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

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

#621
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia they have to record the details of the person buying the phone, but suffice it to say that relying on someone making minimum wage at a supermarket to enforce national security isn't particularly effective.

Just buying a phone at the supermarket doesn't make the SIM work. When I registered my last SIM, I did it online and they wanted Drivers Licence number and a lot of other info that I felt was quite a lot just so I could use a phone.

Yeah they try to track when people have lots of phones registered to them. But last time I did it they were not able to correctly validate international passport numbers. Or you could just buy validated sim cards from poor people or international travellers.

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

#622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or in the case of a citizen of said country it’s, “you want to return home, play by our border rules, and btw you have no citizen rights because the border isn’t the country.”

Can a border agent refuse entry to a citizen of a country?

They can in some countries. China for example.

America has de facto exile due to the No Fly List:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/ju... https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013241659...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/one-womans-case-proves-its-bas... https://www.courthousenews.com/en-banc-9th-circuit-takes-up-... https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/01/who-can-challenge-the-n...

Snowden is arguably in exile, as his passport was cancelled, but he wouldn't be refused entry :-)

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

#624
post #557
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…

My experience is that entering Canada is a little less of a problem and that it's only become more of a problem due to pressure on the Canadians from the US to beef up their border security or else. The more strict checks seem to apply both to Canadians and non-Canadians. And entering Canada, the law is not actually suspended at the border and its vicinity .. unlike some other places. That said I've travelled dozens…

I don't know about that. They were a royal pain in the 90's if you had a bus of high school students. I remember them grabbing a couple of girls (didn't even talk to them first) and taking them away while not allowing the adult counselors to be with them. That lasted about an hour and the girls were crying when they returned. They also kept a group of buses their for multiple hours. I'm not even sure what they were looking for.

The US side would nod their heads and says there was nothing to be done about it.

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

#625
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drove from Detroit to Toronto via Windsor, and was subjected to a vehicle search and questioning. I pulled up my hotel reservation at the agents' request, and he snatched my phone out of my hands and started going through my emails. He couldn't wrap his head around why anyone would want to take a roadtrip to toronto for an extended weekend, other than to run drugs. I've also been interrogated when flying into Canad…

I'm Canadian. I get searched all the time by both sides. Canadian side has been worse for me, so far. I really like going to other countries, their customs tend to be reasonable. coming back home is always a nerve racking experience. I haven't been asked for my phone yet, but have been asked for my camera. I'm being drawn more and more to paying for online storage/sync solutions and clearing my phone and laptop befor…

That's what I do. Anything that I think would cause me problems coming back into Canada gets pushed to the cloud while I'm still out of country, then deleted from my devices. Next, I log out/disconnect from my cloud services and uninstall their apps. Once I've cleared customs, I take a few minutes to reinstall and reconnect everything.

It's a hell of a lot better than dealing with the bullshit that is CBSA.

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

#626
post #604
post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

See the cryptsetup FAQ 5.2 ( https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/FrequentlyAsk... ): "This means that if you have a large set of random-looking data, they can already lock you up." In the UK, with RIPA legislation, there is a real risk of someone dropping a USB key full of random data on you, telling the cops there's child porn in it, then you get locked up for 5 years for failing to decrypt it.

I've read the FAQ item and I'm sorry to say that it seems written by somebody talking out of their behind, giving legal advice to boot.

Sure, once in the hands of the Russian FSB, Italian Mafia or Nicolas Maduro, any detectable amount of random data could result in torture - just to be on the safe side, maybe there is a hidden volume there after all.

But in any state where rule of law is observed, the prosecution must establish probable cause and, once in court, prove beyond reasonable doubt that the illegal act was indeed committed - in this case, failure to disclose the encryption key of a locked volume. So there must exist corroborating evidence that should exclude any reasonable accidental or normal situation that could produce the random data. For example, a border agent could testify that he saw illegal material on your device's screen and a random file could be found in your home directory. In your device history, traces to a missing volume or partition could remain etc. The defense can easily explain away a partition initialized to random, if that's what standard system tools produce in their normal configuration and no other corroborating evidence exits.

A LUKS header is a clear indication that another encryption configuration was/is used on the computer, so you would then be compelled to give explanation about it's presence, it's password, the provenance of the laptop etc. The explanations given in the FAQ (experiment, random swap) are unconvincing if they are not corroborated by other patterns, for example modification timestamps on /etc/fstab and /etc/crypttab and so on.

So the absence of the LUKS header really does fill a practical gap, and it happens that most legal systems today are squeezing harder and harder into that gap. Unlike the dubious claims in that FAQ entry, Truecrypt hidden volumes actually have established legal precedent.

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

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've read that if you have stamps in your passport from certain Middle Eastern countries, you can't get into some other Middle Eastern countries. Normally you can get two/three passports for that reason.

Really? I've not heard of countries issuing multiple simultaneous passports unless you have official or diplomatic status. Previously the Israelis stapled a piece of paper with a stamp on it, you take it out before you go to the GCC. Now its not even stapled. (They photograph your passport & stamp pages though...) https://www.touristisrael.com/the-israeli-passport-stamp/974...

Several of my colleagues have multiple passports, simply because they travel often. They can travel with one passport, while the other is sent to the embassy for the next trip's visa.

Two of them are British, as am I. I looked into the process, but then changed the focus of my work and didn't need to travel so intensely. Essentially, I would have sent in a normal passport renewal form, and attached a letter saying "I'm going to X countries in the last Y months, so need a second passport". "I'm going to X as well as Y" is an equally valid reason.

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

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course these days you could have a Raspberry Pi in a corner of the laptop case and the rest of it filled with whatever contraband, and still present a "working" computer to the security screener.

Nowadays your laptop would go through an X-ray machine with improved explosives detection.

Yep. I've never had to demonstrate that my devices are real at the security checkpoints getting into airports, I just put them in the trays and the X-ray scanners tell the agents that they're safe.

Now, dealing with the customs/pre-clearance checkpoints, that's another matter.

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

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say "don't go to Canada", but I'm not sure how common this is across the world. Does anyone have a sense of how common this draconian approach is? I have a US passport and have been to about 25 countries on six continents and have never experienced this, but borders see such mind bogglingly high numbers pass through that I wouldn't say I have a robust set of data points.

I've been to probably 60-70 countries on a UK passport. The only unpleasant border experiences I recall were in Israel, UK, France, and the USA. (Rude and intrusive).

What unpleasantness can happen to a British citizen at the UK border? (Or France, for that matter.)

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

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I've not heard of countries issuing multiple simultaneous passports unless you have official or diplomatic status. Previously the Israelis stapled a piece of paper with a stamp on it, you take it out before you go to the GCC. Now its not even stapled. (They photograph your passport & stamp pages though...) https://www.touristisrael.com/the-israeli-passport-stamp/974...

> Really? I've not heard of countries issuing multiple simultaneous passports unless you have official or diplomatic status. Germany and I think most other EU countries with heavy industries absolutely do this, because it is necessary to do business in the middle east.

What a practical solution. Deeper googling shows that this is possible for many countries (DE, AU, US, UK, FR at least), often called a concurrent or second passport. I wish I had known about this when various countries had been taking their sweet time about getting me a visa.

https://pointstobemade.boardingarea.com/2018/02/22/getting-a... https://www.passports.gov.au/using-your-passport/concurrent-... https://photos.state.gov/libraries/france/45994/pdf/second.p... https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F21517 https://www.rapidevisa.fr/actualites/174-comment-obtenir-off...

Learn something new on HN every day :-)

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