's how the concept of pre-crime works, the pre-crime itself is made into a crime that can be prosecuted. I'm not suggesting that due process is being abandoned here, I'm saying that the rules in deciding what should and shouldn't be crime are being abandoned in favor of speculation.

> I only say that it is not inconceivable to me that fictional CP increases demand for real CP.

On the same token with the same amount of conviction (i.e none) I can say that it's not inconceivable that fictional CP lowers (or doesn't affect) demand for real CP. Now I don't really believe that's true, but I have as much reason to believe that as you do to believe the opposite. Perhaps posting on HN increases the demand for brutal startup founders who abuse their employees.

Post reply on HN