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Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

haaretz.com

11–20 of 84 posts

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#11
post #3

couldn't you just give a bogus email account, like an old hotmail account? It has my real name, and probably plenty of spam waiting to be opened, but that is about it. If airport security says anything against it I can simply say that I do not use email that often. Am I being too naive?

Well, the penalty for disallowing access seems to be a refusal to allow you into the country. I imagine that giving access to a legitimate but old and useless e-mail address would be taken as a refusal, and you'd just get back on your plane and go home.

The people most likely to maintain several "live" email accounts to get through this situation? Those with criminal intent. So once again this is a perfect way to make innocent people (who value their privacy and won't co-operate) look like a security threat.

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#12
post #9

No real content in the article for non-subscribers. Reddit comment[0] has (a) full story[1]. [0] http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ulvaj/israel_airp... [1] http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/do-you-feel-more-arab-or-more-...

We may need a HN Guideline about paywalls

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#13
post #2

Before any kind of Israel bashing starts, I want to say that unless you have lived under constant threat to your life like nearly all Israelis have during some point of their life, you cannot really grasp the lengths you will go to to preserve your life and the lives of your family. Nonetheless, this does seem a little overboard. From having personally been grilled by Israeli airport security, I can say that they are…

I would demand that my government did go around and committed genocide on my neighbors. I would demand that they treat the palestinians as humans -- so they wouldn't want to kill me.

But that is just me.

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#14
I'm an American who has been to Israel countless times and unless you've been there you can't imagine the security situation. At the last moment I was saved from a terrorist attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_BMW_attack when I went into a corner store to buy a candy bar hearing gunshots with girls running into the store before I could make my purchase. I have eaten at several locations that were later bombed by terrorists.

I have been in Israel where terrorist bombs have blown up buses or the open market just a mile or so from where I was.

A major difference between America and Israel: In America they search your bags on the way out of a store. In Israel they search your bags on the way in.

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#15
post #9

No real content in the article for non-subscribers. Reddit comment[0] has (a) full story[1]. [0] http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ulvaj/israel_airp... [1] http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/do-you-feel-more-arab-or-more-...

You could also just "google" for the headline to read the entire story....

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the penalty for disallowing access seems to be a refusal to allow you into the country. I imagine that giving access to a legitimate but old and useless e-mail address would be taken as a refusal, and you'd just get back on your plane and go home.

It appears that even giving them your real email account will get you refused from the country. As a US citizen, I'm disappointed in Israel, and would prefer even less of my tax dollars are used to support them after this.

Israel has an excellent Supreme Court which has stopped behavior like this in the past. From wikipedia:

The Court has ruled on numerous issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rights of Arab citizens of Israel, and on discrimination between Jewish groups in Israel. It is unique in that its rulings can intervene in Israel Defense Forces military operations.

Most Israelis are equally ashamed of this. This isn't what your tax dollars support.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_Israel

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#17
post #13
post #2

Before any kind of Israel bashing starts, I want to say that unless you have lived under constant threat to your life like nearly all Israelis have during some point of their life, you cannot really grasp the lengths you will go to to preserve your life and the lives of your family. Nonetheless, this does seem a little overboard. From having personally been grilled by Israeli airport security, I can say that they are…

I would demand that my government did go around and committed genocide on my neighbors. I would demand that they treat the palestinians as humans -- so they wouldn't want to kill me. But that is just me.

[deleted]

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#18
This just sounds like an attempt to keep individuals of certain backgrounds out of a country. Ask a lot of invasive information and then refuse them entry. Entry information such as this should be aggregated in to travel warnings given about a particular country to minimize wasting a citizen time & money.

Stories on how foreign countries treat privacy are important. American companies, in some part, have turned places like China in to zero-privacy zones that would have left George Orwell's head spinning.

The post-FB generation of start ups should take very hard lines on privacy and build tools that employ obfuscation & client side decryption. For example, when logging in from an unverified sources (or foreign IP), the email account could reveal only commercial email.

Sadly that isn't what is happening. Just today I got a pop up for Dropbox containing a pre-checked box to "Automatically import when removable devices are connected." Import what? All photos. Sorry if I don't want to store pictures of my girlfriends naked in my Dropbox account.

By the way, what country is known for harassing Americans at their border: Canada. I'd rather travel to Mexico in the middle of a drug war.

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#19
post #2

Before any kind of Israel bashing starts, I want to say that unless you have lived under constant threat to your life like nearly all Israelis have during some point of their life, you cannot really grasp the lengths you will go to to preserve your life and the lives of your family. Nonetheless, this does seem a little overboard. From having personally been grilled by Israeli airport security, I can say that they are…

> "you cannot really grasp the lengths you will go to to preserve your life and the lives of your family" This justifies things... how? Not to mention that imminent danger has been the mother of a huge number of evils in our time, and since time immemorial.

So you're saying if someone were pointing a gun at your family, and you also had a gun pointed at them, you would refuse to use it out of a belief that you occupy some moral high ground?

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#20
post #3

couldn't you just give a bogus email account, like an old hotmail account? It has my real name, and probably plenty of spam waiting to be opened, but that is about it. If airport security says anything against it I can simply say that I do not use email that often. Am I being too naive?

I don't even know my e-mail password (1password) and I don't take my laptop with me on trips, so I guess I'd be in really big trouble.
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