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UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

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Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#31

Post by marssaxman »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #24
marssaxman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no political solutions to things like this either - not that any of us talking about it here have any meaningful hope of accomplishing, anyway. We might as well try whatever technical fixes we can come up with, since it's better than the nothing we'll get if we wait for the politicians to deal with it.

Political/legal solutions are the only ones that will work long term. Tech solutions can be legislated around.

Political/legal solutions also take a generation or more to accomplish. What are we supposed to do in the meantime, just put up with governmental abuse?

Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#32

Post by fapjacks »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #13
jchrisa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't travel with electronics?

Here's a business/service idea off the top of my head. As a traveller, just before going through security you wipe your device and "sell" it to a vendor in exchange for a voucher that will allow you to exchange it back when you land and go through the security at your destination. You take the new device, provision it with your cloud data, and go on your visit; when you go back, you go through this process again, in…

I toyed with building an application like this, except that you just carry your device with you. The application basically tarballs your entire environment up, offsites it, and then wipes and factory-resets your device (incidentally I got lost in the rabbit hole of trying to wipe an SSD heh). It's completely clean, you can surrender your device for inspection, give passwords, etc. And then after you're through, you download the application which acts like a dropper, and it explodes your environment and data onto the device again. Docker was really useful here.

Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#33

Post by Avernar »

deegles wrote: post #30
white-flame wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the governments claim they have authority to search your phone, then the only solution is not to store things on your phone during those border activities. Any system for denial of access will simply be considered obstruction. So technical solutions would simply be to have a backup somewhere, with no trace of the backup software on the device itself. Get to where you're going, go to the website, or download the ap…

What I don't understand about the "create a backup" approach is that the government could simply ask you to surrender the backup. You shouldn't lie about having one, since that's (probably) a felony! Also, what's to stop them from asking for your email or other account passwords?

Use two factor authentication for your email and whatnot and leave the authenticator at home. Use a different email for travel that is only password protected.

Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#34

Post by syrrim »

obstinate wrote: post #17
daxorid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more or less the point of the GGP's suggestion. Contempt is generally brought in cases where you have the ability to comply, but choose not to. If you do not have even the ability to comply, justifying contempt becomes increasingly difficult.

If your mom overseas has the password, you do have the ability to comply. Ask you mom for the password. She gives it to you. You comply. Here's another example that might make this more clear. Let's say I embezzle a million dollars from my employer, and they sue me to get it back. (Let's just pretend that I avoid criminal charges for simplicity.) When they win and I tell them, "I can't comply, I gave it to my cousin…

In the case you linked, the contention was that the judge thought the defendant had access to the money, whereas he said he didn't. If you give the money to another, autonomous, person, and the judge believes that you did, then you should be in the clear. Naturally, you could ask the person for the money, much as you would a bank teller. However, if you had previously instructed the person to ignore such a request, then you would be incapable of retrieving the money. Holding you beyond then would have the goal of using your incarceration to coerce another person, which I'm sure the courts would frown at.

Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#35

Post by Keverw »

srcmap wrote: post #22

One solution is for all other countries' border control started to demand passwords to unlock phone/all social apps for UK citizens, SPECIALLY target UK politicians and government workers. Love to see any/all the interesting info one can find from the politicians.

Sounds like a good way to fight back. The US is doing this too sometimes. I don't really see a reason to search everyone's phone unless there's a reasonable suspicion and be allowed to watch them as they go through it. Just check if they have a weapon or not. If no weapon, don't see why further searching is needed. I saw another article about them wanting to scan people's papers they take with them. If they keep this stuff up, I think they will destroy the tourism industry and maybe more people will care.

I have sadly seen people commenting on similar articles on HN about how they don't ever plan to visit the US over these searches. Even a NASA engineer got searched.

Plus TSA has been known to steal also. I hope private jets become cheaper some day to avoid all this, well there are jet sharing programs. Drive straight to the runway and take off :) I guess if you have a huge company like Google or Apple, a private jet is basically free with all the write offs. Probably boosts productivity without all the waiting in lines.

I'm a US born citizen and I don't even look forward to flying. I haven't yet in my life but do want to fly and travel more someday. Every single day lately there's aways some news story about some major airline messing with people, or some story is talked about back to back on every news program involving the TSA.

Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#36

Post by k-mcgrady »

marssaxman wrote: post #31
k-mcgrady wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political/legal solutions are the only ones that will work long term. Tech solutions can be legislated around.

Political/legal solutions also take a generation or more to accomplish. What are we supposed to do in the meantime, just put up with governmental abuse?

Politics can potentially change within one election cycle, legal faster if get our opposition politicians onside.

Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#37

Post by obstinate »

syrrim wrote: post #34
obstinate wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your mom overseas has the password, you do have the ability to comply. Ask you mom for the password. She gives it to you. You comply. Here's another example that might make this more clear. Let's say I embezzle a million dollars from my employer, and they sue me to get it back. (Let's just pretend that I avoid criminal charges for simplicity.) When they win and I tell them, "I can't comply, I gave it to my cousin…

In the case you linked, the contention was that the judge thought the defendant had access to the money, whereas he said he didn't. If you give the money to another, autonomous, person, and the judge believes that you did, then you should be in the clear. Naturally, you could ask the person for the money, much as you would a bank teller. However, if you had previously instructed the person to ignore such a request, t…

I am not a judge, but if I were, I imagine I would assume you had been insufficiently sincere in your effort to convince your co-conspirator.

Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#38

Post by msmm »

srcmap wrote: post #22

One solution is for all other countries' border control started to demand passwords to unlock phone/all social apps for UK citizens, SPECIALLY target UK politicians and government workers. Love to see any/all the interesting info one can find from the politicians.

Politicians are exempt. Seriously.

Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#39

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

jchrisa wrote: post #11
marssaxman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no political solutions to things like this either - not that any of us talking about it here have any meaningful hope of accomplishing, anyway. We might as well try whatever technical fixes we can come up with, since it's better than the nothing we'll get if we wait for the politicians to deal with it.

Don't travel with electronics?

On a laptop, it shouldn't be too hard to have a dual-boot system where OS 1 has nothing of interest, and OS 2 is temporarily hidden from the boot loader.

Alternatively keep the main OS on a USB or hard drive, and get that in/out of the country by other means.

There are other options. Generally, carrying obviously visible sensitive files with you in person is not a necessity.

Re: UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords

#40

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

fapjacks wrote: post #32
TeMPOraL wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a business/service idea off the top of my head. As a traveller, just before going through security you wipe your device and "sell" it to a vendor in exchange for a voucher that will allow you to exchange it back when you land and go through the security at your destination. You take the new device, provision it with your cloud data, and go on your visit; when you go back, you go through this process again, in…

I toyed with building an application like this, except that you just carry your device with you. The application basically tarballs your entire environment up, offsites it, and then wipes and factory-resets your device (incidentally I got lost in the rabbit hole of trying to wipe an SSD heh). It's completely clean, you can surrender your device for inspection, give passwords, etc. And then after you're through, you d…

But this makes it very obvious you've reset your phone. Which is a red flag - although not technically illegal, so far.

You really want something that looks like an in-use device and gives no hint that you have sensitive files stored anywhere else.

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