Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 483 posts

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

#451

Post by iamatworknow »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #278
LeonM wrote: 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…

This exact thing happened to my brother once. They took his laptop and did Windows Explorer searches for image extensions as well as the words "boy" and "girl", so your (and his) hunch that they were searching for child porn is probably correct. This was maybe 5 years ago.

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

#452

Post by lalos »

Macross8299 wrote: post #335
ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #315

Something I wish iOS had is the dummy password to unlock the phone into a sandboxes type area without any of my personal data. “Yeah sure i’ll unlock it, nope that’s all I have on there”

I think this might backfire, though. It's the same problem with Veracrypt/LUKS hidden volumes. If they know about the sandbox capability, they could easily say "okay, now unlock the real one" if they find nothing incriminating. What happens if you _did_ unlock the real volume/sandbox in the first place and have nothing incriminating on it? Only remedy for this is having arbitrarily many sandboxes.

You could get away with it if you could download sandboxes from iCloud and be allowed to have multiple sandboxes.

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

#453

Post by ivl »

Scoundreller wrote: post #191
refurb wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada does things differently. As a Canadian, I would say “not really”. Plenty of examples of people’s rights being violated by Canadian officials. Those events don’t get the scrutiny that US events do, but they certainly happen.

And the Canadian courts are far more likely to say the infringement was acceptable, either in that court, or under an appeal if the government loses.

Which is terribly unfortunate, and makes me value my Canadian citizenship less and less.

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

#454

Post by grawprog »

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.

Rather than an encrypted archive, would an encrypted, hidden partition not work better? Anything sensitive goes on there, have it unmounted and invisible, leave the rest of the system as is let 'em login and search what they see.

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

#455

Post by kzrdude »

derefr wrote: post #155
ChrisClark wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. In case you're serious, it's the slavery, and children.

I think you’re thinking of sex trafficking . The John being a tourist is orthogonal to the prostitute being a victim of trafficking. Many sex tourists visit Germany, for example, where prostitution is a safe, unionized profession.

Highly naive picture of germanys pragmatic situation - basically nobody is registered much less unionized and trafficking is everywhere.

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

#456

Post by logifail »

morganvachon wrote: post #300
ColanR wrote: 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…

Unless you are under an active investigation, the chances of your mailed laptop or phone being intercepted and searched are far, far less than if they are on your person at the border. Still, if you are paranoid enough you can mitigate the danger of your data falling into unsecured hands (at the border or by mail intercept) by using an encrypted shadow volume: https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Hidden%20Volume.html

> the chances of your mailed laptop or phone being intercepted and searched are far, far less than if they are on your person at the border

Isn't "mailing a laptop" now counted as sending dangerous goods, due to the battery?[0]

If so, the chances of it being subject to interception and/or search might well be far higher than someone just carrying a laptop in hand luggage across an international border.

[0] https://www.dhl.com/en/express/shipping/shipping_advice/lith...

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

#457

Post by hackermailman »

Same thing happened to me last year, flagged by Canada customs as some kind of potential sex criminal being a solo male traveller and I just gave them my unlocked phone to search through so I could get out of there after a 12hr flight.

I had keepassx android 3rd party app installed to keep financial info and passport pics in case my bank cards and other things were stolen, totally forgot it was there and they didn't even ask me for the pw, returning my phone and letting me go. If I was a degenerate criminal I could have had anything in there was surprised they didn't notice it.

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

#459

Post by brandon272 »

brooksgarrett wrote: post #355
brandon272 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was viewed as a better alternative than something like TrueCrypt with decoy passwords since if the government can ever prove you did it then that's obstruction. If that qualifies as a type of legally actionable obstruction, it would seem that intentionally wiping your device before you cross a border and then reloading data onto it once you arrive at your destination would also qualify.

In one, you intentionally give false information and lead the government believe you in good faith complied. In the other, the data is inaccessible and the government is aware it is inaccessible. They can then evaluate risk and seize the device or take some other action from that knowledge. IANAL and I don't play one on TV. ETA: To complete the threat analysis, and if they seize two devices, one with a password prote…

> In the other, the data is inaccessible and the government is aware it is inaccessible.

Because the person made it inaccessible with the intention of concealing it from law enforcement and others. There is still a means to decrypt the data.

All of the actions described in this thread - whether it's decoy passwords, encrypted volumes with headers, burner devices, or wiping data and then restoring at the destination, all seem like they could be construed by law enforcement as a person obstructing their ability to sift through the individual's data.

(But IANAL either.)

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

#460

Post by arminiusreturns »

sctb wrote: post #435
arminiusreturns wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Please don't post flamebait like this again. It's flamebait because it's both inflammatory and unsubstantive. It's like spending your last dollar to buy spoiled milk. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You are careening dangerously close into abuse of the rules just because a position is slightly controversial, and I think you should rethink your approach to this matter.

I understand that it is likely my last setence that you are talking about, and while I certainly should have worded it a bit more carefully, to have a mod jump in and then call my point "unsubstantive" reeks of abuse of power. Before you begin to tell me just how unsubstantive it is, let me ask you one question; does the queen of the UK have or not have the power to dissolve the Canadian Parliament?

If yes, Canada cannot be considered an independent nation, and therefor to call it a "vassal state" is appropriate even in the dryest academic sense. Of course it's a controversial opinion, but I'm not aware that the HN rules can be construed to say that you can't post controversial opinions.

It is times like this when I would like to remind people that the rule change on HN was protested by many of us and we were completely ignored... and it was because we knew the mods would start to marginalize people who spoke ugly-truths and then got bandwagon-flagged. Not saying they do it on purpose or have a malicious intent, just that they established a structure that encourages this kind of abuse.

I protest.

Post reply on HN