Slashdot Mirror
NZ Traveler's Electronics Taken At Airport; Interest in Snowden to Blame?
An anonymous reader writes "A New Zealand backpacker stripped of all electrical equipment at Auckland airport suggests attending a London talk on cyber-security following the Edward Snowden leaks may be to blame. Samuel Blackman was returning home for Christmas on 11 December from London Heathrow to Auckland via San Francisco when a customs officer at his final destination took the law graduate's two smartphones, iPad, external hard drive and laptop, demanding the passwords for all devices." For a quieter version, see also The New Zealand Herald.
It is baffling how easily civilization reverts to medieval behaviors.
We'll take your stuff, which you possibly use for your business or work, and won't tell you why, or for how long.
There need to be laws and yes, intelligence agencies, but barring a crime, this ends up being bad PR.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
taking the piss out of the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain satellites nations and their citizens for the entire "Papers, please!" nonsense that occured whilst I was growing up in the 70s-80s. Is this crow I taste?
And my girlfriend wonders why I encrypt and password protect my phone and laptop. "Give us your password." "No" "We won't let you back in the US." "Um you can't do that to a US citizen." They might confiscate the electronics. Luckily I have the ability to work without the laptop I travel with, and I'm not a fan of this kind of political intimidation. I can't be bothered to do the same to my Kindle Fire though. Unless they want my recently watched shows of netflix, a couple of ebooks (paradise lost, GOT), or my browser history of ESPN and google news, they aren't going to find much.
I guess the next step in this array of bullshit is for random folks to dress up like cops, secret service, airport authorities or any other scheme that fits the area, and detain people randomly and take their stuff. If enough people do this, then maybe people will remember why the fuck laws exist at all, and why the legal authorities have rules to follow as well. If we all allow for mere mankind to represent the universal authority (unquestionable authority; same authority that makes gravity a "law") then we're all doomed, as mankind is not fit for such authority.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
The lesson in this is NEVER carry sensitive information on you when entering an international airport.
That's not the lesson at all. This guy probably didn't have any sensitive information but that didn't stop his devices getting nicked.
The only people with lessons to learn are not the travellers but the security services unreasonably targetting them. Unfortunately, they're not interested in lessons.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Looks like Saruman is now running The Shire.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Indeed. USB stick with "insert favorite linux version" installed, and just enough things to allow you to SSH home and access whatever you need (VNC for the GUI stuff). Make sure the USB stick is read-only, no personal stuff whatsoever stored on it, and password-protect the SSH key.
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
Don't play that game.
The whole issue is contained in the US Constitution where it says,
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." - Amendment 4.
This needs to be a universal human rights declaration world wide and it needs to be a condition where no government is tolerated forcing people to give up their computers or their passwords. In the mean time anyone taking a computer on international travel is an idiot! We also need that every computer has a kill password where it is reset to factory default condition and the disk is wiped with a single password. You just give the government demanding your password the kill password and the game is over for them. Every OS should contain this in the future.
The list of countries you shouldn't travel to if you don't want to be detained and would like to keep your stuff: US, England, New Zealand.
In this world you cannot be both ridiculously reasonable and neutral on most things.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sadly I don't think you have any rights - at least not in Australia - where I come from, and which has very similar customs laws to those of New Zealand.
It would appear that they can take any and all of your electronic devices and storage equipment - including laptops, smartphones, usb keys - and they don't have to explain why or state what "reasonable suspicion" they have that you might have something illegal. On the whim of the customs officer, they can keep it for 14 days, or longer if they feel they have cause to.
At most all you can do is lodge a complaint...
The biggest surprise here is this happened in AKL instead of SFO. There is no transit freedom in the united states. If you're connecting you need to clear US customs and immigration and then re-check into your connecting flight. So if this was really a US demanded search one would think the phones and electronics would have been taken in SFO.
governments in general dont need to care about what particular policy or procedure to which one may object or find questionable. random crackdowns like this one on dissent are designed to impart a chilling effect that would discourage any challenge to a plutocratic united states governing policy. The take-home lesson of this hardship the government wishes you to embrace is that questioning the war on terror, its means or its methods, is absolutely forbidden.
but why? in america heart disease, obesity, cancer, and car accidents kill more people by the day than terrorism has ever aspired to. but these afformentioned blights on american society can be explained away by freedom to consume, the capitalist healthcare and societal model, and the idea of personal responsibility; none of which pose a threat to the government. Terrorism is the forceful demand of very reasonable requests that have been iterated thousands of times over the past fifty years to a deaf audience of american plutocrats. people forget that Osama Bin Laden had rather reasonable requests of our foreign policy that were familiar, even embraced by a number of americans seeking to reduce foreign spending, but entirely ignored by our empire: Namely to leave Saudi Arabia, withdraw from Iraq, and withdraw support from Israel.
The occupy protests are another fine example. it would have cost nothing to begin engaging protestors in constructive dialog and working to mitigate their grievances. We could have helped ensure the disenfranchised among them had a voice in the decision making process of their elected government and emerged championing the american way. Instead they were systematically targeted and demonized by media, their message marginalized and obfuscated. the protestors were arrested, beaten and some killed. free speech areas were closed and voraceously defended from protestors. A new I-Phone came out and as intended, america changed the channel.
many will see that in america, "protests arent allowed to go on forever" and this is true for a number of reasons. grass is trampled, sidewalks are congested and eventually the government grows tired. but like every government we demonize around the world, our leaders laud the idea that protests are not allowed to go on forever. That if they can control the media outcome of the event, they stymy the calcification of resolve and interest in the protest and never have to do anything more than continue with business as usual. Protests in america are as genuine and lawful as protests in china in many respects, because instead of addressing fundamental failures of north american capitalism ad foreign policy we patch over the cracks with arrest warrants and detention camps. Its the reason protests at presidential inaugurations do not take place anywhere near the inauguration, and why Occupy new york does so nowhere near Wall Street.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Google Docs. Lol. You may as well just print your shit off and hand it to the authorities directly. In fact, print it off, and fax it to the national police forces of all the major anglophone countries (including NZ). Because if they want it, they'll get it from Google anyway.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
OK, first I have to say I travel a lot and I know they can check your devices at a lot of airports, and I hate that as much as everyone. However, my question is why don't they just make a copy/backup/etc of all the devices you have and give them all back? Why do they have to take everything away? It's not that I'd have something sensitive or illegal on my devices: I never take sensitive information with me on travels, I always access them remotely on our servers, all the software I use is legit or free, and I buy all my music and videos. However, taking the devices away can cause a lot of problems, the most important being making you unreachable (and making you unable to reach people). Yes, you can buy a new tablet or a new laptop, and you can buy a new phone, but good luck trying to convince your phone company to forward your calls to a new number if you don't actually have the device and you're not even in your home country... and propagating your new number to all your important contacts could be a real PITA. Yes, some can use Google Voice, but others would be simply fscked. All in all, I don't see how one could come out OK from such an encounter.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
You post is interesting but lacks whitespace. I will not be subscribing to your newsletter.
The lesson everyone is supposed to get is "Be afraid". It's not yet "Be very afraid", but just wait and we'll get there. So this guy was in a meeting where the Guardian editor Rusbridger was present. Perhaps that fact was what the intelligence services used to tag this guy as suspicious? If so this is sending a signal that you shouldn't be too (physically or intellectually) close to people like Rusbridger. This is a classic case of a "chilling effect" in action. If this isn't what the security services want, then they are stupidly incompetent. If it's what they want they are dangerously oppressive.
There doesn't seem to be any pleasant solution to this equation.
Indeed. USB stick with "insert favorite linux version" installed, and just enough things to allow you to SSH home and access whatever you need (VNC for the GUI stuff). Make sure the USB stick is read-only, no personal stuff whatsoever stored on it, and memorise the SSH key.
FTFY
GENERATION 24: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
I hope you're right. However the article isn't pointing out what was done and why. It's pointing out that they never told him why, didn't allow him any of his entitled legal rights, and took his stuff for no apparent reason. It's the kind of thing that is happening a lot around the world (remember when they forced the president of Bolivia to land his presidential plane?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
This is not correct. The international terminal is most certainly considered part of the US. You land, your checked bags gets re-screend, and you pass through customs.
the article said the guy was a lawyer or pre-law or graduate, at least.
if they mess with him, you think your 'lawyer friend' is really going to have any say in the matter?
this kind of thing convinces me more than ever that if I need anything with data on it (beyond music players) I'll have it shipped to my destination and back.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
In 2008 I had a computer confiscated they asked me for the password I said the stress of the confiscation made me forget the password. They said to me "do I take them for fools." I said yes but what has that got to do with the password? The laptop was a Dell Computer and it was broken the keyboard did not work and it also did not have a hard drive I had taken it out to use it with another laptop. They never returned the laptop not that I wanted it back anyway. They really are stupid people they just tick boxes and do as they are told they are a special kind of brainless human being. The solicitor told me to make a claim for the laptop "the value of" for a brand-new working computer although I never did. They were looking for clone mobile phone numbers. I have a stubborn rebellious nature that is antiauthority and unfortunately I cannot control my stubborn rebelliousness.
I quickly turned off that feature when I found my 4 year old playing with my phone. She was 2 attempts away from wiping it!
No, that's my actual password, capital G and with spaces!
Whitespace is racist...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
You won't go to NZ because of trivial annoyances like that?
I for one feel that being stripped of all electric equipment without being told why or when I'll get it back is far from trivial.
There is no other country on earth that'll let you pass this sort of thing.
Apparently this guy went through at least 2 other countries without being bullied. One of them was America!
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
I have a friend who is a former US customs agent who worked at a major international airport. We used to meet up every weekend and he would tell me all sorts of funny stories about working in customs.
They normally target people travelling back from countries which are known for various illegal activities. An obvious example is to search people returning from Jamaica trying to smuggle marijuana. Usually it's a small amount for personal use, an ounce or so. Another thing they do is turn away late term pregnant women on visitor visas who are most likely looking to have anchor babies. But sometimes they do pick random people based on observation of behaviour or simply because they sense something to be off. One such story was one of the female agents saw a guy on the line who gave her a bad vibe. She picked him out for a "random" check where they take you into a room for an interview and a search of your possessions. He was returning from Thailand and everything was in order but there was a CD book filled with bootleg movies and porn. She flipped through each page and the book was divided, the first half were bootlegs and the second half was porn. That is not illegal but one DVD stuck out. It had pictures of kids on it but was in the porn section. She took the dvd out and asked him why it was in that section and he claimed he had no idea. She told him "this better not be what I think it is" and took it to a room to be viewed. She came back not a few minutes later and confirmed it was indeed child porn. They arrested the man for possession of child pornography. All on a based on a bad feeling.
"I cannot give out that information as it would pose a risk to national security."
Hey, it works for them, right?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
For example, he may have worked with Wikileaks, been in contact with Snowden, or have some other non-Snowden issue that caused Customs to be very interested in him.
So he exercised his rights to free speech and he gets harassed and stolen from by the government, and you're OK with this? Shame on you.
I'm pretty sure that New Zealand customs does not randomly target backpackers for confiscation of electronics and this is not an example of a police state gone mad.
Confiscating electronics is ALWAYS an example of a police state gone mad. Electronics contain information. Confiscating information is a violation of our rights to free speech.
I'm sure he knows the real reason they took his stuff
Blame the victim. Shame on you.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!