Domestic NZ travel and potential for forced turnover of device logins?

Forums › Travel (planes, train, cruise) › Domestic NZ travel and potential for forced turnover of device logins?

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irongarment

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#2156755 9-Jan-2019 08:35

Kyanar:
irongarment: 2) Nothing to hide nothing to fear. It seems that people don't want to post their Gmail passwords here. Why is that? You have nothing to hide right? The idea that you don't want to give your password to a random stranger but you will to a Customs officer seems odd. Unless of course in the entire history of humanity there has never been a bent official.

What's your Gmail password got to do with anything? You're again banging on about an internet service account, which is both out of scope for this law, and outside Customs policy for device inspection. It's got nothing to do with this at all, apart from being a convenient strawman for you.

It's an example of something private, which someone might not wish to give to a Customs officer.

I realise it's out of scope because allegedly your device will only be searched locally, i.e. not connected to the internet, however most people will have the most recent chunk of Gmail messages stored on their phone which the official will be able to paw through. Naturally, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, so it's ok for someone to look at your recent email and attachments. Or the photos you have taken. Or your to-do list. Or the list of names and phone numbers in your phone book. Or your bank details.

Again, if you are not happy to post any of this on a public forum, then why would you accept someone collecting it at the airport?

Dratsab

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#2156856 9-Jan-2019 10:16

irongarment: It's an example of something private, which someone might not wish to give to a Customs officer.

I realise it's out of scope because allegedly your device will only be searched locally, i.e. not connected to the internet, however most people will have the most recent chunk of Gmail messages stored on their phone which the official will be able to paw through. Naturally, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, so it's ok for someone to look at your recent email and attachments. Or the photos you have taken. Or your to-do list. Or the list of names and phone numbers in your phone book. Or your bank details.

Again, if you are not happy to post any of this on a public forum, then why would you accept someone collecting it at the airport?

Because such things aren't being collected at the airport. I know you're simply not going to understand this so will just say one of my favourite Pijin phrases: "wori wori blong ui" - in other words, it's your problem. I work at an airport and deal a lot with customs (amongst a number of other agencies) so actually know what's going on. I'll leave all the paranoia up to you.

irongarment

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#2156861 9-Jan-2019 10:26

Dratsab:
irongarment: It's an example of something private, which someone might not wish to give to a Customs officer.

I realise it's out of scope because allegedly your device will only be searched locally, i.e. not connected to the internet, however most people will have the most recent chunk of Gmail messages stored on their phone which the official will be able to paw through. Naturally, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, so it's ok for someone to look at your recent email and attachments. Or the photos you have taken. Or your to-do list. Or the list of names and phone numbers in your phone book. Or your bank details.

Again, if you are not happy to post any of this on a public forum, then why would you accept someone collecting it at the airport?

Because such things aren't being collected at the airport. I know you're simply not going to understand this so will just say one of my favourite Pijin phrases: "wori wori blong ui" - in other words, it's your problem. I work at an airport and deal a lot with customs (amongst a number of other agencies) so actually know what's going on. I'll leave all the paranoia up to you.

Working at an airport could mean you are a janitor, or a parking attendant.

Rather than spouting gibberish why not explain things in a way I can understand? I don't see why this law is justified.

Kyanar

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#2156938 9-Jan-2019 11:38

irongarment:
It's an example of something private, which someone might not wish to give to a Customs officer.

I realise it's out of scope because allegedly your device will only be searched locally, i.e. not connected to the internet, however most people will have the most recent chunk of Gmail messages stored on their phone which the official will be able to paw through. Naturally, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, so it's ok for someone to look at your recent email and attachments. Or the photos you have taken. Or your to-do list. Or the list of names and phone numbers in your phone book. Or your bank details.

It's an irrelevant example, because while you might not wish to give your email password to a customs officer, you are not required to. Simple as that. Holding it up constantly as an example just sounds stupid, because the answer to "you might not want to give your Gmail password to customs" is "cool, because you don't have to and they can't ask". Example shot down in a raging inferno. If you want to make an example, actually make it relevant rather than making up an impossible scenario and using that.

irongarment:
Again, if you are not happy to post any of this on a public forum, then why would you accept someone collecting it at the airport?

Honestly, this is just silly. There is absolutely no comparison between posting your password on a public forum for anyone to read and providing access to a single customs official who may use them a single time to access a device (not an internet account) once for the purposes of investigating whether a crime has been committed or will be committed following reasonable suspicion (yes, the Act requires a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or will be committed), and who may not record that password anywhere. They're not "collecting" anything, they're using it once in order to enforce the law. You're throwing up more strawmen than a corn farmer, and providing no cogent arguments whatsoever.

trig42

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#2156953 9-Jan-2019 12:10

I've seen them using it on Border Patrol (AU).

They go through texts/emails/call logs to see (for example) if someone coming in on a student/tourist visa is contacting someone about work etc.

I'd have no problems unlocking my phone (work phone) for a Customs official if asked, and they informed me that they had some suspicion they needed to confirm/reject.

I would have issues if they asked me for password to online accounts/banks etc. (which, currently anyway, they can't do).

Dratsab

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#2157684 10-Jan-2019 16:54

irongarment: Working at an airport could mean you are a janitor, or a parking attendant.

Or it could mean I'm giving @sbiddle a run for his money and rearranging trolleys.

irongarment: Rather than spouting gibberish why not explain things in a way I can understand? I don't see why this law is justified.

What part of "such things aren't being collected at the airport" (in relation to passwords, especially email) is gibberish? Looks like plain English to me, so not sure why you can't understand it.

Password collection is a futile exercise, passwords can be changed within seconds of devices being received back, so what would the point be? Also, the amount of devices which aren't permanently logged into the users email and other messaging systems is infinitesimal so it'd be rare for a customs officer to actually have to ask for such passwords.

If you don't see why this law is justified, perhaps you haven't taken time to read and comprehend the justifications for it. Or perhaps you have and you simply haven't bothered to post a rationale behind your objection - why not take the time to do that?

irongarment: 1) If Customs are too busy to implement this (i.e. we don't have to worry about it) then why have the law?

No-one's ever said customs are too busy to implement this, I've merely said they are too short staffed to randomly search hoards of people arriving from overseas. As has been repeated a number of times in this thread they need to have reasonable grounds to execute a search in the first place*, and they do exercise these powers. As the linked article on the very first page dramatically states "hundreds" of Kiwis get searched every year. Last year that figure was 296, hardly the horrific picture the media was trying to portray but still "technically correct" as they like to say. Add in the 269 foreigners and you get a figure of 565 digital searches for the year. Now, I don't know what the net movement in and out of NZ by residents was (including migration and both long/short term holidays) but I'm confident it would easily be a couple of million coming in each year - in fact this is probably quite conservative. The number of foreigners entering NZ last year is listed as 3.82 million.

Basic maths:
296 / 2,000,000 = 0.0148% Kiwis searched
269 / 3,820,000 = 0.007% foreigners searched

Combined that's 0.0097% of entries into the country.

*Reasonable grounds include (but are not limited to) people suspected for being a drug courier, gang member, sex tourist, paedophile; or having false bona fides, unusual travel movements/ticket purchases...

irongarment: If we have the law on the books it will be abused.

Paranoid conjecture. I'd be interested to hear exactly *how* you think this would/could occur.

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