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ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

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Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#62

Post by a_a_r_o_n »

newhouseb wrote: post #30
scotty79 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not to stop piracy. It is to detect and punish people who have pirated content in their possession. You can't invade people's homes but you can search them thoroughly while crossing the border. People are used to having their privacy invaded while crossing the border.

An interesting question is that if someone were to travel (non-commercially) across borders with a fake gucci bag, could that person could be held liable under ACTA for the case that a) they were aware of the product was counterfeit and/or b) the case in which they were unaware?

It's beginning to sound like it's dangerous to buy anything whose essential feature is IP: movies, music, fancy luggage, watches.

I think the safest thing is to not buy these things. Buy the most serviceable and reliable vanilla physical products (a watch, not a Rolex). Don't buy music, and certainly don't have music or movies on your laptop when you cross borders.

Anything protected by commercial IP is becoming too dangerous to have around, legally obtained or not.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#63

Post by kaybe »

prawn wrote: post #51

Not sure how thorough their searches are, but could you leave a fairly boring drive in your laptop, and carry the real one externally, perhaps partly disguised (phone maybe)? "Oh, this old thing? Stopped working the other week. Seeing if my friend can fix it for me - I think the battery has failed."

Not working is no good. The only kind of inspection of electronics I've had so far is firing them up to see whether they actually are what they look like (of course it would be easy to circumvent that, but hey).

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#64

Post by a_a_r_o_n »

ig1 wrote: post #41

Have a second laptop you use for travelling and treat it as unsecure. Any time a laptop is out of your control, especially when it's held by (any)government, you might as well assume it has had spyware installed on it. Plus you're at a much higher risk of theft while travelling abroad so you definitely should avoid having confidential business documents, etc. on it. I use a netbook for travelling which gets a blanket…

You use the netbook (or cheap laptop) because it's cheap to replace/lose if confiscated.

Your business or other legal data is encrypted in the cloud. If your business or other operation would not be harmed by customs having the data, have it also on the netbook for you convenience. Your encrypted data in the cloud isn't there to keep it sekrit from the government, it's there so you can get it at the other end.

If your netbook is not confiscated, or out of your sight for a suspicious period, then great.

If it's gone for a suspicious time, don't use it on the plane and get rid of it on the other end after wiping it.

If the netbook is confiscated or otherwise compromised, get a cheap netbook on the other end, download your clouded data, and biz on.

Repeat as necessary.

This doesn't protect your illegal (or impossible to prove legal) data, it just allows you to continue to operate after traveling through a bad neighborhood (the airport).

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#65

Post by danenania »

What strikes me most strongly about all this is how utterly weird it is.

Border guards give 'enhanced pat downs' to a middle class suburban family and find no weapons or contraband, but then open the family computer to find an unlicensed Finding Nemo avi, and haul them all off to jail.

It's just such a bizarre mix of nanny-state and fascism. I know it's a pointless rhetorical question, but... how on earth has it come to this??

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#66

Post by ConstantineXVI »

bigiain wrote: post #28
yason wrote: post #13

Regardless of ACTA, I have already established a personal policy to: 1) encrypt my partitions (other than root, to make upgrades and reinstalls easier; I use LUKS) 2) copy the essential first megabytes of each LUKS partition to my server or shell account somewhere, encrypted with GPG 3) fill that space with random data 4) travel and go through customs 5) access the GPG encrypted LUKS blocks over internet, decrypt and…

http://xkcd.com/538/ (yep, it's the "hit him with a wrench" one)

To be fair, when they bring out the wrench, you know (at least for a few moments before the impending brain trauma) someone is trying to get your data. If your disk is encrypted, you can be fairly certain that no one will get at your data while your laptop is out of your hands (back room bag searches, etc.)

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#68

Post by a_a_r_o_n »

specialk16 wrote: post #19
mvzink wrote: post #4

Fear wins out over laziness: finally downloading TrueCrypt.

Is there something like this for Android? I have to travel to the US a few times for work assignments, and I guess I'd be screwed when someone finds 8GB of pirated music. Allegedly pirated music. Which makes me wonder, how would they figure out whether something is pirated or not?

"It's pirated." That's how.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#69

Post by freejack »

freejack wrote: post #57

This particular wikipedia article focuses more on the development of ACTA, and public comment and rumour during its development, than it does on the actual text of ACTA, a public document. I haven't read the actual text, and I imagine that the issue of whether or not ACTA will force border searches is definitively answered by the treaty itself. The Wikipedia passage in question appears to have been written in respons…

I've done some more reading since, and my arm-chair legal review seems to indicate that most, if not all, search and seizure happening in this area is due to U.S. policy and legislation and not ACTA. i.e. DHS, etc. have their own policies rooted in US law that seems to permit this type of search and seizure.

I didn't do a thorough analysis, nor am I am lawyer, nor am I an ACTA supporter, and I think that the wikipedia article referenced is poorly written and not thoroughly representative of the current status of ACTA, its powers and effect.

(edit: it looks like some of the other commenters have picked up on this as well - definitely worth a thorough read of all the comments for a more current view of what we're actually getting with ACTA, I found this post especially helpful [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496277)

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