441–450 of 483 posts
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Did they look for any other file extensions or was that literally it?
That was literally it. I was standing there. They only searched for images. Again, this was about 10 years ago though. From what I understand, they now pull everything for future analysis.
Considering he is a lawyer and a politician and civil liberties activist, he knew CBPA’s rights very well, and this is a public stunt to encourage the government to change the law. A simple search about this nick wright, reveals that this is not his first encounter with the authority. He is definitely more active about civil liberties than the average person. He has been arrested during a G20 event, and his story the…
Or he's being targeted now because of his past activism.
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> It's not like you need to 'smuggle' any form of data physically. Because most people don't have the technical know how, or desire to spend the effort to ensure that the data they _are_ bringing across the border is safe to disclose. Even elsewhere in the comments here is a long debate about the "safe" way to deliver data across borders, some of which are actually terrible ideas. Yes, theoretically, people could avo…
>some of which are actually terrible ideas Which ones?
"Prank them with an undecryptable random file" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19834934 and "prank them with 20,000 goatse images" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837896 as they can get you back by seizing your electronics. Of course, those sound like jokes not serious suggestions.
"Have it remotely locked by an administrator" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835097 as they won't understand that technical mumbo-jumbo and will just seize the laptop.
"Have a hidden dual-boot system" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19836135 as if they take a disk image and spot it, they'll be particularly suspicious of you.
Some posters also think "Send your encrypted laptop by mail" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835019 is not good advice.
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Yes. This thread is full of people proposing inventive technical solutions to genuinely prohibit your own access to the device while you're going through customs, as if border patrol a) knows the difference and b) gives a damn. These are all functionally equivalent to "Um, I forgot my password." (Or, if you wish for a more plausible but equally ineffective excuse, "This is actually my mother's laptop; I'm bringing it…
> it's his job to assume you're lying and find the next legal option available to him. Not sure where you live, but in the US it's actually his first and foremost responsibility to uphold a constitution that says that people are free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
I want to say "clearly you have never used US customs", though I suppose it's possible you have and you are just very lucky.
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You can go to jail for years in the UK for refusing to disclose a password to law enforcement.[0] [0] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/09/04/how-refusing-to-...
And how often does that happen, in real life? The answer is "not that often". The example you gave was of someone who was suspected of murder. The amount of people who are in the population of "people suspected of murder, and are jailed for not giving up their password", is a very small population size.
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.…
2) The people who make these decisions (politicians) don't really understand how any of this works (aka luddites)
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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…
>I'm a private citizen, not a politician.
You mean citizens don't bear responsibility for politics? Does it mean that politics is disconnected from society?
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Yes. This thread is full of people proposing inventive technical solutions to genuinely prohibit your own access to the device while you're going through customs, as if border patrol a) knows the difference and b) gives a damn. These are all functionally equivalent to "Um, I forgot my password." (Or, if you wish for a more plausible but equally ineffective excuse, "This is actually my mother's laptop; I'm bringing it…
> it's his job to assume you're lying and find the next legal option available to him. Not sure where you live, but in the US it's actually his first and foremost responsibility to uphold a constitution that says that people are free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
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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…
Why do you think they did this kind of invasive search? It's very weird to me that border patrol would randomly search all the images on someone's computer. This doesn't even seem like an efficient way to catch criminals. Power trip?
It saddens me that we think of federal governments as benign protectors of our rights. The States did not need and did not want a federal government. We feared they couldn't protect our interests. We had to be persuaded through the Bill of Rights to accept their "protection." The feds have some idealistic people within their organizations, but their stance is to utilize state-level resources for their own needs, such as international warfare wealth accumulation. This includes domination of individuals. We have only our states and the Bill of Rights to protects us from the feds.
Computers represent a very real threat to federal power. People could use them to rise up against federal governments and make their lives very uncomfortable, which is to say, much like our own. These dreams of small groups contacting one another and creating world peace beginning through networked communication were made explicit in the 90s and early 2000s. The maintain its dominion, international governments from around the world simply have to assert themselves in every aspect of our lives. With state protections, one of the key places feds can insert themselves is at borders, where reaching out to people from other nation-states happens.
Efficiency is for little people, like you and me. Federal governments print the paychecks for the border patrol, tax they money the pay them, then tax the people the border patrol buys all their worldly possessions. They care about efficiency less than google cares about disk space. I know I sound like a paranoid libertarian here, but I'm actually only a slightly-light-of-center person trying to bring a little reality and clarity to the situation. We are essentially pets.
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It was a sincere question. You say you've read up on this. I haven't, though I have lived in Thailand and travelled around the region, and from my personal experience (not as a consumer, but I don't need to be a smoker to have some idea (anecdotally) of the level of smoking around me) the vast majority of foreign men that were consumers were not involved in anything to do with children or any such thing. Hence, I was…
You may think I mean straight up pedopholia involving elementary school aged children. That can happen certainly. But a 17 year old is legally still a child in many jurisdictions. A lot of men in their twenties see nothing wrong with getting involved with a 17 year old. If you are talking a dating situation, my views on that get a lot more complicated. If you are talking prostitution, a 17 year old sex worker is high…
That's true for most workers of all ages.