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New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

radionz.co.nz

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Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#141

Post by swarnie_ »

gruez wrote: post #124
yholio wrote: post #85

This is an important issue cryptographers and security minded people often overlook: the strongest cryptography is irrelevant if it opens you to such social harassment. What we need is practical cryptography. I have found practical success by booting from an encrypted Linux partition that has absolutely nothing relevant on it, with a weak password I can always enter when requested by big guys with guns. Unbeknown to…

>It's impossible for any court forensic team, let alone an airport goon, to prove there is actually another partition inside the outer encrypted partition booting into a 50 GB partition on a 512GB SSD isn't suspicious?

Find me a member of the TSA who can explain the significance of that sentence let alone catch it in practice then we can discus the viability of it.

It seems to me this would fix the larger problem most the time.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#142

Post by ForHackernews »

Shank wrote: post #78
davezatch wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil’s advocate: what _is_ wrong with that logic? If we accept that customs can search our persons or luggage as a condition of our entering a given country, what is it about digital materials that makes them off limits?

I store information on my phone like my private thoughts, because I know that it’s an encrypted, secured device I always have with me. I wouldn’t store that information on paper — the best analogy is that it’s a backup of parts of my brain. When you go through customs, they can’t just search your brain. They can search your possessions, but they can’t mind dump you. That’s the critical distinction. It’s not my proper…

...it's not your brain, it's a fancy electronic notebook.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#143

Post by lolc »

I wonder ho such policies work when you're hauling a device for somebody else. "Oh sorry this is my husbands's phone. And that laptop? It's my daughter's." Or simply: "Oh my, I just got a new PIN and now I forgot it."

Is it permissible to punish somebody for not knowing or for forgetting? And if not, who has the burden of proof? I find that these questions have no good answer. For this reason alone I regard laws that take away the right to remain silent as flawed in principle.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#144

Post by AlphaSite »

kadendogthing wrote: post #88
landonxjames wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is a HUGE difference between the contents of your luggage (some clothes, maybe some souvenirs, etc.) and all of your digital accounts (personal pictures, credit card numbers, access to banking, home address, etc.) I don't really care if the TSA look at my underwear, but I don't want anyone, especially low level employees, having access to every single aspect of my life.

You are classically Missing The Point. Historically, your luggage would contain personal pictures, credit card numbers, general banking statements, generally personal information, etc. The medium in which this information is stored and carried around has changed. The need to inspect what you're bringing into the country has not. These processes didn't originally come about because people wanted to inspect your 5 diff…

It’s much harder for them to do something nefarious with physical documents. Not impossible, but it doesn’t really scale.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#145

Post by aikah »

maxxxxx wrote: post #133
aikah wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you do this with an Android device without spending hours restoring it? There are plenty of backup tools available on the internet, this isn't really a problem with Android. Personally that's what I do each time I travel abroad. Both because I might loose my phone/laptop and because on can never be sure what software/content is legal(or not) in this or that country. Some people got jailed abroad for content/…

"There are plenty of backup tools available on the internet, this isn't really a problem with Android" Name one and describe the process. So far everything I have tried takes hours and often loses a bunch of settings that need to be restored manually. It requires significant amounts of work. Also it seems most tools need a rooted phone

> Also it seems most tools need a rooted phone

A minor inconvenience given the legal risks. If you don't want to deal with that just get yourself cheap used gear dedicated to travel purposes.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#146

Post by Shivetya »

yholio wrote: post #85

This is an important issue cryptographers and security minded people often overlook: the strongest cryptography is irrelevant if it opens you to such social harassment. What we need is practical cryptography. I have found practical success by booting from an encrypted Linux partition that has absolutely nothing relevant on it, with a weak password I can always enter when requested by big guys with guns. Unbeknown to…

the end result will be any system which is not familiar to the officials who are doing the checks or compatible with their scanning technology will simply be confiscated upon entry.

the only safe harbor will be one you don't carry with you except as a device which can guarantee secure access to that remote information.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#147

Post by tomp »

gruez wrote: post #124
yholio wrote: post #85

This is an important issue cryptographers and security minded people often overlook: the strongest cryptography is irrelevant if it opens you to such social harassment. What we need is practical cryptography. I have found practical success by booting from an encrypted Linux partition that has absolutely nothing relevant on it, with a weak password I can always enter when requested by big guys with guns. Unbeknown to…

>It's impossible for any court forensic team, let alone an airport goon, to prove there is actually another partition inside the outer encrypted partition booting into a 50 GB partition on a 512GB SSD isn't suspicious?

Nah both partitions are 500GB... it's just that you avoid writing (or filling up) the "outer" partition so the "inner" partition is never overwritten.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#148

Post by oconnor663 »

gsnedders wrote: post #131
yholio wrote: post #85

This is an important issue cryptographers and security minded people often overlook: the strongest cryptography is irrelevant if it opens you to such social harassment. What we need is practical cryptography. I have found practical success by booting from an encrypted Linux partition that has absolutely nothing relevant on it, with a weak password I can always enter when requested by big guys with guns. Unbeknown to…

> It's impossible for any court forensic team, let alone an airport goon, to prove there is actually another partition inside the outer encrypted partition, unless you mount common volumes and cross-contaminate. An important caveat is to properly defragment the outer partition and fiddle with the offset and the size of the inner partition to avoid any conflicts, then avoid writing in the outer partition. Customs staf…

I think the parent comment is describing a scheme where the outer partition contains the inner one, so both are large. As the parent notes, this is dangerous, and you have to be careful not to overwrite inner data if you boot the outer os.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#149

Post by megous »

gruez wrote: post #124
yholio wrote: post #85

This is an important issue cryptographers and security minded people often overlook: the strongest cryptography is irrelevant if it opens you to such social harassment. What we need is practical cryptography. I have found practical success by booting from an encrypted Linux partition that has absolutely nothing relevant on it, with a weak password I can always enter when requested by big guys with guns. Unbeknown to…

>It's impossible for any court forensic team, let alone an airport goon, to prove there is actually another partition inside the outer encrypted partition booting into a 50 GB partition on a 512GB SSD isn't suspicious?

You can patch the kernel to report the full size, I guess.

Re: New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

#150

Post by [deleted] »

WaylonKenning wrote: post #122
jackhack wrote: post #4

It's troubling to watch one of the most amazing places on earth transform itself into a totalitarian purgatory. Access to physical phone/laptop is only the first step -- mark my words. Big Brother's bureaucrats are never satiated. Next, we will have demands for passwords and unrestricted access to : email, facebook, photo sharing, hacker news posts, social media, etc. I see sudden spike in the market for burner phone…

Riddle me this - what is the alternative? Don't look at a phone? Why do we look inside suitcases? Why have the concept of customs? We search things across borders for things our country does not want. We don't want drugs. We don't want fresh fruit (which will trip up more people than drugs). We don't want child porn. And if a phone is a container for that content, we want to be able to explore the container. Of cours…

[deleted]
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