But that's true for all encryption and privacy technology, it has dual use. We as a society must find the right balance and say, ok, there's no reasonable justification for owning 1 pound of plutonium, but there is a legitimate case for high encryption and privacy.
This forum largely believes that the balance struck by New Zealand - that you don't have the right to data privacy when traveling - is completely unacceptable, and as technologists we try to find technical countermeasures.
Let me ask you this hypothetical question instead:
What if we have a "physical encryption" technology that allows encrypting physical objects so that X-ray scanners, drug detecting methods or metal detectors cannot see through them?
Would customs be allowed to ask for the decryption key? Or should the customs just ignore whatever encrypted inside?
Physically, there's constraint on what I am exposing. Digitally, it's my entire life. The bar for a search must be much higher to reflect that. Most people here are not used to dealing with a corrupt officer. Imagine a scenario where you own a property and the police officer next door desperately wants it and he finds a loop hole to block your access to the street (and does more horrible things to get you to vacate your house). Now imagine what he'll do if he had your phone and work backwards from there - even innocent things like a flirty message with someone can potentially ruin someone's life - it doesn't have to be illegal.
The justice system and separation of powers acts as checks and balances from anyone (good or bad) being harassed unless there's a strong reason why. Get a warrant with a limited scope and then do the search.
No need to imagine. There are innumerable cases over the years where cops have turned into stalkers backed by the power of the government when their girlfriends dump them. It happened to one of my ex-es, but I've seen it in newspapers dozens of times over the years.
The problem is that cops are still people. And people are often messy, emotional, irregular, obsessive, mean, or just have a bad day and need someone to take it out on.
Wetware will be wetware. All we can do is advocate for better training and smarter policies.
There's no need to go to such wild hypotheticals if what you want to say is that you support border data searches - it's your right to have that political position. I simply have the opposite position.
Given some hypothetical new technology with vast societal implications, I would be forced to carefully reconsider that position, but in this case I believe privacy is a basic human right that does not simply disappear at the borders.
Let me ask you this hypothetical question instead:
What if we have a "brain encryption" technology that allows encrypting your brain so that brain scanners, thought detecting methods or emotion detectors cannot see through it?
Would customs be allowed to ask for the decryption key? Or should the customs just ignore whatever is encrypted inside?
Actually, it would simply make terrorists avoid official border crossings. They could, for example, pay a human trafficker $2000 to get them over the border with Mexico.
Of course, you would then request for brain scanning technology to be more widely employed and that brain scanners be installed in the subway, on buses, gas stations and any other place drug dealers and terrorists could happen to go by. I think we all know what is the end for this line of reasoning.
You know I used to question why on earth would Trump want to "build a wall". But I think your comment (along with the previous comments) somehow made a good justification for it.
Anyway, it is quite apparent that we have fundamentally different views on these issues, so let's agree to disagree and call it a day.
Only if you don't mind the downvotes. For some odd reason, these 'imaginary points' end up causing me to self-censor anyways.
On further-thought, it makes me think it's just something built into us. We seek social/group approval, and it makes us regress to the mean when it comes to thought/opinion. However, I don't think it's the right way for our brains to be wired, especially with social media exposing us to the entire world.
And now with this border-search thing. If it means that the state end up having access to all your social media accounts, that now span decade+ timeframes, not even time and personal growth/regret can protect us.
Yeah, it would be preferable if your comments weren't voted down here because of disagreement with the view you express, as long as it's expressed clearly and constructively (which it is).
> That would eradicate drug trafficking and cross-border terrorism.
No, it wouldn't. One key weakness of totalitarian systems (and that is what you are advocating for) is always that the massive power of the system attracts criminals and corruption into the system and has a major risk of the criminals ending up using the totalitarian power for themselves. If you think there is some sort of absolute solution to a social problem, you are ignoring that implementing the solution does itself build on society. If society isn't free of crime, your solution won't be free of crime either, and if society if free of crime, you don't need the solution. And if your solution isn't free of crime (so, you have corrupt police officers or judges or whatever), then you have thus given criminals the option to use a massively powerful weapon for themselves in some ways.
It wouldn't stop those things though, there will always be a weak point. What it would do is erode the rights and freedoms of law abiding citizens (something that terrorists seem to want).
Furthermore, if you want to stop drug trafficking, legalize them.
> It wouldn't stop those things though, there will always be a weak point.
If that is your argument, then I don't think anyone can convince you.
> What it would do is erode the rights and freedoms of law abiding citizens (something that terrorists seem to want).
That's not how Wikipedia (and I myself) define terrorism:
> Terrorism is, in the broadest sense, the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror among masses of people; or fear to achieve a financial, political, religious or ideological aim.
I can be convinced when the argument is good. I don't think a nebulous, "give up your privacy for some possible safety gains" is such an argument. I equate privacy with freedom, and I don't want to give up my freedom.
Digital objects are different in that they usually contain your private memories, pictures etc. and it's entirely possible to reconstruct a complete network of your friends, family, history, affairs, trade secrets etc. from a single phone search.
Physical objects usually don't reveal this much at once and require a warrant. With a border phone search, there's no due process at all. If you're so afraid of bad actors that you're willing to subject yourself to this, you're free, but the bad actors have won.
So what happens if you move from country A to country B and bring all your personal papers, address books, photo albums, diaries, business records, etc. across the border (in a moving van, for example)? I really don't know but I suspect that no one takes the takes the time to read all those documents or to copy them for later study at least at most borders. I don't even know what the applicable law is for someone moving to/from US/Canada, for example.
What happens if you use the postal service to deliver your phone across a border? Are the same authorities who claim the right to search your phone if it is on your person at the border also claiming the authority to confiscate and duplicate your phone if it shipped/mailed? Do you have to put your password on a sticky note on the the front of the phone? And if you ship the physical device but transfer the data separately does that change the expectations?
It is interesting that condensing information into a digital format that can be easily duplicated and searched (before or after duplication) seems to change the expectations for the authorities and I think for individuals.
I think this is another example of the modern digital world/economy has left the legal system in the dust.
Your thought experiment raises a good point, but I think your conclusions are still wrong.
The boundary between what should be allowed and what should not be allowed has nothing whatsoever to do with the state of technology.
Freedom is not possible without privacy. As soon as you are in danger of privacy violation, you change your behavior. This is also known as self-censoring. You can already see it here in the forum: people report that they have nothing to hide, but they still reset their phones and use fake accounts when crossing the border.
What is particularly insidious about border control is that there is no legal checks-and-balances system behind it. Police cannot search your home without a warrant issued by a judge. Border control can search everything without any warrant.
In the past, you could yourself 'balance' this by not taking very personal things (e.g., a diary) with you when traveling abroad. But with our digital lifes, this is not possible anymore. You cannot leave your photo album at home anymore.
What makes it so much worse is that criminals can so easily circumvent this issue. They anyway use throw-away phones. They don't need to carry notebooks with them, they can just buy a new one on arrival - if needed at all - and download encrypted files from the Cloud.
So we now have established that border control has an unprecedented and uncontrolled access to our privacy. Shouldn't they be forced to prove that this pays off for our society? Please show me the cases of successful prosecution after digital search of a phone. To me, there seem extremely few of them. So it seems a high price for a marginal benefit.
To make the analogy complete, it needs to include a global mail network that accepts these magic boxes and transports them almost instantaneously at almost no charge, so that you could trivially avoid any requirement to show customs what's inside by mailing your stuff to yourself after you get through.
You can "download" crappy, not very effective guns. And you still need to obtain the ammo (the actually lethal part) the old-fashioned way.
I would very much be surprised if it becomes possible for drugs or explosives any time within my lifetime. Chemistry and physics just don't work that way.
Still, you do need very specific input materials for both processes.
In the case of the latter, you basically need a spool of explosive string. You're not so much printing an explosive as you are shaping an explosive into a desired form. I'm sure it's still very useful, but I don't think it's a particularly big game changer in the "smuggling things into a country" field.
I have a hypothetical question for you. Lets say we develop brain scanning tech. Should it be mandatory to perform a brain download to cross the border?
This forum largely believes that the balance struck by New Zealand - that you don't have the right to data privacy when traveling - is completely unacceptable, and as technologists we try to find technical countermeasures.