ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Using any non opensource software is so scary that I wonder why would anyone pay and take the risk.
There was even one case when polish company purchased software directly from the US but polish distributor of this software insisted that it was pirated because they didn't sell it. Police went in. Confiscated computers and media for investigation. Software was essential for operation of this company so the company died.
I wonder however how they would confiscate my laptop running only free software. Well, they could always pretend it is stolen : I usually don't have the receipt of it while travelling.
No one knows a priori what software you have on your laptop. They either have to take your word for it or analyse the contents of the disk -- and that's a reason to withhold your equipment.
I'm sure it would be returned. Eventually.
In Romania, businesses must fill each month online statements, but such fillings can only be done with Microsoft Internet Explorer, and there's no option to fill them in person. So you're forced to use non opensource software.
E. g. the EULA for IE6 states:
"NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A VALID EULA FOR ANY "OS PRODUCT" (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98, MICROSOFT WINDOWS NT 4.0, MICROSOFT WINDOWS 2000, MICROSOFT MILLENNIUM EDITION, MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP, OR ANY OTHER MICROSOFT OPERATING SYSTEM THAT IS A SUCCESSOR TO ANY OF THE FOREGOING OPERATING SYSTEMS) YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO INSTALL, COPY, OR OTHERWISE USE THE OS COMPONENTS AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS UNDER THIS SUPPLEMENTAL EULA."
Border guards give 'enhanced pat downs' to a middle class suburban family and find no weapons or contraband, but then open the family computer to find an unlicensed Finding Nemo avi, and haul them all off to jail.
It's just such a bizarre mix of nanny-state and fascism. I know it's a pointless rhetorical question, but... how on earth has it come to this??
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
It has come to this one small step at a time. That is how politicians work. They know that the "whole" is to scary for voters to accept all at once. So they find just what they can get away with this year, then grab a tiny bit more next year, and so on. Eventually, everyone looks back and thinks "how on earth has it come to this??"
Or am I just too naive?
What they want is maximum power/profit.
And it's not politicians --those are mostly puppets.
America is/is becoming a corporate state, and corporatism was the very essence of Mussolini's fascism.
The very notion of lobbyist groups is fascistic (Mussolini himself partitioned the power system in Italy to consist of various group interests in a great extend).
Power and law become then an exchange between groups (lobbying), experts (often paid lackeys of said groups), and politicians, and democracy goes out of the window.
The democratic alternative would have been several opposed political parties, so that the play for power is open to the general masses --the population that supports them-- directly, and is carried out as a public struggle for the vote.
But the differences between Republicans and Democrats in most matters are mostly marginal or a joke, and mainly in issues that don't matter to the actual power play --- like playing pro or against "gay marriage" to appeal to conservative or progressive voters, the same voters that both parties pass laws to make them poorer and more controlled in every possible way.
You're being way too reductionist, buying the anti-capitalist propaganda. To be sure, there's plenty of bad things to be said about corporations. But it's tremendously naive to believe that it's corporations that are calling all the shots.
Remember, the corporations looking for these perks are every bit as dependent on the power of government as the government is on corporate donations. So directing ire at corporations for trying to get rents out of the government, without simultaneously excoriating government officials for selling out, is misguided.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the only viable strategy to combat this is to combat the government abuses.
The corporations are doing what's natural: find places where they can get advantages over competitors, and take them to maximize shareholder value. But the government officials are more culpable. They are making promises that they (seem to) have no intention of keeping, and in doing so are blatantly violating their oaths of office. While the negative end results is the result of each, I believe that the members of the government are more immoral, and more deserving of our anger.
And the answer is not greater legislation to control corporations. That's just giving the government more power that they can sell to the highest bidder. The answer is to strip away the government's power. This may seem counterintuitive, because it appears to leave us unprotected against corporate abuse. But when the vehicle to that abuse is through government power, then curtaining that power leaves the corporations themselves unarmed against us.
This is really quite analogous to the arguments for/against gun control. Sure, demanding licensing of guns, etc., keeps the weapons out of the hands of much of the public. But the bad guys still get the guns, and the poor law-abiding citizens are then left defenseless. It's better, in my mind, to ensure that we can all compete on a level playing field, rather than handicap the citizenry so that the bad guys (or the corporations) get the power.
There is ample evidence of corporate fraud in recent years, not the least of which is around the mortgage securitization processes.
We need a level playing field, with known, equitable rules, and with enforcement, and with judicial review.
Commit to regulation and a pro-governance model? Lose.
Commit to a corporate model and a pro-corporate model? Lose.
It's about balance.
You'll have to first account for two words: "regulatory capture".
Until you can find a miracle to get around that problem, regulation is in the long run destined to be turned inside-out and used to sustain the industries. Look no farther than the current debates about various IP problems for an example.
There is an old Milton Friedman video floating around which dates back to the 1970s. At the time he was spending a lot of time trying to convince people that oversized governments weren't a good thing.
One of the very salient points he makes to a detractor is that if you limit the size of the government, you - by nature - limit the power a corporation can obtain. If the government has limited powers, so it goes that a corporation can gain limited powers - it should be impossible for a corporation to gain more power than a government.
It's the essential point that everyone skips over - they see government powers failing to check corporate growth, and so want more government power. If you take this to the argument by absurdity, you end up with a fascist government that exerts total control over the people, and then licences that control out to selected corporations in return for cash and favors.
The problem is human nature - and the solution must be to design a system that makes the assumption that humans will try and gather power and abuse it. It's the same concept as term limits but applied across a much broader spectrum.
Consider this "very salient point": "if you limit the size of the government, you - by nature - limit the power a corporation can obtain. If the government has limited powers, so it goes that a corporation can gain limited powers - it should be impossible for a corporation to gain more power than a government".
This point is BS. There are places where corporations (or even one corporation) have more power than the government everywhere around the world, especially in Africa and Asia. There are entire countries where the government is just paid lackeys and a front for some mega-corporation. There is even a term for those, they are called "banana republics".
The limiting of the argument to "one corporation" is especially BS, since even if a single corporation cannot get "bigger than the government" in a place like the US, the "corporate interests" can and do get bigger than the government.
Despite fighting in the market (and that, only if they are serving the same market, which, say, Google, Exxon and GE do not), corporations also agree on a lot of things. For example media companies agree on SOPA and PIPA and a thousand other things (drm everywhere, destroy cinematographers unions, etc). And all corporate interest's also converge on a lot of things, like tax deductions, being able to fire any employee at will, lower minimum wages, unpaid overtime, etc.
Consider a country where there is no public health coverage. What will happen will not be "competing health services for the benefit of the customer" but an emergence of a health industry cartel and the total dependence of the people in it. Things that need big scale and resources, like building, buying equipment, and running a hospital or a bank or an insurance company, have been seen time and again to build cartels with "competitors" and kill competition to maximize profits.
(See also: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27512/ , but one can also see it from experience, if one follows the political/social history of more than one country --something easy to do in Europe).
People talking about the limiting of the power of government always have in mind the equation "government = some politicians who abuse their power", and never "government = the only power body that is elected and somewhat controlled by the general public".
Not the same thing. 'Corporatism' in the Italian Fascism sense does not mean what you think it means. It means all society is organized 'corporations' controlled by the state.
All society is turning to "organized corporations" controlled by the state.
That's why in my comment above, I did not only talk about corporations as such ("Microsoft", "Google", "Apple", "GE", etc), but also about lobbies in general.
All those (actual companies, and aggregate lobbying entities like the health lobby, the christian lobby, the gay lobby, the gun lobby, the press lobby) etc are the equivalent of fascism corporations.
A nice discourse of this can be found in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Unconscious-Civilization-John-Ralston-...
No. Look up the definitions.
> All society is turning to "organized corporations" controlled by the state.
Again, only in your mind. There is no evidence of this outside your head.
1) You go to 2 wars with the dumbest of excuses by the dumbest of presidents in order for some mega-corps in the industrial-military complex to profit.
-- said president probably got elected due to electoral fraud in the first place, anyway--
2) You have para-police security personnel do naked scans of you and cup your genitals in airpots.
3) You have laws that invalidate due process, like the Patriot Act.
4) You have mass electronic surveillance, security agencies installing backdoors in public platforms, etc.
5) You give ~ 1 trillion dollar bailout to mass financial companies that brought the economy to a halt through deregulation and greed.
6) They try to pass 2-3 laws (PIPA, SOPA, ACTA) to control the internet, including censoring whole websites.
and "there is no evidence of this". Except in my head. Right.
How is this head-in-the-sand thing working for you?
And so you resort to ad-hominem and downvoting instead of argument.
Second, I resort to ad-hominen? Really? Because, besides the "head in the sand" comment, my reply included SIX (count 'em!), numbered, counter arguments. It boggles the mind how one can manage to miss them.
And all those six (count 'em) arguments, in order to reply to your sans-argument ad-hominen that it's all "only in [my] mind. There is no evidence of this outside [my] head".
It's okay to make slippery slope arguments, but let's not get into Godwin territory.
We have detention without trial for extended periods, or indefinitely if you mutter the magic word "terrorism".
We have outright torture of detainees, and people dying in prisons.
If a suspect does get to trial, it might be in a secretive court where they have no opportunity to confront their accuser or see and challenge all of the evidence against them.
We have laws that allow government agents to infringe on almost every fundamental civil liberty by one kind of executive order or another, some of which are strikingly similar to the Enabling Act in their effect even if the intent was not necessarily the same.
We have routine invasion of privacy and monitoring of the general populace without any reasonable grounds for suspicion/probable cause/whatever you like to call it. There are well-documented cases of routine national surveillance being set up by police or security services without any oversight or consent from elected governments.
We have seen far too many cases of obvious abuse of peaceful protesters (or simply those caught in the wrong place at the wrong time) and in some cases we have seen courts accept a defence of the indefensible.
We have seen deaths at the hands of police actions that were later shown to be completely unjustified and an operational screw-up from start to finish, for which no-one has ever been held accountable.
The biggest difference between the situation today and the situation in Germany around the Second World War is a matter of scale, nothing more. And I think that is exactly the lesson that Pastor Niemoeller was trying to teach. While matters of intellectual property are hardly the stuff of revolutions, when you get into things like routine searches of private matters without justification, which in turn build on other obvious abuses that have been going in in the interests of "security" at transport hubs in recent years, I think you're way over the line into "why haven't we stopped this madness yet".
Saying that "government policies in many Western countries today that are every bit as evil as the kind of thing that was going on in Germany at that time" is very ignorant. Who are our Jews and Gypsies? Where is our Kristallnacht? Where is our Triumph of the Will? Where is our 'Der Ewige Jew'? Where are our massive crowds doing what is our sieg heil?
In fact a fundamental difference between America 2012 and Germany 1938 (among many) is that we have massive amounts of people vocally and publicly against the laws our politicians are pushing and the state of the country. In 1938 Germany you had the exact opposite.
> Who are our Jews and Gypsies?
Islamophobia is widespread since 9/11. In England and Wales, black people are thirty times as likely to be subject to a stop-and-search by the police as white people. Don't kid yourself that we don't have rampant discrimination just because you aren't in a group that gets discriminated against.
Obviously no-one credible is equating the seriousness of police abuse of stop-and-search powers with gas chamber mass executions. But there really are extreme cases with consequences not so far from the concentration camps even today. There's a little US military base in Cuba you've probably heard of, for example, and if you don't know why they chose to use that particular base for what they now use it for, you should really look up the history. Once again, the scale is very different, but what is the difference in principle?
One can draw similar parallels with some of the other things you mentioned.
We might not have Kristallnacht, but we are increasingly living in surveillance states, and we have increasingly paramilitary police weapons and tactics, and we have military units being deployed on home soil. We are eroding the fundamental concept of due process and basic legal principles like habeas corpus. I don't really believe we're about to see the violent subjugation of an entire section of our society or that our current political leaders have any ambition to act in that way, but that's not the point. The mechanisms for such abuse should never even be created in a free country.
We might not have Triumph of the Will, but modern political machines are propagandists unrivalled in the history of humanity. For example, for several years in the early 2000s, as the most recent Iraq War was building momentum, about half of the US population thought the Hussein regime was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. That support was used to justify a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and taken a staggering amount of time and money out of Western governments that could have been spent on far more constructive purposes.
> In fact a fundamental difference between America 2012 and Germany 1938 (among many) is that we have massive amounts of people vocally and publicly against the laws our politicians are pushing and the state of the country.
And the really scary thing in all of this is that you have massive amounts more who are openly complying and think it's all being done for their safety and well-being. As I said, modern political machines are propagandists without equal. They're just more subtle about it than they were 75 years ago.
You have given examples of parallels to these things but there is no commonality of purpose behind them.
'Der Ewige Jude' was not a campaign to create a 'common enemy' or hoodwink the German people as I assume you believe Islamophobia is (I can only assume you believe Islamophobia can be explained by media promotion rather than an emergent feeling among the populace in response to 9/11). It was done with the express purpose of dehumanizing Jews so the populace would be complacent with the gas chambers.
So please, show me a commonality of purpose behind all these parallels you have shown. All you have are disparate events to which you have identified a certain aspect which is similar to what Nazi Germany did.
Still, it doesn't matter to a black kid in London whether he's being excessively hassled because a senior officer made an active decision to employ racial profiling or because of institutional racism within the Met. The consequence is still the same.
Moreover, in most of the worst cases today, there really is someone actively making those decisions. Guantanamo Bay did not become what it is by accident. The West did not invade Iraq by accident, and the Blair administration did not fail to notice the two million citizens marching in protest to demonstrate that the war did not have popular support. More recently, the police did not detain peaceful protestors in London in a restricted area for hours without food, water or toilet facilities by accident, and the courts that condoned such behaviour did not reach their decision without looking at the evidence to establish the facts of what really happened and why.
These actions all had different victims, and obviously some had much more serious consequences than others. The one thing they all have in common is authorities that are granted powers in law that most of us don't get using those powers in ways that conflict with what we used to consider basic human rights and getting away with it. However well-intentioned they might have been in their actions, however they rationalised those decisions in their own minds, some rights and freedoms should be above interference by the administration of the day, whoever the victims are and however small their number, and any decent human being ought to stand up for those rights and freedoms wherever they are threatened. As I said, I think that is exactly the warning Pastor Niemoeller was trying to give us.
All governments past and present abuse their power. Sometimes in large ways. Sometimes in small ways. That alone is not sufficient to warrant a comparison to Nazi Germany which carries more historical baggage than it's clear you realize.
You are cheapening your position by resorting to hyperbole.
Please notice that at no point in this discussion have I suggested that any current Western administration is behaving like the Nazi party of 1930s Germany, equated any current leader with Hitler, suggested that the motivation for these laws was genocide, or anything similar. I have criticised only specific measures already taken that pose a much wider threat to basic human rights and freedoms than has yet been realised, and I have been careful to acknowledge that I am considering only the end results and that the motivations for such measures are probably very different.
Fortunately the situation nowadays still is different in many points. However consider that several hundred thousands Iraqis have died for no good reason at all. That two countries are under military occupation.
The main contrast, as you mentioned, is people utter apathy. Instead of rabid nazis, we're seeing only paralysed sheep; instead of angry people wanting revenge from the entire world (read about the treaty of Versailles), we have frightened people afraid of losing their material comfort.
That doesn't make ACTA and other similar laws any better, unfortunately. Now more than ever westerners look like Elois under the control of Morlocks.
How this this fascism in particular and not, say, Communism?
In Fascism the Government is owned by (some of) the corporations.
No, in Fascism the government owns the corporations and uses them to control society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism#General_c...
> "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."
Why do you believe that it has come to this? Has this happened to someone? Or are you just believing what is on wikipedia?
1) encrypt my partitions (other than root, to make upgrades and reinstalls easier; I use LUKS)
2) copy the essential first megabytes of each LUKS partition to my server or shell account somewhere, encrypted with GPG
3) fill that space with random data
4) travel and go through customs
5) access the GPG encrypted LUKS blocks over internet, decrypt and copy them over
6) boot back into my system
If at 4) "they" require me to decrypt the partitions, I can honestly say I can't: for security reasons I don't have the decryption keys with me. If my equipment gets confiscated when they hear I won't and can't decrypt the partitions, I will have to clean the physical laptop to remove any keyloggers, or just replace it before proceeding to restore my encrypted setup. If "they" find out about my encrypted LUKS blocks, I can also ask my friend to provide half of the GPG passphrase, so that I can honestly claim I don't have the passphrase to unlock the blocks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Boucher
In that case the government could only compel the defendant to produce his keys because they already knew what was on the drive in question.
It's a federal crime to lie to a border agent or government agent, and the EFF specifically says not to do this - see comment above.
Hidden volumes are fine for other uses and perhaps in other jurisdictions but will land you in hot water in the US/US Border.
The EFF advice is as follows:
Although TrueCrypt hidden volumes may have some practical applications, we think they are unlikely to be useful in the border search context because they are most helpful when lying to someone about whether there is additional hidden data on a disk. Lying to border agents is not advisable, because it can be a serious crime.
Lying to border agents clearly is a serious offence, but as far as I can see that is the "only" major problem with hidden volumes. Given many of the suggestions so far involve lying to border agents along with weird schemes that are less technically secure than hidden volumes it would appear hidden volumes have two things going for them:
1) No worse than other options (assuming you have to carry data with you somehow)
2) Give you a higher possibility that you won't need to lie to border agents (failing to tell them about your additional layer of security will get you in trouble, but is more defensible in court than outright lying)
For this to work, you need to actually use the dummy partition for non-sensitive matters -- and be absolutely religious about separating the sensitive tasks from non-sensitive, which is much more difficult than it first sounds.
There is nothing unusual about that.
(yep, it's the "hit him with a wrench" one)
This won't help you legally. You may honestly claim that you don't have the passphrase, but you cannot honestly claim that you cannot decrypt the contents. You just have to call and ask your friend while you're detained at customs.
Ask the inverse: they decide to detain you, indefinitely, until you produce the encryption key or admit that there's some base level of contraband on your computer that you're responsible for. What happens in that case?
Maybe as a Canadian I see this differently. At least as an American you will have certain rights that you can hope to depend on in your own country. But I forfeit all those rights when I cross the border. What's to stop these guys from detaining me as an international terrorist?
Might hidden volumes help you pass a cursory check? Sure. But if someone really wants your data it's not likely going to keep you out of a contempt of court charge.
Now all that you have to do is prove that you either don't know or have forgotten the key that decrypts your random bits into a plan they will accept. How hard do you think it will be to convince an aggressive prosecutor/judge that you are innocent when you have no evidence (can't prove a negative) and the government has reasonable suspicion?
A small key does not contain enough information to make the data decrypt to any arbitrary thing.
Although TrueCrypt hidden volumes may have some practical applications, we think they are unlikely to be useful in the border search context because they are most helpful when lying to someone about whether there is additional hidden data on a disk. Lying to border agents is not advisable, because it can be a serious crime. [PDF: https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/EFF-border-...]
This advice is based on the EFF document. IANAL.
https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-gui...
How many border protection agents look into your /etc/fstab and know fdisk, mount and cryptsetup?
How is this supposed to be implemented?
They don't need to. Microsoft and other companies have been providing software on bootable CDs and USB keys to do quick 'security' audits of PCs for years to various police forces. I'd be extremely surprised if detecting encrypted/hidden partitions wasn't a common feature.
Is there software that detect HDDs that are disabled via BIOS? Do the border agents reset the BIOS? Are they looking at individual files and encrypted archives?
Show them a partition with normal files encrypted with the display key, while keeping your secret-key-activated files on the hidden partition.
Of course, this won't stop a determined search, but it will likely get you by the security guards.
I think you'd have better luck giving them something they expect instead of sabotaging your system.
- I don't find it reasonable for "them" to grill me too much. I don't need to hide my encrypted partitions or use hidden partitions. I'm not a target of any interest to any three-letter agencies or customs officials. But I don't want to start discussing unlocking my laptop with anyone, I want to make it a matter of "can't" instead of "won't".
- The friend scheme might not be necessary or a good choice. I could just say I have the decryption keys at home which is entirely true. I can still use the machine: I have just deselected a few partitions out of use permanently until I return home
In particular, Article 14.
ARTICLE 14: SMALL CONSIGNMENTS AND PERSONAL LUGGAGE
1. Each Party shall include in the application of this Section goods of a commercial nature sent in small consignments.
2. A Party may exclude from the application of this Section small quantities of goods of a non-commercial nature contained in travellers’ personal luggage.
Note it is may exclude and as such it's up to the individual countries on how they implement this. I've contacted my government representatives (Australia) to find out their position on this section.
Edit: More information in this fact sheet
https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-gui...
Just to clarify, raphman did post his link before it was submitted as a story should anyone be wondering once this moves out of the resolution of a day.
raphman 7 hours ago
[link]
Defending Privacy at the U.S. Border...
144 points by llambda 5 hours agoYou can't invade people's homes but you can search them thoroughly while crossing the border. People are used to having their privacy invaded while crossing the border.
Can somebody tell me if this is expected to be enforced only to citizens from countries that actually signed ACTA, or also to everyone else?
Talk about a waste of time.
[Posted using my own account... not a US citizen and not hoping to travel there. If I were extradited i guess i wouldnt take any equipment or data!]
- What if it was a gift?
- What if he is not aware of the brand and thought it was just another bag?
Where would a person learn this? I've heard the brand name Gucci before, but I had no idea it was so expensive. Naturally, I'm not the sort of person who would buy such things because of the name of the company who made them, but it also wouldn't seem strange to me to see a given brand on sale outside of a luxury store.
I guess we each have our own set of assumptions about what the "average person" should consider common knowledge.
I think the safest thing is to not buy these things. Buy the most serviceable and reliable vanilla physical products (a watch, not a Rolex). Don't buy music, and certainly don't have music or movies on your laptop when you cross borders.
Anything protected by commercial IP is becoming too dangerous to have around, legally obtained or not.
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/or8ag/ive_read_the...
In July 2008, the United States Department of Homeland
Security disclosed that its border search policies allow
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to conduct
random searches of electronic devices for "information
concerning terrorism, narcotics smuggling, and other
national security matters; alien admissibility;
contraband including child pornography, monetary
instruments, and information in violation of copyright
or trademark laws; and evidence of embargo violations
or other import or export control laws."[61][62] US
Senator Russell Feingold called the policies "truly
alarming" and proposed to introduce legislation to
require reasonable suspicion of illegality and to
prohibit racial profiling.[61] The Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals has previously upheld the
constitutionality of laptop searches without reasonable
suspicion at border crossings.[61]
1) Feingold can't introduce anything anymore, since he is no longer a Senator. (This tells you how long it has been since this section of the wikipedia article has been edited).
2) Even for US citizens, there is no right for people to bring whatever they want into the country. Once you leave the country, you lose 4th amendment protections. So, if you don't want to be searched, don't bring anything with you. It has nothing to do with the Constitution since the Constitution stops at the border.
How does any legislator look at the people they represent and come to the conclusion that this is a good idea?
The hugely ironic part of all of this is that laws like this don't make moving data harder for criminals. It just forces them to use better data-securing practices in their day to day lives which make it harder for local law enforcement to get their job done.
The only impact I can see this legislation having is making law abiding citizens upset with their democracy.
Did you see the excerpts from the SOPA hearings? The legislators can conclude that this degree of disruption is acceptable because they are morons.
what better way to stop piracy than to harass travelers? i can think of none.
I use a netbook for travelling which gets a blanket format & reinstall before and after it goes travelling. Even then there's a risk that it might have had a hardware keylogger installed on it (this has happened to business people travelling to China in the past).
Your business or other legal data is encrypted in the cloud. If your business or other operation would not be harmed by customs having the data, have it also on the netbook for you convenience. Your encrypted data in the cloud isn't there to keep it sekrit from the government, it's there so you can get it at the other end.
If your netbook is not confiscated, or out of your sight for a suspicious period, then great.
If it's gone for a suspicious time, don't use it on the plane and get rid of it on the other end after wiping it.
If the netbook is confiscated or otherwise compromised, get a cheap netbook on the other end, download your clouded data, and biz on.
Repeat as necessary.
This doesn't protect your illegal (or impossible to prove legal) data, it just allows you to continue to operate after traveling through a bad neighborhood (the airport).
OK.
But, what about key escrow? What if I gave the keys to my attorney? Can I be compelled to lie to my attorney about whether I'm under arrest?
Or Jacob Appelbaum, who carries USB drives with the Bill of Rights encoded on them. If the remaining blocks were noise, would he have to somehow prove they weren't encrypted data?
This all seems very unsustainable.
Look, if border patrol is in the wrong mood and you try to pull a "well, I'd let you see it but it's encrypted and I don't have the key!" they're going to detain you until they have the information they want. So what's the point? That's the real issue here: we've given more authority to uneducated, power-hungry citizens to mistreat others at will.
I haven't read the actual text, and I imagine that the issue of whether or not ACTA will force border searches is definitively answered by the treaty itself. The Wikipedia passage in question appears to have been written in response to rumours and leaks dating back to 2009.
I didn't do a thorough analysis, nor am I am lawyer, nor am I an ACTA supporter, and I think that the wikipedia article referenced is poorly written and not thoroughly representative of the current status of ACTA, its powers and effect.
(edit: it looks like some of the other commenters have picked up on this as well - definitely worth a thorough read of all the comments for a more current view of what we're actually getting with ACTA, I found this post especially helpful [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496277)
Im fine with the search but they have no right to scan my notebook etc.
Yes they can charge you/confiscate if you don't cooperate/unlock your data. You might be better off hiding it in plain view, it's not like they're going to do much more than a cursory glance.
The EFF says that you can't be required to unlock encrypted files without a court order. https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-gui...
Whether or not that's a good idea is up to you and certainly (as a non-US citizen) I'd be very reluctant to start making a fuss - if I had anything sufficiently sensitive that a long flight home seemed the less-bad option, I would have just sent it in parallel.
FWIW I'm a Canadian citizen and when returning to that country I refuse, politely, to answer any questions whatsoever (which have become really quite intrusive) on the grounds that there is no legal requirement to answer. It often leads to a customs screen (which is a ten minute delay/irritation) but there, and I assume in the US, there is no right to deny entry to someone holding valid travel documents.
The final decision of entry to a country(at that point) lies with the immigration officer. I imagine you can ask nicely for a review after you've been flown back to your point of origin.
I'll dig up some links, but seizure of non-citizen's computers at US borders is possible and scary. I treat the US border like a hackers conference - take a freshly imaged device, and refresh it on your return.
ARTICLE 11: INFORMATION RELATED TO INFRINGEMENT
Without prejudice to its law governing privilege, the protection of confidentiality of information sources, or the processing of personal data, each Party shall provide that, in civil judicial proceedings concerning the enforcement of intellectual property rights, its judicial authorities have the authority, upon a justified request of the right holder, to order the infringer or, in the alternative, the alleged infringer, to provide to the right holder or to the judicial authorities, at least for the purpose of collecting evidence, relevant information as provided for in its applicable laws and regulations that the infringer or alleged infringer possesses or controls. Such information may include information regarding any person involved in any aspect of the infringement or alleged infringement and regarding the means of production or the channels of distribution of the infringing or allegedly infringing goods or services, including the identification of third persons alleged to be involved in the production and distribution of such goods or services and of their channels of distribution.
It seems like this might cover a court ordering you to provide the password to determine infringement. However the first sentence might get you off the hook if you're a doctor or lawyer or other similarly privileged professional who has information about your clients on your laptop. I'll update this when I finish reading it tomorrow if I find anything more specific.
I have never been arrested, never investigated. But recent events, have instigated in me a fear of those in power. The Megavideo seizure was a wake up call.
I wont even post comments like this under my normal HN account.
Allegedly pirated music. Which makes me wonder, how would they figure out whether something is pirated or not?
But I'm curious, how else do you think that conversation is going to go?
Although TrueCrypt hidden volumes may have some practical applications, we think they are unlikely to be useful in the border search context because they are most helpful when lying to someone about whether there is additional hidden data on a disk. Lying to border agents is not advisable, because it can be a serious crime. [PDF: https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/EFF-border-...]
PD: Sorry to re-post it here, but I add it, for anyone reading this later. You can get in serious trouble.
And to make it worse: If you refuse to provide information or assistance upon request, the border agent may seize your device for further inspection or consider you uncooperative, which the agent may take into consideration when deciding whether to allow you to enter the United States.
And that kind of thinking is very, very dangerous. Much worse than SOPA - which, to be frank, was going to be used much like patents are - as a corporate bludgeon in a war for profits (in my opinon- obviously this is speculation). This idea is a direct violation individual freedoms with no greater goal than to exert control over the populace.
It's also a signal that the concept of trade restriction is deeply and dangerously flawed.
On another note. How long before tools come out that "fidget" with media files on your computer so you can defeat CRC match scans of media on your computer? "Well the file is Finding Nemo.avi, but it doesn't match any of the known pirated copies of that movie."
Finally, how is this not a gross violation of the right to privacy? This has about as much chance of standing up in SCOTUS as a new law reinstating slavery IMHO.
Anyone want to partner up :)
The "no fault of their own" part is obviously being challenged by those who claim that the data should have been saved in multiple places. Though I think this just avoids the real issue of the bust having negatively affected users that had legitimate use cases for the service.
I don't know how long you're planning to stay in the States, but it might be wise to bring an empty laptop and certainly not an external HD if it's for a short visit.
The particular section cites: a) a Vancouver Sun article from 2008; b) a blog post from 2009; c) a Globe and Mail article from 2008; and d) a Washington Post article from 2008. All of these are somewhat speculative. It also cites a Customs and Border Patrol policy paper which affirms that customs has the right to search people as they enter the country.
Also part of the wikipedia entry is a quote from a European Commission fact sheet that directly counters the notion that ACTA will lead to the wide-spread searching of iPods of consumers.
If you want to argue that something is draconian and will force (not merely allow) searches, then at least come up with something more substantial than wikipedia.
You might have to, but the experience is questionable due to American customs having no respect whatsoever for privacy or personal belongings. All your luggage are belongs to them, in other words.
Compare with Europe/Schengen where that simply is not a problem.
And that clumsiness and ignorance gets copied into international treaties.
As long as America continues to present it's theater politics through it's media outlets, people won't know what actually happens.
Also, if we're talking about software developers and startup founders, you can't bullshit this kind of people for a long period of time. They'd figure it out. Well, they did.
Prove it. Isn't it about time Europeans started to take responsibility for their ("democratic") governments? Why did your government sign the dotted line? If answer is "US made us", then news flash: You do not live in a democracy. If you insist you Europeans have your act together (where as we boobs in US don't) then clearly it is your own government that is behind it.
ACTA: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2010/april/tradoc_1460... [ARTICLE 6.1: BECOMING PARTY TO THE AGREEMENT is worth a gander.]
Thanks to Wikileaks and other sources we do have evidence of long running pressure and threats by the US to influence or in some cases directly write other countries laws in respect to copyright. One recent example about piracy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/05/us-pressure...
Spain? What about the European powers? Does that mean UK (nuclear power), France (nuclear power), Germany (fine ~occupied, but still a major economic power), are broken democracies subject to "threats" from, and cowering before, United States of America? (Poodles, one and all?)
America is the scape goat of the /Global/ oligarchy. My opinion, of course. You may wish to continue to trust in The Guardian (of Truth).
For every dollar lost by entertainment they probably got ten gained by telecoms, internet companies and consumer hardware.
Now, I understand that as "hackers" we are likely to go on about technical measures to avert this kind of search. But, that's not the point. The point is they should not violate your privacy in the first place. And that is a political problem.
It would be nice if most of the comments were about how to avert ACTA in the first place. You, know, like SOPA, but even better.
And people using 'fascism' as a general-purpose pejorative with no understanding of the history of the world.
I'm not using it as a "general-purpose pejorative" (as in: "oh, the cop hit me in the demonstration, fascism!", or "TSA cupped my privates, oh, the fascism!"). I'm making an exact analogy to the actual historical form fascism, which you may agree or disagree with.
Also, are TSA agents now capable of understanding what is fair use now since they have trouble with the volume of liquid I am able to bring?
What if someone has a bunch of legally licensed AVIs ? You get side-lined for a 3-4 hours. They should open a little MPAA lawyer's office in the airport. He'll help you negotiate a settlement before you get on the next leg of your flight to Houston.
Similarly, I may have ripped an AVI from a legit DVD. For my own convenience while traveling. I sometimes do.
Ripping a DVD is, I believe, a criminal act in the US and a number of other countries (including the UK).
Like cassette recording an album in ye olden analogue days. To stop vinyl wear-and-tear. That was certainly perfectly legal as long as it wasn't distributed.
Sigh. I'm a criminal and don't even know it.
I'm fucking sick of paying taxes and yet still being labelled a criminal by people who don't even know me. I'm sure I'm not alone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Circumvention_of_DVD_co...
"personal use" copying is not explicitly mentioned as a type of fair use, and case law has not yet established otherwise.
Silly of me to have forgotten the trivial CP scheme.
Considering I've probably paid £10 per person to have seen it in the cinema and then have bought the over-priced DVD as well. How many times do they expect me to pay for the same-old-same-old?
I've paid two, maybe three times for the same product. Fair Use isn't a crime and I'll please myself. Either that or simply stop participating and stop buying their product entirely.
May as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb, eh?