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Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

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Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#151

Post by nerdsniper »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #116
anonymousiam wrote: post #108

I wonder what would happen if HK tried to force somebody to unlock their business phone. It's typically a violation of corporate policy to allow a third party to access the encrypted, confidential information on corporate mobile devices. The poor device user would be faced with a choice of losing their job and being held criminally liable for breaching their company's systems, or going to jail in Hong Kong.

Police in HK will not ask you to unlock your business phone, or personal phone. They are pro-business and want to remain an attractive international business hub so they are nice to foreign visitors. Likewise China (mainland) is nice to Western visitors and will not create trouble to you. If you visit the mainland these days (visa free if coming from Europe!) they also make efforts so that you are not impacted by the…

That just boils down to “you have no real rights, but if you keep your head down and dont get unlucky, you probably won’t be targeted”.

I’m a white US citizen who worked on oil rigs in GCC countries (Arabian Gulf). I was put on a global watch list for 6 years due to my work in the middle east.

I still don’t know why - maybe due to colleagues in my contacts? There was a “mega church” near me that some of my coworkers attended which was the “minority religion” of Saudi Arabia, so perhaps I was a few degrees of Kevin Bacon from some people that Saudi had flagged. Or maybe just travel patterns - I often didn’t know exactly when my rotation would end and I frequently bought last minute flights to head back home / to vacation destinations.

I certainly was not put on a list for any of my speech (public or private), which had been extremely measured at the time (and still is), due to understanding that my host countries had different laws and constitutions from our own. I very carefully observed all the laws and social expectations. But nonetheless, I found myself on a list anyways and for that 6-7 year duration, all of my boarding passes globally got “SSSS” written on it and all my luggage + carryons got unpacked by hand and hand-searched prior to every flight, including connecting flights.

Every flight I flew those searches were a very personal 20-30 minute long reminder to carefully manicure who I’m in contact with, what I say, how/where/when I travel, and any other records/data that I might generate. I often had to give a heads up to anyone I was traveling with (colleagues or personal friends) that we had to leave a little extra early to accommodate those searches.

Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#152

Post by hananova »

eqvinox wrote: post #65
hananova wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This isn't what we expected to find. Give us the real password."

So your approach instead is...?

Well, if you absolutely must go, don’t bring a phone at all. But do realize that that can be seen as suspicious too.

In general though, my point is that you can’t solve this problem with clever tech tricks. It’ll just make everything more painful for you.

Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#153

Post by gib444 »

nerdsniper wrote: post #146
gruez wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in the US and UK ??? Of all the issues with the US justice system, being compelled to disclose passwords isn't one of them. It is an issue for UK, though.

Upon entering the US, CBP can ask you to unlock your phone, then connect it to a little box that hacks into the phone and downloads everything. Search for "Cellebrite Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED)" or "Grayshift GrayKey". The border agent doesn't have to know anything about phones/computers, it's just "plug in, press button". With modern phones, they really only work if you unlock your phone before hand…

No but .. but the constitution.. but...

Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#154

Post by mytailorisrich »

nerdsniper wrote: post #151
mytailorisrich wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police in HK will not ask you to unlock your business phone, or personal phone. They are pro-business and want to remain an attractive international business hub so they are nice to foreign visitors. Likewise China (mainland) is nice to Western visitors and will not create trouble to you. If you visit the mainland these days (visa free if coming from Europe!) they also make efforts so that you are not impacted by the…

That just boils down to “you have no real rights, but if you keep your head down and dont get unlucky, you probably won’t be targeted”. I’m a white US citizen who worked on oil rigs in GCC countries (Arabian Gulf). I was put on a global watch list for 6 years due to my work in the middle east. I still don’t know why - maybe due to colleagues in my contacts? There was a “mega church” near me that some of my coworkers…

> That just boils down to “you have no real rights, but if you keep your head down and dont get unlucky, you probably won’t be targeted”.

It's not about luck in this case. They want to be 'nice' so you need to actively do something, that's not the same as as "keeping your head down". Also note that as a Western visitor to China, if they have flagged you they are more likely to deny your visa or to deny you entry than to look for further trouble. In general the least waves the better.

Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#155

Post by iamnothere »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #149
iamnothere wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws that are so poorly worded that they could be easily misused are bad laws. Legislators should force future would-be tyrants to flagrantly violate the law, as this is more likely to generate popular resistance.

> Laws that are so poorly worded that they could be easily misused are bad laws. The point is that these laws aren't badly written. There's already protections in place for what's described above.

I don’t believe this is the case, every now and then we see prosecutors using an obsolete unenforced law or an unexpected edge case of some law to come after people.

A great example is the CFAA. It has been judicially narrowed after court battles, because in its original form it was overbroad and criminalized basic, common things. Prosecutors abused it in order to get political wins until they were finally stopped.

This is unfortunately fairly common. Legislators either push for too much or don’t understand how the law might be applied, and innocent people suffer until someone wins a big expensive set of appeals.

Edit: I realize now you may be talking about the UK in particular, in which case you don’t even get this shoddy level of protection as “Parliament is sovereign” (lol).

Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#156

Post by nerdsniper »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #154
nerdsniper wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just boils down to “you have no real rights, but if you keep your head down and dont get unlucky, you probably won’t be targeted”. I’m a white US citizen who worked on oil rigs in GCC countries (Arabian Gulf). I was put on a global watch list for 6 years due to my work in the middle east. I still don’t know why - maybe due to colleagues in my contacts? There was a “mega church” near me that some of my coworkers…

> That just boils down to “you have no real rights, but if you keep your head down and dont get unlucky, you probably won’t be targeted”. It's not about luck in this case. They want to be 'nice' so you need to actively do something, that's not the same as as "keeping your head down". Also note that as a Western visitor to China, if they have flagged you they are more likely to deny your visa or to deny you entry than…

This so profoundly naive.

Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#157

Post by JasperBit »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #141
gruez wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Its five years with no limitations, so when you are due to be released Doesn't double jeopardy prevent this? Has this actually happened?

It does and of course it's different happened. My pet peeve has to be the "it's a poorly worded law" argument about things that have obviously been considered by legal experts. The scares like "the psychoactive substances act will technically make coffee illegal" I've seen on HN are particularly egregious.

Dismissing the concerns about poorly worded laws on the basis that they have been considered by legal experts is laughable when it's often legal experts, and in the case of the Psychoactive Substances Act, the government's own advisors that are the ones raising concerns with the broad applicability and unenforceable nature of these controversial laws. The Psychoactive Substances Act has an explicit exemption stating food is not covered by the law for crying out loud, and the exemption for healthcare providers to act within the course of their profession was only added as an amendment, it wasn't even considered in the original drafting of the bill.

Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#158

Post by sfjailbird »

jonex wrote: post #21

Feature request: Make it default behavior on phones that you can have multiple passwords, connected to different profiles. With no way to determine how many profiles a phone have. I'm sure there's some people here working on mobile operating systems, might be worth considering?

Crypto wallets work like that. Put in a different password (in addition to the seed) and it's a different account, preferably with some chump change on it for plausibility.

Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#159

Post by AlecSchueler »

iamnothere wrote: post #155
AlecSchueler wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Laws that are so poorly worded that they could be easily misused are bad laws. The point is that these laws aren't badly written. There's already protections in place for what's described above.

I don’t believe this is the case, every now and then we see prosecutors using an obsolete unenforced law or an unexpected edge case of some law to come after people. A great example is the CFAA. It has been judicially narrowed after court battles, because in its original form it was overbroad and criminalized basic, common things. Prosecutors abused it in order to get political wins until they were finally stopped. T…

I'm talking about the specific law that was being discussed, and the particular other law I used as an example. And the protection mentioned was the one of double jeopardy which had also been explicitly mentioned.

Re: Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under new security rules

#160

Post by AlecSchueler »

JasperBit wrote: post #157
AlecSchueler wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does and of course it's different happened. My pet peeve has to be the "it's a poorly worded law" argument about things that have obviously been considered by legal experts. The scares like "the psychoactive substances act will technically make coffee illegal" I've seen on HN are particularly egregious.

Dismissing the concerns about poorly worded laws on the basis that they have been considered by legal experts is laughable when it's often legal experts, and in the case of the Psychoactive Substances Act, the government's own advisors that are the ones raising concerns with the broad applicability and unenforceable nature of these controversial laws. The Psychoactive Substances Act has an explicit exemption stating…

> The Psychoactive Substances Act has an explicit exemption stating food is not covered by the law for crying out loud,

Why the "for crying out loud?" That's an example of the law being well written in a way that covers the knee jerk reactions to "it's too broad, it's badly written!"

> the government's own advisors that are the ones raising concerns with the broad applicability

What's your issue with this? They're advisors, it's their job to raise concerns that lead to the inclusion of exemptions like the one you're "crying out loud" about.

> it wasn't even considered in the original drafting of the bill.

That's why bills go through various stages of drafting and debate, and why parliament seeks out and considers the advice from industry. It's "laughable" to judge the quality of a law by the original draft, just as it would be too judge a piece of software by the initial commit.

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