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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

#171

Post by gruez »

tomp wrote: post #147
gruez wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

how do you ensure this? afaik ext4 scatters its allocations across the partition, so it's only a matter of time before an allocation for a syslog entry wipes your .ssh/id_rsa

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

#172

Post by TACIXAT »

lolc wrote: post #143

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…

Under US law you can be compelled by a court to unlock (provide passwords / decrypt) a device if the contents of the device are known (the helpful search term for this is forgone conclusion). Otherwise it should be covered under the 5th. As for "forgetting" a password in this case, you will be held in contempt of court if they don't believe you, which can mean indefinite detention.

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

#174

Post by jrace »

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…

I get your point....but a similar and more worrying thing is happening at the Canadian/US border right now.

Entry to the US can be denied (for life even) if the customs agent suspects the traveler has involvement with Cannabis.

That includes having investments in Cannabis companies.

So if the take my phone and find any information on it connected to Cannabis I could be barred FOR LIFE from entry into the US.

That means that I am leaving a country where that is legal, and entering into a state that it is also legal some border gaourd can ban me for life - even if all I did was search for "Cannibis legal in Canada".

Where does it end?

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

#175

Post by jacquesm »

I wish them much good luck with my elderly dumbphone, it has extremely little on it that wasn't there when it rolled out of the factory. Besides that, way to go to ruin your international reputation (not that anybody cares). Paying $5000 to be allowed to break the law is interesting too: so it's about the money? Or do you get fined and then you still have to cough up the contents of your devices?

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

#176

Post by djsumdog »

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…

I was in Wellington during the GDPR protests. Instead of arrested and fining those who illegally searched and handed over Kim Dotcom's servers, they just changed the law to make it all retroactively legal; making spying legal on all citizens.

At least they banned software patents.

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

#177

Post by vorpalhex »

davezatch wrote: post #57
plink wrote: post #7

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards had some influence over the drafting of the legislation and said he was "pretty comfortable" with where the law stood... "You know when you come into the country that you can be asked to open your suitcase and that a Customs officer can look at everything in there." Evidently, severe brain damage is no hindrance to securing a commissioner's appointment in New Zealand.

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?

My suitcase doesn't contain:

+ Communications with my lawyer

+ My private health information

+ My detailed financial information

+ My communications with significant others which may be of various degrees of sfw

+ My work files, including proprietary or secret information

Any of those things would absolutely require a warrant, and may even require a specialized warrant in some cases (communications with my lawyer, health information).

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

#178

Post by jrockway »

WaylonKenning wrote: post #109
plink wrote: post #7

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards had some influence over the drafting of the legislation and said he was "pretty comfortable" with where the law stood... "You know when you come into the country that you can be asked to open your suitcase and that a Customs officer can look at everything in there." Evidently, severe brain damage is no hindrance to securing a commissioner's appointment in New Zealand.

Some material that can be stored on your phone is not permitted into New Zealand, like child pornography. If you had that stored in your suitcase, it can be discovered, and a prosecution started. If you had that stored in your phone, it can be discovered, and a prosecution started. Phones aren't magical parts of your brain, that can cross borders without being inspected. There's no digital 'diplomatic pouch'. Just be…

There is a digital diplomatic pouch though, it's called "the cloud". Anyone that wants to smuggle illegal bits and bytes into a country can simply do it over the Internet.

The reality is, nothing on your phone can cause actual danger to anyone in the way that guns or a bomb can.

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

#179

Post by WaylonKenning »

komali2 wrote: post #98

>"It is a file-by-file [search] on your phone. We're not going into 'the cloud'. We'll examine your phone while it's on flight mode," Customs spokesperson Terry Brown said. They will see my genitals and the genitals of many other people. Not sure how not going accessing my off-phone backups is supposed to be better. This is a shame, my partner and I have been spending the last couple months seriously considering new…

Kia Ora. I hope you still consider New Zealand. We have an island mentality, which means we treat borders pretty seriously. We don't have a wall, we have the Pacific ocean as our border, and Australia (known as the West Island).

If the idea that 540 people out of 3.7M international visitors get their phones inspected worries you, then that's a valid concern.

For perspective, we issued over 9000 biosecurity infringements for people bringing in fresh fruit, meat, honey, etc.

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

#180

Post by debacle »

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…

> 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.

I could be 100% wrong, but I feel like you could check every digital device entering the country all day with 100% accuracy and have less than a 1% impact on the amount of child porn (or any other digital contraband) being trafficked.

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