$5000 FINE for refusing digital search!

I was working with the US DHS when they first started going after digital information on phones, computers and such at borders, arrests, and such.
I don't agree with blindly searching phones/computers, so I store everything in simple clouds, and when not in use I log out and uninstall the app from my phone, and log out on my computer and delete the cookies.
They can't search what they can't find.

I get around that issue by doing everything from my home PC via RDP, and wiping my laptop immediately after the security checks to get rid of the backdoors they occasionally install.

If the data is never on the device in the first place, it'll never show up on a drive clone by customs, and having it lost/stolen is just an expensive inconvenience rather than a considerable setback.

davids355 said:

May be a controversial opinion but I think its a good thing. Its not so important here but the "invasion of personal privacy" argument is ultimately helping serious criminals to stay protected. Think about the tech giants that refuse or make it very hard to hand over data or information relating to murder investigations and so on - it seems like the people who don't really have anything insignificant to hide are the ones citing personal privacy and in reality they are protecting the people who do have something to hide.

Click to expand...

I really don't get the argument. If I have some important data to hide from a customs inspection, I will simply not put it on my devices. It's not like when you cross the border of NZ you lose the ability to download (your) stuff from the Internet. So how exactly does that hamper any criminal?

It doesn't. It's just a smokescreen - "hey we protect you!", "hey, checking your mail is normal now!".

What's even weirder, how does it actually protect the plane passengers? Oh wait, it doesn't even pretend to do so. Who does it pretend to protect? The residents. And if you go to the immigration site of NZ, you will see that ~60 countries are waived from tourist Visa requirement. So in other words, the officials are letting in 1/4 of the planet's population waltz in without any concern for the residents protection buuuuuut "we must check your files on a check you know could happen on the border, because you're such a stupid criminal and we're saving so many lives".

cerebration said:

I complied and put in my password as I had nothing to hide.

Click to expand...

This is not the right way to look at it. The common quote from Snowden:

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

"When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights."

That side, as wrong as it is if you're standing at immigration there's a time and place to pick your battles and I'd probably hand my shit over. Honestly, my biggest concern would be them breaking something or finding their way onto one of my production servers without knowing what they're looking at.

this shit is crazy, I can forget about their country loled

Isn't this the same as searching your house without a warrant?

What kind of archaic laws are these

I find it strange they can fine him. If he doesn't agree to the search he should be able to just turn around and board another plane back home.

So what happens if people that get fined start filing liens against the ambassador of NZ in their country?