Travelling across borders? What do you do with your data?

General
1

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/25/sydney-airport-seizure-of-phone-and-laptop-alarming-say-privacy-groups

Sydney airport seizure of phone and laptop ‘alarming’, say privacy groups
Border Force detain British-Australian software developer Nathan Hague, apparently at random, for 90 minutes

Over the last year I read a few articles like this one especially about people tavelling to the US. Seems Australia is following suite.

To quote part of the article:

[i]Under new legislation, proposed last week, the ABF would be given additional search powers and the penalties for individuals refusing to provide access to the ABF to evidence held in a device – for example, refusing to share their password to unlock a device – would be up to five years’ imprisonment, or 10 for serious offences.

An exposure draft of the bill revealed the obligation to assist police and other agencies in unlocking devices, including by de-encrypting data, would extend to tech giants such as Facebook, Apple and Google.

Steele-John and other privacy advocates have raised concerns over the new legislation.

“The scope and overreach of the new Border Force powers is terrifying, and has much broader consequences and implications than just individual privacy, in the context of this incident which occurred at Sydney airport.”

Keeping data private

Professor Michaels recommended that people who wanted to protect their data should not carry devices across international borders.

“If you are doing sensitive work, keep your files on your computer encrypted, or go one better and do not take your computer with you through Customs. Put it on the cloud where the GDPR [EU’s General Data Protection Regulation] is in force and lease a laptop in your given destination,” she said.

But that advice is of little comfort to Hague, who said the actions of the ABF officers had put his business in breach of Europe’s tough new GDPR data privacy laws and he would now need to give privacy breach notifications to his clients.

“I don’t mind people looking at the files if that’s one of the directives, but you have to give clear definitions and you also can’t leave the international business travellers exposed like this to having fines or breach notices being served by their own clients.”
[/i]

2

Civilisation:
One step forward,
one step backward.

I will start to worry when the German custom people start to do that too. I will go to Germany (3km from where I actually am) in 35 minutes with my laptop and a phone (not smart).

Also: there are so many other injustices in this world…
The glass ceiling is not restricted to women, for example.

3

Considering that Germany has some of the strongest privacy and data protection laws in the World (quite possibly THE strongest) you could not have picked a worse example. It‘s actually quite offensive.

4

These days, I feel ashamed being an Australian. Australia has always been about “a fair go” for everyone. Very liberal society and model example of multiculteralism and democracy.

The “Right”, ie. the political wing, is getting the upper hand all under the guise of “keeping us safe”. Yeah, all good for a while until you realize you are living in a totalitarian state.

5

Talking about the data storage in your cloud. If you do that, beware: if the customs people saw a link to your cloud, they are capable of asking you to give your password to access in your cloud.

Better be prudent !

PS: I’m back from Germany, and as usual, nobody asked me anything at the border, this time I even not saw any custom people (nor German nor French). Sometimes there are some French customs, but they are there because of terrorists, they never asked me more than to open my car back door !

6

Only if you are white. I think especially the Aborigines beg to differ … (you might have heard of the “stolen generation”? Slave conditions for aboriginal workers? Child labour from the age of 6?)

In the last few years Kiwis are not too happy about being treated as second-class citizens either (while Australians are on an equal footing with Kiwis in New Zealand).

And let’s not get started on Nauru …

Sorry to burst that particular bubble.

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[quote=402562:@Markus Winter]Only if you are white. I think especially the Aborigines beg to differ … (you might have heard of the “stolen generation”? Slave conditions for aboriginal workers? Child labour from the age of 6?)

In the last few years Kiwis are not too happy about being treated as second-class citizens either (while Australians are on an equal footing with Kiwis in New Zealand).

And let’s not get started on Nauru …

Sorry to burst that particular bubble.[/quote]

I’m not “White” Australian, but born in Australia from Greek and German heritage. A fantastic combination I say :slight_smile:

I used to get called a “Wog” (a derogatory term) which I think means “Western Oriental Gentleman” which really makes no sense at all if you think about it.

Perhaps Australia has become the “little selfish brother” of the world, whereas Australia should be the little brother learning from the big brothers/sisters.

But when the little brother looks to the “Older” brother/s for guidance - and when the older brother screws up, then the younger brother should learn not to make the same mistakes - but then chooses to go along with it anyways . . . .

I almost just made sense of what I said and thunk.

Cheers.

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do the same because the older brother is always a guidance for the younger :frowning:

unfortunately :frowning: