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Israel Airport Security Allowed To Read Tourists' Email
wiredmikey writes "Israeli security officials at Ben Gurion airport are legally allowed to demand access to tourists' email accounts and deny them entry if they refuse, the country's top legal official said on Wednesday. Details of the policy were laid out by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein in a written response to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the group said in a statement. 'In a response dated April 24, 2013, the attorney general's office confirmed this practice,' ACRI said, quoting sections of the document which said it was only done in exceptional cases where 'relevant suspicious signs' were evident and only done with the tourist's 'consent'. 'Allowing security agents to take such invasive measures at their own discretion and on the basis of such flimsy "consent" is not befitting of a democracy,' commented Lila Margalit from ACRI."
Israel has every right to require you show just cause why they should let you in. Just like the US has that same right.
You have no right to enter a country of which you are not a citizen, and they can deny you entry for any reason, and require whatever they want of you as a condition of entry.
That's just the way it is. Don't like it? Don't go to Israel.
I guess that might be a good reason to have a throw away email account. They want to read your email, well, sure officer, here you go. mydummyaccount@gmail.com and my password. Have fun with it.
Border guards of pretty much any country can deny you entry (or exit) for pretty much any reason at all. If you abhor this practice, you can vote with your dollars by not visiting that country.
I haven't visited the U.S. since 2001, which is about when their war-on-tourrists seems to have begun.
To generate some sense of outrage against Israel and Jews for doing something that every other country on the planet does - except they do it better than anyone.
I feel safer walking down the street in Tel Aviv than I do walking down the street in Detroit.
This is why I do all my confidential corporate communication via Twitter and Slashdot postings.
... or, you could be a racist douche-bag. The possibilities are endless.
What about those of us that left email behind long ago, just after we taught our grandparents to use it.
At the point that the government requires data retention of a means of communication its time to move on.
This is a stupid policy because anyone intent on doing harm will just set up a dummy account full of fluffy happy mail to show to airport security. Basically the only outcome of this policy is to deny entry to people who are not a threat.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Consent, eh? Really?
.
-- Consent, or get back on that airplane!
-- Consent, or get into that jail!
-- (DUI checkpoint, consensual, of course) : consent, or give up your driving privileges, and line up over there for your breathalyser test!
-- (Border patrol checkpoint, right outside San Onofre Nuke plant, on I-5 north bound and southbound, about 50 miles NORTH of the California-BajaCalifornia USA-Mexico) border -- consent or step out of the car please
-- (Watertown MA, search for a terrorist, where did I misplace those 4th amendment rights, weren't they here just yesterday?) -- we're coming into your house NOW, consent or we're pulling you out anyway and we've got automatic weapons, so consent NOW!
-- (DUI checkpoint) -- roll down your windows and answer these questions, with your CONSENT! Hey, don't make a u-turn, we'll chase you DOWN for not CONSENTING to this intrusive non-probable-cause DUI checkpoint!!!
I musta signed that consent during that EULA as I was coming out of the womb, yeah, that must have been when I consented to all of this crap...
Sometimes i wonder if the Israeli State forgot the lessons of world war 2 .
Sad to say , but i believe they forgot. There's no excuse to invade tourist's privacy .
And puh-lease none of that " we need to protect ourselves " bullshit.
Spying on human rights activists and stepping on human rights is no concern to them.
The Israeli State has become the enemy of it's own People.
I got no sympathy left for the Israeli State and government , at all.
Their people gets screwed just like we do , and that is terrible for a people that suffered so much .
I do make a distinction between the State and the People. Great people . Sad State.
What does Isreal's policy have to do with flying to the US? I suppose if you are from Isreal, and returning, you may be deported from your home country. Where would you go?
Personally, I have several email accounts. Not all of them are accessable from the web outside the office. One of them is used only for sailsmen, scam baits, web page registrations, and other junk. I have NO texting on my phone, so it has NO email.
Private personal email is just that, private.
The truth shall set you free!
This will be coming to America soon.
The one party system has 300+ million willing slaves who won't lift a finger for anything less than instant gratification. Ideas of civil liberties and human rights are passing by the wayside and there isn't a damn thing the new power elite will let you do about it.
I wonder if people realize that to enter US you need a Tourist Visa (except if you are from approx. 17 states that are exempt).
To obtain a Tourist Visa, you need to prove your "residential ties" to the country of origin, which include your bank account statements, your apartment lease, etc.
On top of that you are finger printed on entry.
And If you think US is bad then try entering Switzerland if you are not from EU, US and a few other countries.
Will they lock you up in an attempt at avoiding giving them access, even if you legitimately do not have one?
Big Israeli brother is watching.
I traveled through Ben Gurion airport in 2011 and I have to say, I found the security there a lot less invasive and arbitrary than security at US airports. They didn't make me take off my shoes or walk through a body scanner. And they didn't confiscate my bottle of water.
What they did do was actually spend time talking to me and watching me. I think the security there is really security, not security theatre.
As for demanding to read your email, that's probably crossing the line. I likely would have refused. But really, it's no worse than the US which can confiscate your laptop at the airport and go through all your files.
See The U.S. Government Wanted to Know: Am I Jewish"
"This is the conversation I recall having with Chris Kain at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv by telephone:"
CK: Hello. I got your number from ___. You are being questioned by the Israeli authorities, I understand.
ST: They are threatening to deny me entry and to deport me.
CK: Are you Jewish?
ST: No
CK: Have you been in contact with the Israeli government or military in the past?
ST: No
CK: Have you been here before?
ST: Yes, several times. I am a Palestinian with family in the West Bank.
CK: Oh, you have family in the West Bank. Then there is nothing I can do to help you. In fact, if I interceded on your behalf, it will hurt your case with the Israelis.
ST: I don't understand. You are saying you can't speak with them. You have no influence. They are demanding to access my gmail account.
CK: If they have your gmail address, they can get in without your password.
ST: What do you mean? How?
CK: They're good!
ST: This is crazy. You mean you know about these requests to access emails and you have no problem with it.
CK: It is in our travel warning. They won't harm you. You will be sent home on the next flight out.I hope I have been of good service to you.
ST: Frankly, you have done nothing for me.
CK: Well at least you can say I did it kindly.
Otr he could be an antisemitic, funny how Arabs and Jews are the most Antisemtic peoples I have ever met.
...credentials to my Mailinator account :P
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
I use Thunderbird to POP my mail down to my local desktop at home. The server copy is *not* retained. Furthermore, I don't even know my ISP mail and Gmail passwords off hand - they're stored in my local mail client, which, as I mentioned, is a desktop at home.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Unfortunately, bigots like you have done everything they can to allow Muslims into Israel so they can commit terrorist attacks against innocent civilians.
You tell him! I got a problem with people like him too!
There are two kinds of people I hate in this World:
People who are intolerant of other people's culture and the Dutch.
Huh. I thought we bombed enough nazi's into the stone age. I guess next on the agenda is more bombing of nazi's, who would have guessed? Always hard to deal with single issue political parties....
They routinely take your laptops and make the backup and give it back to you. Please don't go to Israel with your laptops or any data that you want to protect. Sanitize your email accounts (esp with respect to commercial information where you are bidding against an Israeli company) and then visit the place. The people and the country are a complete delight in surprising contrast to the airport experience. Please take an informed decision.
It's nothing new. I wrote about this a year ago, when the same issues came up http://falkvinge.net/2012/06/29/your-email-privacy-is-under-increasing-threat/
Whine all you want, but more than happy to help these guys. They have:
* A legitimate reason for increased security. They're under far more serious security threats (and frequency) than the US and Europe.
* A better security record (% of attacks foiled) using far less money
* Real security at airports and malls, unlike the security theater going on elsewhere in the world.
Trust me, if they ever get to the point of asking for your email they have flagged multiple levels of suspicious behavior. I have been traveling there for years and their security is *far* less intrusive than the US and Europe. Personally I wish them all the best. They're the only country in the entire world that is actually winning against Islamic terrorism. That's most than most countries can say.
You do know what country Ben Gurion airport is in, right? Despite what you may have heard, Israel != The United States. This means if you never travel to or through or even over or near the US, you could STILL end up going through BG, and be subject to this pointless bit of security theater. Did you even read the article?
Also... on the subject of security theater, since I now know about this, all it means is I must set up a dummy e-mail account to "hand-over" to authorities next time I pass through Ben Gurion (which coincidentally will be just a week or two after NEVER.) They can check THAT e-mail all they want. The only step beyond what any prudent person takes when traveling with a computer nowadays is to delete all cookies, etc., or IMAP or POP configurations, so the machine can't tell them anything about your REAL e-mail account no matter what they ask.
In fact, I would, if I traveled regularly, have a travel machine that booted off a stick, maybe even had no HDD, and never use it to process any info I consider private or sensitive. It seems this is just common sense today. As for the stick, I'd have that concealed somewhere they wouldn't find it.
I "read" ebooks now at 600 to 800 words per minute by listening to text-to-speech wav files sped up by 3-4X. If you're stuck reading at average or below speed, I can forgive you for being somewhat ignorant of history. I was until I started speed listening. By "we", I assume you mean the USA. Britain bombed the heck out of Germany, far more than we did, and the Russians may have even outdone England. While the bombing was terrible, it was primarily communist Russia that defeated Germany. They both inflicted and took more casualties than the rest of us fighting Germany combined by something like a factor of 3X. That in part is why Russia was in military possession of so many countries at the end of the war, and why they felt they couldn't just go home after fighting so hard for every mile. The even greater casualties on the Russian side relative to Germany helps explain the rape an pillage by the communists as they rampaged through Europe, though Stalin encouraged it, and sh-t flows downhill. Are you confusing Nazi Germany with Japan? It's probably fair to say we bombed Japan into the stone age, partly with nuclear bombs, though our napalming of Japanese cities made of wood probably did far more damage. Now, this was all under a Democratic dominated government in the USA. Are they the single-issue party you are referring to?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
I have only traveled to Israel once. My passage in and out was very quick and easy. I spent less time in customs and security than I usually do flying into America. This may be because my company has a branch in Israel, and I think some pre-arrival and departure documentation was provided.
However, already 5 years ago when I traveled there, it was well documented that security screeners would ask questions like:
What do you do for a living? Why did you come to Israel? What did you do while you were here? etc.
For example, if you said that you were a writer working on a book about early Christianity, they would ask you to fire up your laptop and show them some of your writing, notes, and pictures. They would take your laptop and read some of the documents. If your story and the documentation didn't match, you could expect a lot more questions.
The fact that they have extended this to email does not surprise me much.
including both founders. Why would they not give 'special access' to Mossad?
Time to register iloveisrael@gmail.com....
protip: don't stand in front of bulldozers.
Then it would be too much.
"We demand to see your email account."
An email account isn't like a passport or other official document. It can be created, or deleted, on a whim. What kind of "security" do they think this will bring?
I will be more than happy to show them any of the number of fake e-mail accounts that I maintain for spam. How exactly are they going to be able to tell that they aren't legitimate? Oh, they aren't. They want to go through my email, they will have to spend all afternoon picking through idiotic threads of forwarded cute cat pictures....
Hey Israel, fuck you for being stupid.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I have about a dozen email accounts.
There's enough space left in other places. I don't think people need to degrade themselves to this level to travel.
Thanks to lobbying, even in the US, Israel's interests are often placed above that of Americans. For a recent example, see this.
Actually, Rachel Corrie put herself in harm's way where the bulldozer driver could not see her. She committed suicide by bulldozer, dude. Check the facts. That's why the driver was cleared, she idiotically placed herself in a position the driver simply could not see and therefore could not stop. Same would happen to the idiots that walk in front of buses in every city when they are jabbering on their cellphones.
Any competent attacker will just set up a fake account or use a separate one for anything that would be suspicious. The Israelis used to really understand effective security. Seems that time is over and security theater has not taken over.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Ho hum...guess I'm adding another place to the "No fly zone" list then.
Same would happen to the idiots that walk in front of buses in every city when they are jabbering on their cellphones.
It'd happen a lot more if the buses were 3 meter tall, the driver had a 5" viewport, and the front side of the bus was heavily armored.
Fun fact, the armored D9 bulldozer was used in the area where Rachel Corrie died because of Palestinian terrorists' sniper fire on that day. Another fun fact, Rachel Corrie was not "protecting the house of a doctor" (who was not even a doctor) but a tunnel used by abovesaid Palestinian terrorists for smuggling weapons. And yet another fun fact, immediately after Corrie died, her enable organization ISM, a leftwing extremist organization famous for enabling and encouraging suicide bombings, posted fake pictures of the incident which were taken in another location, with another bulldozer, and with people photoshopped into them in order to create a false impression that the driver could see Corrie and therefore chose to drive the D9 over her, so that they could claim she was a martyr murdered by occupation forces.
They already know your email address, your password, and everything, they just want to make sure you're sincere.
This could give me a very good reason to stop deleting all the stuff I get on one of my dot-edu accounts.
If there's anything that can incapacitate a Mossad agent, it's reading a few years of mail-to-all from vice-chancellors of whatever.
If they insisted on accessing the address that's on my business cards, that might be almost as good, since my email at the dot-org that gives me business cards is full of nearly a decade worth of stuff about international policy on environment and development.
I don't think I'd give them the other dot-edu, the dot-gov, or my personal account.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I use SMIME to encrypt my mails! Oh wait... I use a certificate from StartSSL. Should I trust them?
So terrorists have to create a free email account if they want to travel?
That will discourage them.
Because terrorists are way too dumb to sign up for more than one email account.
Let's see, there's 3 on gmail, 4 on yahoo, 2 on hotmail, and over 100 on my own server. I think I'll give them one of the hotmail ones. They've got the most spam and will look pretty "used".
Israeli security officials at Ben Gurion airport are legally allowed to demand access to tourists' email accounts and deny them entry if they refuse
What if I do not use email? Would I be allowed to enter Israel, or would I need to set up a fake account?
The british empire, happy to fight any man in the room as long as he's much shorter, starved, and they can sneak up behind him and hit him over the head with a baseball bat first.
What, you don't always look for every advantage over who you're fighting?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
...if you don't like the rules, don't travel to Israel. Easy enough.
Sure, and when they see the amazingly blank email account they're fre to take that as suspicious and not let you in.
If you have no friends or don't use email then don't look Arab while trying to enter Israel.
Oh hail the mgihty Merkins , who like to pick on nations like Grenda , what did they threaten your pinapple growers or something?
Land of the brave and home of the free and who never win a war when the natives can actually shoot back straight or were the French did the fighting and the Amerkins did the running away.
American definition of winning a war , Invade Canada with the intention of sezing the whole country, get pushed back into your own country . Net result the borders stayed where they where at the start. VICTORY!
You know, Western countries are moving towards an appalling level of hypocrisy in this regard.
If any other country did this, there would be howls of banana republics, references to the USSR, and comments on the rule of law. When the West does this, it's okay.
So if someone put in a reciprocal policy that says "OK, we'll check all of the emails of people coming from Israel" there would be outrage, cries of anti-Semitism, and discrimination. Kinda like when the US said it was going to fingerprint visitors, and other countries started talking about the same thing.
For all the chastising one hears of 'other countries' doing things which the West disagrees with, the trend is to do the exact same thing and say "yeah, but we're the good guys, so it's OK".
I fear the terrorists have done far more damage than people realize, because what used to be our laws and rights are now mostly guidelines to be changed and ignored as they see fit.
Countries are moving towards deciding their highest legal principles are something you can decide don't apply if it's expedient for your needs. At which all of this talk about democracy, freedom and rights is pretty much just lip-service.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A cricket bat, yes. Even a rounders bat but NOT a "baseball bat"!
As for the rest, a rather warped and shall we say "inaccurate" interpretation of the facts?
btw, perhaps you could suggest how an evacuation of troops off a shallow sloping beach to destroyers and merchant ships might be facilitated in a short time scale? Evacuating nearly 240000 troops in a period of some 10 days from start to finish under severe German interference was certainly a triumph of impromptu organisation by the British. Perhaps you should study the wikipedia entry Operation Dynamo Also consider the Battle of Britain, the action that followed immediately after Dunkirk. Hmmmm????
They've been demanding email access for years - this isn't anything new. They use this to try and identify Westeners visiting to campaign for Palestinian rights. When I last visited they deported an American Christian pastor who was going to the West Bank to spend a week helping Palestinians pick olives on their own land that Israeli settlers were trying to claim -- he was honest when questioned so was deported.
Regulars are well versed in the Israeli security facade - it's easy to get around. It's just a case of keeping your name off the internet - if you comment on Palestinian rights on the internet then use a pseudonym. Have secondary Facebook, Twitter and Email accounts just to show the Israelis - with no controversial friends. Make sure your SD cards are blank as they often demand to examine photos. Avoid having stamps of Muslim countries (eg. Malaysia) in your passport. Ensure your phone is free of anything they might not like (eg. contacts, notes, emails). They search the luggage of many people leaving and some entering, so expect that and post back anything Palestinian related - eg. souvenirs and SD cards with photos.
A friend got back last week and they searched his email & fb - he said he was lucky as he had a Google News alert on Israel and there were hundreds of emails - those fortunately obscured some email exchanges with Palestinian activists. He was let in.
The whole thing is a joke .. anyone they don't like is likely to know how to get around it. The publicity is only likely to put off tourists.
If you don't like their policy, you can just choose not to enter the country, no big deal - it's not as if you were you were arrested but the government refuses to Mirandize you...
I take it you're a neo-nazi Yank who's disappointed Hitler lost and has a large collection of swastika armbands?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Why not have a 2nd email account that you use for travel confirmations, bookings, etc. that you can share if needed while protecting your true email account?
i like how Israel uses a human approach to security, and doesn't just radiate us to death for security theater purposes like the TSA.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
As anatheist(emphasis mine), I'm concerned whenever traveling to any country/society that allows religion into the culture so completely. On the whole, I think religion has been a terrible thing for humans over the last 10,000 yrs. Once in a while, religion has been helpful to hide things from governments, but that hasn't been worth all the suffering cause to billions of people over all of time. Just look at what christians and jews and muslims have done to themselves over the last 200 years. Sad. Very sad.
If you desire not to be flagged for hypocrisy in your Atheism (fighting hypocrisy IS a sacrament in Atheism), you better start criticizing some non-Abrahamic religions in your posts. Reincarnation does not absolve guilt for violence committed.
While Israel is a sovereign nation, it is also a signatory to a number of human rights conventions... They've voluntarily given themselves restrictions on what laws they can make and how they apply them.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights' Article 12 says:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
http://www.hri.org/docs/UDHR48.html
ps ...so if in israel they are strict/invasive (and i experienced it also, and to me they were gentle despite a libyc stamp on my passport) it is never like the amerikans !
this is my story of the u.s. customs security...
my name is paolo ventura. i am from italy (rome). i am 46 years old now. i live in italy.
i have lived in new york city for less than a couple of years as "tourist" and student.
i left your nyc february/2011.
i am going to bother you with a silly story: my experience with u.s. "department of homeland security customs and border protection".
i am quite sure you wouldn't be interested in, but i am going to write it anyway, just to vent out my rage ..to try to loosen up and forget forever these unfortunate events. and maybe you might give me some advices ?!
first of all, please forgive my disconnected speech and english.
and secondly let me say that i understand how delicate it could be the work of a policeman.
especially after 9/11 (my american girlfriend is a surivor. she was in one of the tower).
so, i understand all.
what i can't understand is why most of the policemen at the customs control of the nyc airports have to be so mean, unkind, abusive, arrogant and bad as if they find pleasure in harass people, as if they have subtle sadistic low instincts to leak.
i think ..if you want to inquiry me, because you think i did something wrong/illegal you can do it in a different way... maybe not politely, but at least dry/plain/coldly.
why in that area you loose any rights civil, legal, human ?!
aren't we talking about u.s. country ?!
the big country, the "freedom" nation ?! ...anyway i gave up. i will not try to enter anymore your land.
and this is my story (or maybe the story of what happen daily at the u.s. border).
i have worked for 20 years in the "information technology" field, in italy. but i was sick and tired of
so, i "exploited" the situation of my company (that was in crisis) and via the italian union i signed an agreement to be in a kind of "sabbatical" for four (4) years.
during which i earn a subsidy, montly (i know it sounds strange but in italy social welfare in some cases could be very advantageous. in many other not).
then i rented my apartment in rome, to get another income.
so with both earnings i could count on 2000 $/month ish
in 2010 i decided to leave italy. to go to new york city. to study english and see if there were new routes to walk.
the first of may i arrived in nyc with the tourist visa program, called "esta" - the one who allows you to stay for three months (90 days).
i did use it twice with no issues. the first three months i went to an english school, then quit. and the followings i used to meet american people privately and "exchange" languages, italian for english.
so, i met lot of people ! i was deep in love with nyc !
november/9/2010, the third time i arrived in nyc. always using "esta" visa. customs policemen brought me to their office.
of course, question was: how could i have been living there for six months, without a job ?!
i explained about my incomes showing also the printout of my bank account with the transactions.
of course, they didn't believe me. they told me i was an "abuser" of the visa program "esta".
several policemen "interviewed" me about what, why, where, which, whatever.whatnot.
their strategy is alternate a good, kind cop follow by a mean one.
they suggested me to tell the truth because i was high risking (but i was telling the truth).
time passed one of them called me in a hallway and asked me the wallet.
he will found 2 different kind of business cards. one as photographer, the other as personal chef - with internet blog address and phone number, too.
as a matter of fact i wasn't any of the two (just a big passionate about).
but the price to print 500 of them was only 10
He doesn't have to insult every conceivable religion in existence in order to not be a hypocrite, and it seems silly to say otherwise.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
No probs, go ahead... And despite looking legit don't answer to the mail from the widow of the former president of Nigeria.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
So the Brits forced Hitler to attack Russia?
Hitler never was interested in a "peaceful coexistence" with Stalin. All he was interested in was that Stalin thought he'd be safe from Hitler until Hitler actually attacked.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Demowhat?