NZ Customs Wants Power To Require Passwords

First time accepted submitter Orange Roughy writes New Zealand customs are seeking powers to obtain passwords and encryption keys for travelers. Supposedly they will only act to obtain credentials if it was acting on 'some intelligence or observation of abnormal behaviour.' People who refuse to hand over credentials could face up to three months jail time. From the story: "Customs boss Carolyn Tremain has told MPs the department would only request travellers hand over passwords to their electronic devices if it had a reason to be suspicious about what was on them. The department unleashed a furore last week when it said in a discussion paper that it should be given unrestricted power to force people to divulge passwords to their smartphones and computers at the border. That would be without Customs officials having to show they had any grounds for suspicion."

Comments

Strong public relations

[Futurepower(R)]

Kills tourism to N.Z.

Re: Strong public relations

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't happen. It's been demonstrated over and over again that people are willing and often eager to comply with the authorities' requests. More likely, other countries will follow soon and the day will come when this is law everywhere. We live in the Surveillance Age now. Deal with it.

Re: Strong public relations

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine. We do not believe you, go to jail. When you grow up you'll learn that playing smartass with people who literally own your life is not only foolish but suicidal. You have no concept or understanding of the imbalance of power between you and them, do you?

Re: Strong public relations

[Karmashock]

You can have hidden encrypted information.

You're starting an arms race. Cisco is already shipping routers to dead drops in a bid to avoid NSA interceptions.

The entire tech ecosystem is reacting to increased surveillance.

The average user you will get it. But person with something to hide? They'll install a bit of encryption software that will not only encrypt the data but make it look like it doesn't even exist.

And if there is something you have a bogus encrypted file that is decrypted instead.

There are lots of means of dealing with this stuff.

Re: Strong public relations

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you made Nazi Germany a reality. Good job.

Re: Strong public relations

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, why not? Getting passwords and checking laptops, phones and whatnot on the border is completely useless waste of time, and won't catch a single criminal or terrorist. People will just travel with clean machines and download anything they need while in the country. What if you don't actually KNOW the password? Company IT department will tell it on the phone to you after you have passed customs? Jailed for 3 months? What if your USB stick contains a "random" datafile? Is it encrypted or just junk? Or some data for some obscure program?

That being said, people will just travel with clean computers, especially the ones that might have something to hide.

Re: Strong public relations

[gadget junkie]

It won't happen. It's been demonstrated over and over again that people are willing and often eager to comply with the authorities' requests. More likely, other countries will follow soon and the day will come when this is law everywhere. We live in the Surveillance Age now. Deal with it.

Of course they are. the great unwashed do not see the point, and the others use some form of plausible deniability encryption.
This is the usual PHB event in which a high official misread some bad science in a hairdresser magazine, asked that something be done about it to an even more ignorant burocrat, and lo and behold, something was eventually done.
nothing to see here.

Re: Strong public relations

[Anonymous Coward]

Before my next visit to NZ I'll change my phone's password to "fuckyouretardednzcustomsofficers-youimbecilepuppetstotheusa"

Feel free to use it yourself :-)

Re: Strong public relations

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to lay down in the street and die just because some with supposed authority asks you to.

There's also a third solution: appear to be compliant while retaining your privacy.

Re: Strong public relations

[Sun]

No, it is not.

It is a legitimate invocation of a core reason why Nazism was allowed to rule, despite most Germans being against it.

Goodwin is more about "You do know that Hitler also washed his hands daily". Drawing an analogy that has nothing to do with Nazism.

Shachar

Re: Strong public relations

[dargaud]

Or what if your work actually FORBIDS you to reveal your password to anyone, under various penalties ? I'd like to see a high US official pass through customs and watch a random rent-a-cop get his password and copy all his files. Right, like this is gonna happen.

Decoy

[photonic]

Easy workaround: dual-booted laptop, one partition with WindowsXP and weak password, full with celebrity porn, 9/11 conspiracy documents and spyware to keep them busy for a while. Fully encrypted Linux partition for everything else.

"not its intention", hah, hah!

[whoever57]

Although the proposed power would let Customs request passwords from any traveller or do random checks on electronic devices, Tremain told a parliamentary select committee that was not its intention.

Instead, the department would only use the power if it was acting on "some intelligence or observation of abnormal behaviour", she said.

Protip: whenever some government official says that they won't use their power for some purpose, you know that it will be used in exactly that way or for that purpose. Case in point, RIPA in the UK, which has been used (abused) in cases related to petty crime in exactly the way it was originally claimed it would not be used.

See you in three months

[facetube]

for i in `seq 1 2160`; do echo "Hello, jail! It's hour $n."; done \
| gpg -a --symmetric --passphrase "$(dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1024 count=1)" > ~/important.txt