
UK Police Charge Activist for Refusing to Hand Over Passwords - vjvj
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uk-police-charge-activist-under-terrorism-law-for-refusing-to-hand-over-passwords
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srcmap
One solution is for all other countries' border control started to demand
passwords to unlock phone/all social apps for UK citizens, SPECIALLY target UK
politicians and government workers.

Love to see any/all the interesting info one can find from the politicians.

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msmm
Politicians are exempt. Seriously.

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na85
Diplomats are exempt, but a random Member of Parliament is not.

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uncle_d
I recently flew to the U.S. - I did consider wiping my iPhone in advance and
then restoring it from iCloud backup once safely in the hotel, but in the end
just left it at home. It was very nice taking a break too.

Of course, as a fairly unremarkable middle-aged white guy, I didn't get
stopped at all.

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mercer
This makes me wonder what the statistical likelihood of 'getting into trouble'
is for 'unremarkable' people entering the US (by flight).

If I'd fly to the US (unlikely), I'd definitely wipe my phone or leave it at
home. But since I'm also 'unremarkable', I'm now wondering if perhaps the
chance of getting into trouble is ridiculously small for me, and that perhaps
I'm in a bit of a bubble of my own going through all this (pointless) trouble
to be 'safe'.

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vjvj
Follow up from previous HN submitted article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14340137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14340137)

Surprised more app developers are not creating solutions to this kind of thing
- e.g. some form of multisig authorisation to access certain files or 2FA that
relies on the second factor only being available at times access is genuinely
needed.

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x0x0
I'm not a lawyer, but I very strongly doubt deliberately making yourself
unavailable to give the password on demand is going to be perceived by a court
as as cute a way around this law as you believe it to be.

There's no technological solutions to things like this, only political ones.

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marssaxman
There are no political solutions to things like this either - not that any of
us talking about it here have any meaningful hope of accomplishing, anyway. We
might as well try whatever technical fixes we can come up with, since it's
better than the nothing we'll get if we wait for the politicians to deal with
it.

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jchrisa
Don't travel with electronics?

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TeMPOraL
Here's a business/service idea off the top of my head.

As a traveller, just before going through security you wipe your device and
"sell" it to a vendor in exchange for a voucher that will allow you to
exchange it back when you land and go through the security at your
destination. You take the new device, provision it with your cloud data, and
go on your visit; when you go back, you go through this process again, in the
other direction.

Lots of problems to be solved with that idea, not the least of which is the
business model, but it would allow you to travel without any electronics on
your person.

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fapjacks
I toyed with building an application like this, except that you just carry
your device with you. The application basically tarballs your entire
environment up, offsites it, and then wipes and factory-resets your device
(incidentally I got lost in the rabbit hole of trying to wipe an SSD heh).
It's completely clean, you can surrender your device for inspection, give
passwords, etc. And then after you're through, you download the application
which acts like a dropper, and it explodes your environment and data onto the
device again. Docker was really useful here.

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TheOtherHobbes
But this makes it very obvious you've reset your phone. Which is a red flag -
although not technically illegal, so far.

You really want something that looks like an in-use device and gives no hint
that you have sensitive files stored anywhere else.

~~~
fapjacks
It would have been configurable. The important thing is that your blob of data
(e.g. VeraCrypt volume) is offsited and wiped. You could leave your laptop
otherwise completely lived-in, just not containing your data anymore.
Otherwise, I've worked for companies that gave out loaner phones for overseas
travel. A factory-reset phone is much less suspicious than a threadbare
"factory-reset" laptop.

