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New Zealand Travelers Refusing Digital Search Now Face $5000 Customs Fine (msn.com)
Travelers in New Zealand who refuse to hand over their phone or laptop passwords to Customs officials can now be slapped with a $5000 fine. From a report: The Customs and Excise Act 2018 -- which comes into effect today -- sets guidelines around how Customs can carry out "digital strip-searches." Previously, Customs could stop anyone at the border and demand to see their electronic devices. However, the law did not specify that people had to also provide a password. The updated law makes clear that travelers must provide access -- whether that be a password, pin-code or fingerprint -- but officials would need to have a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. "It is a file-by-file [search] on your phone. We're not going into 'the cloud.' We'll examine your phone while it's on flight mode," Customs spokesperson Terry Brown said. If people refused to comply, they could be fined up to $5000 and their device would be seized and forensically searched. Mr Brown said the law struck the "delicate balance" between a person's right to privacy and Customs' law enforcement responsibilities. "I personally have an e-device and it maintains all my records -- banking data, et cetera, et cetera -- so we understand the importance and significance of it."
$5000 fine might be worth paying, depending on the circumstances, if the alternative is jail or loss of corporate secrets. Way around this is either an erased phone or an SD card with a smaller capacity stamped on it with plus an encrypted partition on the remainder. If what's on the unencrypted partition is innocuous, this should stand up to a casual search at least.
I wipe my iphone before landing on a plane, and set it up as new. I do the same with my iPad. I have an external SSD that I use as a time capsule specifically for time capsule to quickly update and backup / restore. It's encrypted, so it won't show anything unless you know how to mount it (a simple offset).
When I'm through customs, I start restoring my laptop, then my iDevices. It's terribly inconvenient, and never been tested crossing the border back into the US, but I'm of Arab descent and I feel that if they want you, they will simply plant it or find SOMETHING you have done to break the law.
This is the sad state of "freedom" in the US these days. I'm a citizen (have been since birth) like my father before me.
I have a Chromebook and I run Crouton on it with Debian. Adding a ne user tat does not have that is pretty easy.
So I could just add a user with some pasword. If that where not possible, i would change the password to "pass" for the duration.
Or even better would be if they press "Enter" instead of CTRL-d to go to restore mode. Ir I do it myself.
That way I have a blank PC when I arive. Setting things back takes an hour., if that.
Same for the phone. Just restore factory settings. I could even pop in a cheap sim card and blank sd card.
Sim card can be had for 6EUR. Who cares they know it is in my name. It is not as if I am going to use it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Relying to this top comment so more people see this.
As an NZ citizen I think this isn't a great development and understand why people in these comments are setting don't go to NZ and only take burner electronics with you etc.
What is missing, is that the border service currently only request searches of electronic devices about 500 times a year, total, across all border arrivals. That's a little over 1 per day across the whole country.
You have to be a suspect in the first place before they ask for your device. They don't expect the number to increase due to the new policy.
So yes, this is an unfortunate development and it'd be better if they didn't have these powers. However you have to be pretty damn "unlucky" to be targeted by this policy in the first place. 99.9999% of border crossers have nothing to worry about.