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Australia Air Travelers' Laptops To Be Searched For Porn
bluetoad writes "Australian customs officers have been given the power to search incoming travelers' laptops and mobile phones for porn. Passengers must declare whether they are carrying pornography on their Incoming Passenger Card. The Australian government is also planning to implement an Internet filter. Once these powers are in places, who knows how they will be used."
So they can search for porn. What can they do if they find it? Is porn illegal in Australia now?
.
Well there goes my plans to smuggle porn into Australia and use it in a terrorist attack.
Well, I hope the guards are really desensitized because once they search my laptop they will most likely vomit.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
In the US this kind of thing would usually be blamed on politicians pandering to the Christian right. Are there really a lot of fundies in Australia too? I always thought it was a very laid back sort of country.
Censorship is not only morally wrong, it is ineffective. You chase your tail wasting time and money often to accomplish nothing.
When will people learn?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
What is it with these nutcases and pornography? ...but sending your own people to an obscure war on the other side of the world to involve them in shooting at civilians, that's okay?
"Eeeeeeek, a woman showing a naked boobie! How horrifying!"
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
What's that you say skippy?
The porn is trapped in the free world!
Back to dream time.
What if my laptop is encrypted because of PCI compliance? What if it is against the law in my country for me to compromise confidential information, but now Australia demands to see it? Does this mean American businessmen can't travel ao Australia with company laptops?
Or will Australia not search encrypted laptops?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
When travelling to Australia, remember to use drive-level encryption and turn off my laptop before passing through customs. I could also keep a LiveCD in the CD drive to keep customs happy since they'll have something to search.
With the new filter, they need to get their porn somehow. This was the best option.
How bored the rent-a-cops at airports are? I still remember the two idiots who deliberately attempted to make me miss my flight .. somehow I don't think that type of person is the most qualified to make judgement calls.
.. welcome to 1984!
And what exactly is this hoping to achieve anyway? If someone wanted to smuggle illegal porn into Australia a laptop isn't exactly the most efficient means, just use public email systems and some basic encryption. Unless the government is going to demand that all home PCs have monitoring software enforced there's no way that stopping the 'smuggling' of software can even be considered.
Or maybe that's actually what they want
Not being Australian, I have to ask, "What does the Australian government have against business and tourism?"
Now just define 'porn' for me.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Uh huh, and why do they let people through with the usual stash of 'Bali disks?' It's not about copyright.
Scenario 1:
You have a drive full of happy family pictures, with your 2yo running around naked on the beach.
Scernario 2:
You lend your laptop to your 14-15yo something teen for homework or an assignment, who ends up collecting sexy pictures of current love-interest or webcamfling, or whatever. You walk through security with a confident smile because you don't look at pron (on that laptop).
You're jolly entering Australia for a nice warm vacation or business, but you did not get in because you're now in jail for childpornography.
"Sir, did you leave your laptop unguarded? Did you pack your laptop yourself?"
Australia, it could happen to you!
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Copyright violation is a civil matter. The copyright holder has to sue, not the government (which it would if it was a criminal matter - is it? I'm not sure).
Maybe you were hoping for a +Funny mod, I don't know, but what you _think_ a healthy sexual relationship should consist of is entirely irrelevant.
Now, in case you also didn't bother to RTFA, here are a few choice quotes for you:
"Australian customs officers have been given new powers to search incoming travellers' laptops and mobile phones for pornography, a spokeswoman for the Australian sex industry says."
"If you and your partner have filmed or photographed yourselves making love in an exotic destination or even taking a bath, you will have to answer 'Yes' to the question or you will be breaking the law."
Customs confirmed the new reference to "pornography" on the Incoming Passenger Cards and the search powers, acknowledging that searches conducted by officers may involve the discovery of "personal or sensitive possessions".
So if you and your significant other decide to take nude photos and you say "no" to having pornography, that could mean an arrest. Not to mention answering "yes" and having to show it off to strangers, low rent strangers at that.
And I don't even want to think about what happens if you do declare "yes" to be law abiding and a particularly conservative guard/cop/agent happens to uncover a few pictures of your 3 year old son running naked through a sprinkler on a summer day.
Well, if I ever go to Australia, I'll have to remember downloading 1000+ pictures from icanhascheezburger.com, answer "yes" on the pornography question and claim to have a huge furry fetish. I would probably get fined, but it would totally be worth it :D
Australia is like the Arkansas of the world
Have they worked out a good, legal definition of what constitutes 'porn'? If they haven't then you;d better not take *any* gadget into Australia.
No sig today...
That's exactly the way we do it. We send people to France with some regularity and it's illegal to take an encrypted device into that country. Thus, we wipe the machine and put a base, unencrypted image on it. User flies to France. Once inside, an encypted blob of user data is VPN'd to the local IT guy who puts it on the laptop. User does his job. Before flying out, local IT guy wipes the machine.
If Australia is going to start insisting on poking around in our machines, we'll have to do the same for employees going there.
Of course, if it's optional I imagine our folks won't be subjected to it. Those red passports open a lot of doors. :-)
(Actually, I've never seen one of our "official business only" passports. International travelers have their official passports stored in a safe in Washington D.C. and only get them issued right before departure. So I'm not sure they're red but that's what I've been told.)
go fuck yourself, but don't film it
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
are having intercourse with the teddy ruxpins, while the cabbage patch kids are fellating the my little ponies
the tamagotchi orgy centers on aang the last airbender and spongebob square pants is using the tentacled kate gosselin dildo on adam lambert and dick cheney ...
oh i'm sorry, you meant define porn IN GENERAL, not my specific porn, sorry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
These days my personal laptop has a copy of my family photo archive. (All perfectly innocent... unless you find sunsets and landscapes arousing...) I'm sure this is true of a LOT of people, perhaps even the majority of people who travel with laptops. I suspect my current archive is smaller than average, a few thousand images, under 5GB if I recall. Skimming quickly through this meagre archive is not a quick exercise
If they really intend to inspect every single image on every single incoming laptop then they had better have lots of employees who are not likely to fall asleep...
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
A friend of mine usually puts a couple of Penthouse mags in his suitcase when traveling to some third world countries (North Africa in this case) on purpose to bribe local customs officers. Works like a charm every time: they "confiscate" the material and wave him through with a big grin without bothering him anymore with his electronic gadgets, netbooks, video cam etc... I guess Australia is finally catching up with those countries.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
These inspectors should be required to keep their laptops on site, so that I may search their private information whilst they search mine. It's only fair.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
I would never have guessed the Aussies (of all people) would be as terrified of human sexuality as Steve Jobs.
They are just respecting their history as a penal colony. It stands to reason, all visitors will be searched for contraband on entry or exit of the facility.