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Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

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Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#111

Post by chc »

Zigurd wrote: post #30
chc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds more like a platitude than a thought I can actually agree or disagree with. What does it even mean? You want to abolish rule of law? You want everybody to be ruled by the Communist Party of China (now the Community Party of The World)? You just want everybody to behave the way you imagine people ought to behave in a utopia?

Many parts of the world had not formed into modern nations states 300 years ago. Surely there was the rule of law in many places without the current idea of nations. There is no a priori reason the current political organization of people is eternal, or even very durable.

Your comment seems to hinge on the nuance of phrases like "modern nations", "the current idea of nations" and "current political organization of people", but I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean and what you're trying to distinguish it from. If you mean that the precise set of nations and territories that exists today is not fundamental or permanent, that's obviously true, but it doesn't seem to have any bearing on anything.

Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#112

Post by vacri »

Zigurd wrote: post #30
chc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds more like a platitude than a thought I can actually agree or disagree with. What does it even mean? You want to abolish rule of law? You want everybody to be ruled by the Communist Party of China (now the Community Party of The World)? You just want everybody to behave the way you imagine people ought to behave in a utopia?

Many parts of the world had not formed into modern nations states 300 years ago. Surely there was the rule of law in many places without the current idea of nations. There is no a priori reason the current political organization of people is eternal, or even very durable.

By 'not durable', do you mean 'the concept stretches as far back as we have written records'? Yes, 'nations' meaning 'something that gives you a passport' haven't been around long, but 'nations' meaning 'geopolitical entities' is as old as record-keeping itself.

And what do you mean by 'rule of law'? Do the decisions of tribal elders count? That doesn't suggest consistency, which is the spirit of the term.

Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#113

Post by tomek_zemla »

powertower wrote: post #72

Please look into the details of the court papers before making a judgement. I would say that at least 70-80% of these stories leave out very important details and contexts - to mold what happened to fit whatever narrative the spinners subscribe to. For example - The person could have been importing a large amount of goods with him that exceeded the value he stated. Once questioned about the disparity, he might have m…

Actually majority of people searched going through borders turn out to be perfectly innocent... Which means that if the law does allow officers to search everybody's personal information on their electronic devices they can browse at will my personal communication every time I cross the border.

One good thing about this story is that electronic device searches on Canadian borders are somewhat in the legal grey zone and this will force the courts to clarify the rules. And... allow public to voice their approval or disapproval of this ongoing practice.

Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#114

Post by malexw »

allendoerfer wrote: post #61
robertfw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just fyi, this was in Canada. just as bad :(

Canada is in America, I knew that this would come, could not resist the bait ;-) Arguably the last part applies less to Canada.

What part of the world are you from? Here in Canada, if you were to say "Canada is in America", it would sound as strange as saying "Spain is in France". To Canadians, America only ever refers to The United States of America.

Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#115

Post by lightbritefight »

malkia wrote: post #41
cpncrunch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that the people they're trying to catch by doing these searches (pedophiles, illegal workers) are generally too stupid or lazy to bother hiding their data. At least, that seems to be the case when watching Border Security. They do actually catch a lot of people this way.

So you would catch the lazy criminals, and maybe even victims of such act, where things were done on their devices without their knowledge... I've read recently about new kind of software, that encrypts your data without your knowledge and then asks you for money to unlock it - wondering how this would play in courts...

It sounds like an encryption suite that had had an included "crytpolocker" gui element would be a hilarious method plausible deniability, and at least make this asinine habit harder. Just randomly generate the BT address so some strangers get paid if the border agents want to try to unlock something they have confiscated.

Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#116

Post by Canada »

cpncrunch wrote: post #20
andrewchambers wrote: post #2

There is no reason anyone should search a phone, because anyone smuggling "illegal data" can just transfer it directly over the internet undetected. This is horrible and ridiculous.

You could, but if you watch some episodes of "border security" you'll see that they catch people doing illegal stuff all the time by searching their phones. Usually it's illegally working (which obviously wouldn't apply in this case). However they also are looking for child porn, which may be been why they wanted to search this guy's phone.

That's a bullshit excuse border guards give to search electronic storage.

Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#117

Post by Spearchucker »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #38
udev wrote: post #28

"Under the Customs Act, customs officers are allowed to inspect things that you have, that you're bringing into the country," - Here's my phone, sir. - I see it has a password, give me the password. - Mhhh... OK. It is 1234. - Oh, I see you have Dropbox app installed. I need the Dropbox password. - Mhhh... OK. It is 5678. - Oh I see you have a GPG encrypted file in Dropbox. I will need to decrypt that. Give me the pa…

Could you not backup your device, wipe it at the border, and then when they request the password simply say "There is no data on the device. Its as it comes from the factory" and hand it to them? You could then perform an over the air recovery once safely away from the border.

I do this (reset and reformat to factory spec) with my phone and my laptop every time I cross a border. On the other side I download a TrueCrypt file which has everything (and only what) I need whilst abroad. I started doing this in 2010, after my phone got taken into another room for a half hour at Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv in 2010.

Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#118

Post by onethree »

bigiain wrote: post #93
guard-of-terra wrote: post #19

Does our world have even one country that is not awful but at least passable? (Preferrably one you can actually live in?) The shrinking life space makes me contemplate suicide.

People _used_ to say "Im moving to New Zealand!", but the Mega/Kimdotcom fiasco and some of the most recent Snowden files show they're no better than any of the rest of them. I'm hoping Elon gets us to Mars and we get to leave the B-Ark behind on this once-nice rock that we're busy destroying for ourselves...

and now NZ customs is seeking blanket authority to force people to give them passwords at the border

Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#119

Post by mherdeg »

Silhouette wrote: post #100
wil421 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that was a political maneuver. The article about the guy in Canada didn't say what the reason was for searching him. >"Officers are trained in examination, investigative and questioning techniques. To divulge our approach may render our techniques ineffective. Officers are trained to look for indicators of deception and use a risk management approach in determining which goods may warrant a closer look" This stat…

That description seems awfully close to saying an officer can selectively interfere with someone's life just because the officer didn't like the look of him. I think we all know how that one turns out.

Sure, it gets us the "Terry stop", a police tactic which the Supreme Court currently says is legal.

In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), Terry was represented by Louis Stokes, who went on to become a luminary in local and national politics. Here's what Stokes said about the case, from http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/nypd-stop-and-frisk-2012... :

> Stokes, chairman of the legal-­redress committee of the Cleveland NAACP, believed the arrest was dubious.

> Representing Terry in court, Stokes pressed [arresting officer Martin] McFadden on the stand, where he got him to admit that the men weren’t doing anything other than peering into store windows, and that he’d never busted anyone before for seeming to case a business. “What attracted you to them?” Stokes asked.

> “Well, to tell the truth,” McFadden answered, “I didn’t like them.”

Re: Canadian Charged for Not Unlocking Smartphone at Canadian Border

#120

Post by cpncrunch »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #57
cpncrunch wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people like Snowden are a very small minority even on HN.

Anybody who uses bitcoin, tor or have encrypted disks can easily become a target. Not meaning Canada specifically, but one twist in a law and you're nailed. You have no rights when it comes to digital.

If you're not doing anything illegal with tor or encryption, you shouldn't have anything to worry about (in Canada anyway).
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