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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

#491

Post by wool_gather »

ALittleLight wrote: post #488
patmcc wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It ruined the vacation for me, and I've stopped visiting Canada because of how disgusted I felt afterwards. I don't blame you for this at all, but I will say this is bi-directional; as a Canadian, when I travel to the US, I get the same bullshit questioning and phone snooping on occasion. The current controversy on border crossing is that, despite marijuana becoming legalized in Canada shortly, if you admit to smok…

Now I want to go to Canada repeatedly just to get them to try to decrypt my phone. "You know, I don't recall the darn password. I'll just go have a seat while you do your thing." I'd be interested to know if they could!

Best case result of this is you sitting there for several hours, and then them deciding to seize the device anyways.

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

#492

Post by jessaustin »

mito88 wrote: post #490
jessaustin wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it works, customs officers cannot find actual illegal contents, and criminals walk free through customs. "Illegal contents", as in what? Unflattering cartoons of the president? A spreadsheet marked "cocaine delivery schedule"? Why is this on the alleged criminal's phone while she's crossing the border? Has she never heard of the internet? No real criminal could be caught by any of this buffoonery. Lots of normal p…

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/27/suspected_dark_web_... one big strong and noisy facepalm... :)

Haha yeah Beard Man should have left his laptop at home. Still, they must have been pretty confident in the evidence they already had when they issued that arrest warrant.

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

#493

Post by thewizardofaus »

I'm curious - this is hypothetical. What if you were a millitary contractor and had work on your laptop. And they asked to search it and hand over password. What would happen then? Assuming they would need clearance to view certain files.

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

#494

Post by yholio »

ldarby wrote: post #446
yholio wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. I've simplified a bit: I boot from a 50GB decoy root partition that also has a 450GB decoy data partition along side it, both encrypted with the same weak password. This is a standard configuration and the machine works perfectly fine, you can write inside the decoy root as much as you want, as Linux would do when it boots. The data partition is largely empty and you haven't written large files there…

There is a risk of them looking at the raw data of the drive and asking what all the random data at the end of it is. The beatings will continue until you decrypt it. Hopefully you can and it's not actually just random data...

The outer volume is itself encrypted so if you correctly initialized it as recommended, the raw disk should be full of random bits. When read from within the encrypted outer volume, these decrypt to random data as well, so there should be no way to detect the inner volume, either by looking at the raw disk sectors or at the decrypted outer volume sectors. Most importantly, you have the plausible deniability that the disk looks exactly as it should per recommendations of security experts, that the boot-loader and initrd are the stock versions that exist on any other Ubuntu machine with encrypted volumes etc.

Another caveat here is that the inner volume must use the implicit encryption parameters of cryptsetup, or that the correct parameters are supplied in the command line. A LUKS header should absolutely not be used, as it will be plainly visible inside the partition, and would indicate, at the very least, that some other encrypted data was stored in the past on the disk leading to new questions about its password etc., killing plausible deniability.

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

#495

Post by davidkuhta »

nojvek wrote: post #405
DoreenMichele wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, the motive there was probably he found her hot, would hit that, was aggravated at reading her Tinder messages and finding her even more hot because of it and was pissed off that there was no way in hell he would ever get a shot at being with her, so he felt some need to piss all over her, blame her for making him hot and bothered with no immediate means to get relief, yadda. This is an essential element of sit…

That’s sexual harassment. But then who’s gonna police the police?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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

#496

Post by gwright »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #312
paradite wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask you this hypothetical question instead: What if we have a "physical encryption" technology that allows encrypting physical objects so that X-ray scanners, drug detecting methods or metal detectors cannot see through them? Would customs be allowed to ask for the decryption key? Or should the customs just ignore whatever encrypted inside?

Digital objects are different in that they usually contain your private memories, pictures etc. and it's entirely possible to reconstruct a complete network of your friends, family, history, affairs, trade secrets etc. from a single phone search. Physical objects usually don't reveal this much at once and require a warrant. With a border phone search, there's no due process at all. If you're so afraid of bad actors t…

So what happens if you move from country A to country B and bring all your personal papers, address books, photo albums, diaries, business records, etc. across the border (in a moving van, for example)? I really don't know but I suspect that no one takes the takes the time to read all those documents or to copy them for later study at least at most borders. I don't even know what the applicable law is for someone moving to/from US/Canada, for example.

What happens if you use the postal service to deliver your phone across a border? Are the same authorities who claim the right to search your phone if it is on your person at the border also claiming the authority to confiscate and duplicate your phone if it shipped/mailed? Do you have to put your password on a sticky note on the the front of the phone? And if you ship the physical device but transfer the data separately does that change the expectations?

It is interesting that condensing information into a digital format that can be easily duplicated and searched (before or after duplication) seems to change the expectations for the authorities and I think for individuals.

I think this is another example of the modern digital world/economy has left the legal system in the dust.

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

#497

Post by gwright »

jessaustin wrote: post #368
paradite wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be very honest, I find the methodology very similar to what drug trafficker would do to hide their drugs. And I don't think this method will end well for all parties either way. If it works, customs officers cannot find actual illegal contents, and criminals walk free through customs. If customs officers somehow detects you are doing this, you risk obstructing security measures.

If it works, customs officers cannot find actual illegal contents, and criminals walk free through customs. "Illegal contents", as in what? Unflattering cartoons of the president? A spreadsheet marked "cocaine delivery schedule"? Why is this on the alleged criminal's phone while she's crossing the border? Has she never heard of the internet? No real criminal could be caught by any of this buffoonery. Lots of normal p…

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/turkish-president-app...

Just another example of the different way in which speech/information is treated in different countries.

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

#498

Post by dctoedt »

jboles wrote: post #469
dctoedt wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All countries can demand it. They are sovereign. "Sovereign" is a fancy word that boils down to, we have enough police- and/or military power at our disposal that we can force you to do it.

No; you are never forced to visit foreign countries. It's more along the lines of: you want to visit, you play by our rules .

> It's more along the lines of: you want to visit, you play by our rules.

PoTAYto, poTAHto

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

#499

Post by illusivesaint »

Damn it's hard advocating others HOW IMPORTANT digital privacy is even if you have nothing to fear nothing to hide because it sets the standard so low to anyone to be vulnerable to be molested.

Bad people are going to find ways to find ways to take advantage of a system in place, but at least we can try to make it a safe for those innocent.

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

#500

Post by adpoe »

Last time I traveled internationally (~10 years ago), I had to buy a separate international cell phone.

Not for privacy reasons -- but instead because my US-based phone wouldn't work in some of the other countries I'd be in. (At the protocol level, I suppose.)

Assuming it's not prohibitively expensive, why not do the same thing, now?

I agree that this is a troubling policy. But it seems simple to get around, if you were interested in doing so. It's also possible that this suggestion is naive, and feel free to let me know why, if so. =)

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