Hasn't this been in effect since 2008? I have probably entered the US 100 times since then and have never had anyone show any interest in searching any of my devices, nor have I noticed them looking at anybody else's devices. Or did I miss something that is going to make them start doing this actively now? It is still scary as hell that this is possible at all, of course.
ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
111–120 of 197 posts
Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
USA is behind it, they're almost the only ones who really want it, they write it and also their world view gets into it and then imposed on the other countries.
> USA is behind it Prove it. Isn't it about time Europeans started to take responsibility for their ("democratic") governments? Why did your government sign the dotted line? If answer is "US made us", then news flash: You do not live in a democracy. If you insist you Europeans have your act together (where as we boobs in US don't) then clearly it is your own government that is behind it. ACTA: http://trade.ec.europa.…
USA would profit from it when it would be made a law, USA is the primary driver of it. Other countries might accept it once it's ready but it's USA who are making it.
Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scary part is that I don't imagine any politician actually wanting this. Or am I just too naive?
I'll go with the too naive. What they want is maximum power/profit. And it's not politicians --those are mostly puppets. America is/is becoming a corporate state, and corporatism was the very essence of Mussolini's fascism. The very notion of lobbyist groups is fascistic (Mussolini himself partitioned the power system in Italy to consist of various group interests in a great extend). Power and law become then an exch…
America is/is becoming a corporate state
You're being way too reductionist, buying the anti-capitalist propaganda. To be sure, there's plenty of bad things to be said about corporations. But it's tremendously naive to believe that it's corporations that are calling all the shots.
Remember, the corporations looking for these perks are every bit as dependent on the power of government as the government is on corporate donations. So directing ire at corporations for trying to get rents out of the government, without simultaneously excoriating government officials for selling out, is misguided.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the only viable strategy to combat this is to combat the government abuses.
The corporations are doing what's natural: find places where they can get advantages over competitors, and take them to maximize shareholder value. But the government officials are more culpable. They are making promises that they (seem to) have no intention of keeping, and in doing so are blatantly violating their oaths of office. While the negative end results is the result of each, I believe that the members of the government are more immoral, and more deserving of our anger.
And the answer is not greater legislation to control corporations. That's just giving the government more power that they can sell to the highest bidder. The answer is to strip away the government's power. This may seem counterintuitive, because it appears to leave us unprotected against corporate abuse. But when the vehicle to that abuse is through government power, then curtaining that power leaves the corporations themselves unarmed against us.
This is really quite analogous to the arguments for/against gun control. Sure, demanding licensing of guns, etc., keeps the weapons out of the hands of much of the public. But the bad guys still get the guns, and the poor law-abiding citizens are then left defenseless. It's better, in my mind, to ensure that we can all compete on a level playing field, rather than handicap the citizenry so that the bad guys (or the corporations) get the power.
Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scary part is that I don't imagine any politician actually wanting this. Or am I just too naive?
I'll go with the too naive. What they want is maximum power/profit. And it's not politicians --those are mostly puppets. America is/is becoming a corporate state, and corporatism was the very essence of Mussolini's fascism. The very notion of lobbyist groups is fascistic (Mussolini himself partitioned the power system in Italy to consist of various group interests in a great extend). Power and law become then an exch…
> America is/is becoming a corporate state, and corporatism was the very essence of Mussolini's fascism.
Not the same thing. 'Corporatism' in the Italian Fascism sense does not mean what you think it means. It means all society is organized 'corporations' controlled by the state.
Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
#115Stop buying BigContent. If they don't find Finding Nemo on your disk, there is nothing they can do.
Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
#116What 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…
> fascism
How this this fascism in particular and not, say, Communism?
Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
#117Regardless 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…
A shadow partition would be more effective at bypassing customs. For real boots, you use a copy of grub on a usb dongle. When grub is missing, you boot into a honeypot Windows XP partition that was installed only for that purpose.
No. "Only for that purpose" means that you never use it. This is trivially detected: the OS event logs will report that it hasn't been booted in 6 months, and no files have changed in that time. It's obvious that you haven't been using that system in the time you were out of the country; why did you have it with you?
For this to work, you need to actually use the dummy partition for non-sensitive matters -- and be absolutely religious about separating the sensitive tasks from non-sensitive, which is much more difficult than it first sounds.
Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
#118Supposedly, if your hard drive is encrypted, customs agents can hold your computer indefinitely if you refuse to provide the password. The irony is that gigabytes of encrypted data cross national borders every second -- over the internet. So dump your important data in an encrypted file and put it on a file sharing web site, or a VPS, or whatever, and download it again when you get across the border. Nobody with "interesting" data (and half a brain) will be physically bringing it across a border. The searches are useless.
Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll go with the too naive. What they want is maximum power/profit. And it's not politicians --those are mostly puppets. America is/is becoming a corporate state, and corporatism was the very essence of Mussolini's fascism. The very notion of lobbyist groups is fascistic (Mussolini himself partitioned the power system in Italy to consist of various group interests in a great extend). Power and law become then an exch…
America is/is becoming a corporate state You're being way too reductionist, buying the anti-capitalist propaganda. To be sure, there's plenty of bad things to be said about corporations. But it's tremendously naive to believe that it's corporations that are calling all the shots. Remember, the corporations looking for these perks are every bit as dependent on the power of government as the government is on corporate…
...You're being way too reductionist, buying the anti-regulation propaganda. To be sure, there's plenty of bad things to be said about regulations. But it's tremendously naive to believe that a lack of regulations - a case which we have recently experienced with the deregulation of the finance markets and of Wall Street, and the subsequent financial melt-down - will cure our ills.
There is ample evidence of corporate fraud in recent years, not the least of which is around the mortgage securitization processes.
We need a level playing field, with known, equitable rules, and with enforcement, and with judicial review.
Commit to regulation and a pro-governance model? Lose.
Commit to a corporate model and a pro-corporate model? Lose.
It's about balance.
Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
America is/is becoming a corporate state You're being way too reductionist, buying the anti-capitalist propaganda. To be sure, there's plenty of bad things to be said about corporations. But it's tremendously naive to believe that it's corporations that are calling all the shots. Remember, the corporations looking for these perks are every bit as dependent on the power of government as the government is on corporate…
...You're being way too reductionist, buying the anti-regulation propaganda. To be sure, there's plenty of bad things to be said about regulations. But it's tremendously naive to believe that a lack of regulations - a case which we have recently experienced with the deregulation of the finance markets and of Wall Street, and the subsequent financial melt-down - will cure our ills. There is ample evidence of corporate…
it's tremendously naive to believe that a lack of regulations ... will cure our ills. ... It's about balance.
You'll have to first account for two words: "regulatory capture".
Until you can find a miracle to get around that problem, regulation is in the long run destined to be turned inside-out and used to sustain the industries. Look no farther than the current debates about various IP problems for an example.