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Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

cbc.ca

31–40 of 483 posts

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#31

I never really understood the reason for seizing an electronic device anyway. Surely if something was important / secret enough it wouldn't be _on_ the phone. What are they looking for, exactly?

> What are they looking for, exactly? Probably anything incriminating. Human nature is laziness so if the guy was a baddie then there's a high chance something could be on the devices.

Most violators of the law are not "baddies", unless you believe most people are "baddies"

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#32

I never really understood the reason for seizing an electronic device anyway. Surely if something was important / secret enough it wouldn't be _on_ the phone. What are they looking for, exactly?

Most criminals don’t actually have great OpSec. I’m sure there are tons of phones that have incriminating photographs in the default camera app, or incriminating text messages or saved voicemails or who knows what.

Most people don't have great opsec, and most people are technically criminals.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#33

> Officers uncovered a customs-related offence during 38 per cent of those searches, said the agency. I really want to understand what kind of digital data is considered a customs-related offence.

I'm more surprised at the 38% true positive rate. If you consider false positives, it would mean that they are shockingly good at profiling and most criminals are dumb enough to leave obvious evidence on their phone, or an overwhelming majority of people have committed a "customs-related offence" so that you could pick anyone and they would be guilty.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#34
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think its better to have an iPhone powered down or on? I am wondering if it would be possible to leverage remote wipe features, but maybe the border agents power off the device or put it in a bag / container that blocks cellular signals.

Shouldn’t matter. The key thing is to have a strong password, and disable any biometric authentication beforehand. (You can do this by squeezing the side buttons for a few seconds until the “power off” screen appears. The phone will then require a password before reenabling biometric authentication.)

[deleted]

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#35
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think its better to have an iPhone powered down or on? I am wondering if it would be possible to leverage remote wipe features, but maybe the border agents power off the device or put it in a bag / container that blocks cellular signals.

Shouldn’t matter. The key thing is to have a strong password, and disable any biometric authentication beforehand. (You can do this by squeezing the side buttons for a few seconds until the “power off” screen appears. The phone will then require a password before reenabling biometric authentication.)

Will that also terminate the in-memory ephemeral key that’s set up at first login to permit background app refreshes?

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#36
post #12

> Officers uncovered a customs-related offence during 38 per cent of those searches, said the agency. This is hard for me to comprehend. Does anyone have an idea of what 38% of the phones can have stored on them, that is illegal to have when crossing the border?

It’s not on 38% of phones. It’s on 38% of phones that they search, and they only do that in situations where they think they are likely to find something based on the story provided by the traveler. Usually it involves working on a tourist visa, or intent to overstay on a visa (person claims to be visiting but does not intend to leave).

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#37
While for a laptop one can use xen ( or grub, or similar ) to default boot into a pretty boring image of, let's say, windows 10, with some fake-but-good-looking documents, photos, etc, I wonder what are the possibilities on a smartphone? Would this be possible on an Android?

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#38
post #9

>Wright refused, telling the officer both devices contained confidential information protected by solicitor-client privilege. >He said the officer then confiscated his phone and laptop, and told him the items would be sent to a government lab which would try to crack his passwords and search his files. Can this be used to get whatever case(es) he was defending thrown out because solicitor-client privilege was violate…

Probably only if the seized information was provably "used" for something.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#39
post #2

> He said the officer then confiscated his phone and laptop, and told him the items would be sent to a government lab which would try to crack his passwords and search his files. Hopefully they were powered down and used proper full-disk encryption.

Do you think its better to have an iPhone powered down or on? I am wondering if it would be possible to leverage remote wipe features, but maybe the border agents power off the device or put it in a bag / container that blocks cellular signals.

Powering down if possible and then initiating a remote wipe for my supporting Apple devices (macbook, iphone) as soon as possible would be my very first move. It's possible they do have procedures in place to block connectivity to any wireless networks, but couldn't hurt to try.

Re: Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are they looking for, exactly? Probably anything incriminating. Human nature is laziness so if the guy was a baddie then there's a high chance something could be on the devices.

Most violators of the law are not "baddies", unless you believe most people are "baddies"

Most people are not baddies, but some are. True malevolence is quite real unfortunately.
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