
ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content - nextparadigms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement#Border_searches
======
cynest
How does one determine whether something is pirated in these cases? All the
music I've bought in the past few months has been distributed to me DRM-free
so there exists no difference between it and a pirated copy other than a
receipt. To make a long story short, having to proved that I have licenses for
everything on my computer is utter crap.

~~~
scotty79
If you run a company that's the rules. If you can't prove that you are
licensed to use every single piece of software that you have on your computer
then you can have your whole computer (or just the hard drive) confiscated and
held for indefinite amount of time by the police probably long enough to
technology become obsolete and your withheld data to become meaningless. At
least that's how it looks in Poland.

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.

~~~
vladd
> Using any non opensource software is so scary that I wonder why would anyone
> pay and take the risk.

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.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
I know you may be aware of this already and could have tried it, but in case
not: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ie-view-lite/> It's a
firefox plugin that can run iexplorer through wine under linux.

~~~
onemoreact
iexplorer is not open source.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
Just in case I was misleading people, from here: <http://www.von-
thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools/>

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."

------
danenania
What strikes me most strongly about all this is how utterly weird it is.

 _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??

~~~
pwg
> 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.
    

Martin Niemöller (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came%E2%80%A6>)

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??"

~~~
mbreese
Do you realize how many people will find it offensive that you are using this
quote to compare a treaty to the holocaust? There is a big difference between
a treaty which _may_ infringe on civil liberties and killing people based on
their beliefs or ethnicity.

It's okay to make slippery slope arguments, but let's not get into Godwin
territory.

~~~
Silhouette
I realise this is always a sensitive area, but please consider that there
_are_ in fact laws on the books and 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.

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".

~~~
tkahn6
pwg's point is that the road to any sort of catastrophic illiberal state-
sponsored action is paved slowly and incrementally. Not that we are living in
mini 1930s Germany. The situations in their substance or scale are not
comparable.

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.

~~~
Silhouette
Please don't turn this into a US-centric discussion. We are talking about
ACTA, which is a global deal, and my post was about the current situation in
the West in general. I don't really want to go off on an extended off-topic
debate anyway, since as I noted before ACTA itself is hardly on the same level
as what we're talking about in this side-track.

> 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.

~~~
tkahn6
Kristalnacht, 'Der Ewige Jew', Triumph of the Will, the death camps and
concentration camps, these were all concerted campaigns against the
'undesirables' of Germany in order to promote racial purity.

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.

~~~
Silhouette
I don't think there _is_ much commonality of purpose with many of the
legal/governmental trends today, other than acting out of fear of some
perceived bogeyman (though not necessarily the same one in each case) or in
the interests of a powerful minority at the expense of the majority (ditto).

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.

~~~
tkahn6
So the only difference between Western governments and the Nazis is a matter
of scale and your evidence for this is that Western governments are abusing
their power.

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.

~~~
Silhouette
You are reading things into my posts that are not there. I am commenting only
on objective things like laws that are being passed and practical policies
being adopted today. Those laws and policies have very serious consequences
for a relatively small number of people today, but for now only much less
serious consequences for the wider population. However, they could be
exploited by an undesirable administration at some future point to have
serious consequences much more widely.

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.

------
yason
Regardless of ACTA, I have already established a personal policy to:

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.

~~~
coryl
Not a lawyer here, but I've heard some BS laws about encryption. In some cases
if you refuse to decrypt or are unable, you can be at fault and still be
detained. Needs citation though.

~~~
tlrobinson
TrueCrypt hidden volumes are one solution:
<http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=hidden-volume>

~~~
dotBen
No they're not for any kind of border or government interaction... everyone
really must stop perpetuating this.

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.

~~~
nl
I think you are overstating the problems with hidden volumes.

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)

------
tomflack
Force? Hardly. Read it for yourself:
[http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jsct/21november2011/tr...](http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jsct/21november2011/treaties/anti_counterfeiting_text.pdf)

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

<http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/factsheet.html>

------
raphman
EFF on countermeasures: 'Defending Privacy at the U.S. Border: A Guide for
Travelers Carrying Digital Devices' (December 2011)

[https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-
gui...](https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-
travelers-carrying-digital-devices)

~~~
raphman
Oh, what a coincidence ;)

<http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3496475>

~~~
Zancarius
Haha! That is a strange coincidence indeed but not altogether surprising given
the subject matter. It's possible someone read your post and submitted it.

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 ago

~~~
dvdhsu
Probably not coincidence: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3497285>

~~~
raphman
Thanks for the link. I have added my view over there.

------
newhouseb
If true, this has to be one of the more bizarre ways to counteract piracy I
have ever seen. I don't know what percentage of piracy is enabled by people
carrying hard drives full of pirated movies across borders, but I'm sure it is
vanishingly small - that is, after all, what pirates use the _internet_ for.

~~~
scotty79
It is not to stop piracy. It is to detect and punish people who have pirated
content in their possession.

You 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.

~~~
newhouseb
An interesting question is that if someone were to travel (non-commercially)
across borders with a fake gucci bag, could that person could be held liable
under ACTA for the case that a) they were aware of the product was counterfeit
and/or b) the case in which they were unaware?

~~~
maigret
Yes. Near the French / Italian border there are targeted controls for
counterfeited products. Common sense should tell you you can't get a Gucci bag
for 200$, or anywhere outside of a luxury shop ;) And yes, you are also liable
if you were unaware - but most people are actually aware.

~~~
jasonkester
_Common sense should tell you you can't get a Gucci bag for 200$, or anywhere
outside of a luxury shop_

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.

~~~
dhimes
I agree- I had no idea. $200 sounds expensive to me, so if someone offered one
for that and I wanted to buy it for my wife I probably would. I've bought
"Coach" brand for about that at the mall, so an approximately equivalent price
wouldn't set off any alarms in my head.

------
tzs
There is a lot of FUD about ACTA (such as this submission). There was a very
good post on Reddit a few hours ago that goes into great detail about what it
ACTUALLY does:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/or8ag/ive_read_the...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/or8ag/ive_read_the_final_version_of_acta_heres_what_you/)

------
guard-of-terra
That's why nobody wants to come to USA any more.

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.

~~~
mbesto
_That's why nobody wants to come to USA any more._ I have to respectfully
disagree. The amount of people (mainly Europeans) I meet who tell me they want
to move to the US is still very substantial. In my experience, the perception
of the American dream is still very real in a large portion of the world's
eyes.

As long as America continues to present it's theater politics through it's
media outlets, people won't know what actually happens.

~~~
tatsuke95
You're American, I presume? I will also assume that, being on Hacker News,
you're in the computer field? If that's the case, of course most Europeans you
talk to want to move to the US. California (possibly New York) is kind of
appealing like that. But as a non-American, I can tell you that very few
people _I meet_ believe America is where it's at, mainly because of social
policies like this one.

~~~
rue
As a counterpoint I'll offer that I'm from Europe, lived in the States, came
back home, and have no wish to return stateside (not really even for a visit).
I can work remotely.

------
runjake
To me, the following passage from the link demonstrates the dire situation in
the US:

    
    
      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]
    

Sure, Feingold could introduce new legislation already covered by the 4th
amendment. But if the government isn't going to pay attention to a founding
document of the US, what makes him think they're going to pay attention to his
piddly law?

~~~
mbreese
Two things:

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.

~~~
runjake
On #2, no it doesn't. Not for US citizens. Well, it DOES in practice, but not
in terms of our constitutional rights, imho.

~~~
mbreese
You're right that US citizens still have rights when dealing with the
government wherever we might be. However, the 4th amendment protects US
citizens against unreasonable search and seizure. But crossing the border
gives the gov't a reason to search...

~~~
runjake
We could argue that either way, but it just illustrates my original point
again: it illustrates the sad reality of our government and its interference
into our lives.

------
mrdingle
Lets take this seriously for a second. Say we're actually trying to catch
cyber criminals and child pornographers and we're discussing enacting this
law. Someone speaks up and says, "For all the discomfort and trouble we're
putting innocent people through, the real criminals will just store their data
online and travel with cleaned computers." How do you continue enacting this
legislation? I'm trying to be as serious as possible.

How does any legislator look at the people they represent and come to the
conclusion that this is a good idea?

~~~
ivanbernat
In my opinion this is exactly like SOPA, a corporation-sponsored bill. Why
would any government care if you "pirate" a movie? There is no tax on cinemas,
but you pay an tax + extra fees if you're buying blank CD/DVDs -- because they
presume you're going to write ("burn") illegal content.

~~~
mrdingle
Put copyright aside for a sec and lets try to actually frame it in the case of
child porn or drug trafficking. How can any legislator conclude that
disrupting the public like this is acceptable after having a reasonable
discussion about how easy it would be for criminals to circumvent?

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.

~~~
CamperBob
_Put copyright aside for a sec and lets try to actually frame it in the case
of child porn or drug trafficking. How can any legislator conclude that
disrupting the public like this is acceptable after having a reasonable
discussion about how easy it would be for criminals to circumvent?_

Did you see the excerpts from the SOPA hearings? The legislators can conclude
that this degree of disruption is acceptable because _they are morons_.

------
kellyreid
I KNOW! If we can't attack these PIRATES online, in their magical pirate
cloud, we'll hit them where it already hurts...AIRPORTS!

what better way to stop piracy than to harass travelers? i can think of none.

------
ig1
Have a second laptop you use for travelling and treat it as unsecure. Any time
a laptop is out of your control, especially when it's held by (any)government,
you might as well assume it has had spyware installed on it. Plus you're at a
much higher risk of theft while travelling abroad so you definitely should
avoid having confidential business documents, etc. on it.

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).

~~~
a_a_r_o_n
You use the netbook (or cheap laptop) because it's cheap to replace/lose if
confiscated.

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).

------
quadhome
If detained at the border, and all your storage is encrypted, many countries
have laws that require you to reveal your passphrase.

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.

~~~
tatsuke95
Encryption or no encryption, or any of these other little games won't do
anything.

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.

------
rglover
Really? Are politicians and the entertainment industry this dependent on each
other? It seems like the battle cry of both parties is "we're too lazy to come
up with our own safe guards, so let's just do the most unnecessary thing that
comes to mind. Wait, why are we doing this? Oh right, money." It's downright
pathetic to see those in control having panic attacks in the form of
legislation. Next google search: the finer points of being an expatriate.

------
freejack
This particular wikipedia article focuses more on the development of ACTA, and
public comment and rumour during its development, than it does on the actual
text of ACTA, a public document.

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.

~~~
freejack
I've done some more reading since, and my arm-chair legal review seems to
indicate that most, if not all, search and seizure happening in this area is
due to U.S. policy and legislation and not ACTA. i.e. DHS, etc. have their own
policies rooted in US law that seems to permit this type of search and
seizure.

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>)

------
spdy
Can the US Custom force someone to unlock an encrypted drive or deny entry if
you dont comply ?

Im fine with the search but they have no right to scan my notebook etc.

~~~
tnuc
They can't really deny you entry if you have a US passport.

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.

~~~
dbuxton
The tone of this entire thread is very paranoid and it's not helped by
slightly rash comments like this.

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...](https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-
travelers-carrying-digital-devices)

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.

------
manmal
This is no news, I heard about this years ago from friends going to the US as
exchange students. There were random laptop harddisk searches, luckily they
were spared.

------
mvzink
Fear wins out over laziness: finally downloading TrueCrypt.

~~~
tomflack
I haven't read the whole thing yet, but a quick glance through shows Article
11:

 _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.

~~~
wisty
How about an IT worker? You'd _hope_ a sysadmin has some kind of privilege. I
expect not, though.

~~~
tomflack
I don't think they do unless their work covers one of the traditionally
privileged cases.

------
damoncali
This is, of course, ridiculous. But I think SOPA has some missing the broader
point. It looks to me like the target of this is drug smugglers and other
"organized criminals", not some family on vacation in Canada or your linux
laptop. It gives law enforcement an easy excuse to dig into the laptops of
suspected smugglers and thugs.

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.

------
koke
The reality is, pretty much every time I land in the US by laptop is out of
battery :)

------
bane
Wow, this won't slow things down at the border.

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.

------
ThomPete
In other words. This means cloud storage services will be one of the
businesses who will se a huge increase in sales next coming years.

Anyone want to partner up :)

~~~
nxn
I tend to think otherwise with the recent Megauploads situation; plenty of
people lost their personal data with no warning and through no fault of their
own.

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.

------
c16
Surely you'd be better off having an empty netbook and using RDP to connect to
a home server? At least then nothing is encrypted, they are free to look at
the hard drive and could happily confiscate it without you having any issues.
Worst comes to the worst, if you use dynDNS, you could just change the URL you
use to connect.

------
keeperofdakeys
I really do wonder what they would do if they saw a linux laptop, especially
if you are using a simple window manager, and only had a terminal available.
Would they flag you for being 'suspicious'? Dual booting handles most of it
though, changing it to boot instantly while going through the airport.

------
uptown
What's the general consensus on services like iTunes Match, and Google Music
where you're essentially exposing your audio collection to a 3rd party?
Couldn't this library be subjected to the same type of review?

------
Apreche
Never store anything important on a laptop hard drive, ever. Erase all hard
discs with dban before going through customs. Upload to a safe place before
you leave, download when you get back.

~~~
ojilles
And your mobile. And... And...

------
rll
Hasn't this been in effect since 2008? I have probably entered the US 100
times since then and have never had anyone show any interest in searching any
of my devices, nor have I noticed them looking at anybody else's devices. Or
did I miss something that is going to make them start doing this actively now?
It is still scary as hell that this is possible at all, of course.

------
prawn
Not sure how thorough their searches are, but could you leave a fairly boring
drive in your laptop, and carry the real one externally, perhaps partly
disguised (phone maybe)? "Oh, this old thing? Stopped working the other week.
Seeing if my friend can fix it for me - I think the battery has failed."

~~~
kaybe
Not working is no good. The only kind of inspection of electronics I've had so
far is firing them up to see whether they actually are what they look like (of
course it would be easy to circumvent that, but hey).

------
venusaur
I'm travelling to the states next week. I have a lot of pirated content (books
and music) on my hidden encrypted partition on my laptop and external HD.
Should I be worried, and what are my options if I do get stopped? (I'm
actually a regular user - this is a throwaway account for obvious reasons).

~~~
ctchocula
I'm not an expert on this, but judging from the discussion above based on the
EFF guide, it sounds like hidden partitions aren't recommended. The consensus
seems to be that they may have ways of detecting hidden partitions and may ask
you if you have any, placing you in a situation where you have to decide
whether or not to lie to them. If you do, you could get busted for lying. If
you don't lie, then it's the same as having full-disk encryption except it's
slightly more suspicious and you'll be in the situation where you're not
obliged to tell them the password, but they will take it into consideration in
deciding whether or not to let you into the US.

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.

------
mbreese
While I appreciate the concern over ACTA, this is _a wikipedia article_.

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.

------
iamandrus
All my drives are already TrueCrypted. I have nothing to hide, but I do not
want to be treated like a criminal for doing something as simple as crossing
the US border.

~~~
nickik
Please stop saying "I have nothing to hide" after talking about crypto. You
imply that most people who use crypto have somthing to hide, witch is not the
case.

------
Void_
Buy small "travel" HDD, replace before traveling.

------
rayiner
Stop buying BigContent. If they don't find Finding Nemo on your disk, there is
nothing they can do.

------
spyder
Just upload your pirated content to Megaupload before travelling and download
on arriving. This is what they want, isn't ? :)

------
easy_rider
Issn't this what they do in North Korea ?

------
batista
I find it amusing about how this comment thread turned all about technical
solutions (from hidden partitions, to encryption, to steganography, to dual
booting, etc).

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.

~~~
derleth
> I find it amusing about how this comment thread turned all about technical
> solutions

And people using 'fascism' as a general-purpose pejorative with no
understanding of the history of the world.

<http://www.anesi.com/Fascism-TheUltimateDefinition.htm>

~~~
batista
If you're talking about me regarding other comments in this thread, I'm not
from parts of the world that need to be pointed to some online article for the
history of fascism. On top of this, I have read extensively on the subject,
from Adorno to Isaiah Berlin, including fringe cases like dr. Wilhelm Reich
and his "Mass Psychology of Fascism".

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.

------
napierzaza
This is annoying, especially since I might very well want to rip the DVDs I
own to my laptop so I can watch them on the plane without fumbling with shitty
disks.

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.

------
daintynews
Supposedly, if your hard drive is encrypted, customs agents can hold your
computer indefinitely if you refuse to provide the password. The irony is that
gigabytes of encrypted data cross national borders every second -- over the
internet. So dump your important data in an encrypted file and put it on a
file sharing web site, or a VPS, or whatever, and download it again when you
get across the border. Nobody with "interesting" data (and half a brain) will
be physically bringing it across a border. The searches are useless.

------
Craiggybear
How can they tell it is pirated? I mean, the audio files may have been ripped
from a legit CD. They can't tell for sure.

Similarly, I may have ripped an AVI from a legit DVD. For my own convenience
while traveling. I sometimes do.

~~~
arethuza
"I may have ripped an AVI from a legit DVD"

Ripping a DVD is, I believe, a criminal act in the US and a number of other
countries (including the UK).

<http://www.audiostream.com/content/ripping-crime>

~~~
Craiggybear
Is it? I thought it was fair use.

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.

~~~
arethuza
I believe it's because DVDs do have a trivial copyright protection scheme on
them - ripping the DVD involves breaking this and it's this part that causes
the real trouble:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Circumvention_of_DVD_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Circumvention_of_DVD_copy_protection)

~~~
greiskul
From the article you linked: "This case made clear that manufacturing and
distribution of circumvention tools was illegal, but use of those tools for
non-infringing purposes, including fair use purposes, was not." So it is legal
to rip a DVD, it is illegal to make or distribute a tool that allows DVD
ripping. Yes, the law is insane like that.

~~~
arethuza
It does say this though:

 _"personal use" copying is not explicitly mentioned as a type of fair use,
and case law has not yet established otherwise._

