UK border cops can seize and retail all your data without suspicion or charge

And you aren’t hard encoding your disk drive with something like LUKS… why? Being able to seize it, and being able to access it (without a serious effort), can be made separate issues.

(Yes, given time, any simple crypto can be broken. But you don’t need perfect security; you just need security good enough that the cost of breaking it exceeds the value of the contents. Just as you don’t need pick-proof locks, you just need locks that are good enough that any burglar goes elsewhere.)

((Admittedly, my personal laptop is not yet encrypted. But I don’t travel with it; it’s really a compact desktop with built-in UPS that I can carry around the house if I need to. My work machine is hardened.))

In the UK there is no equivalent of the 5th amendment. Refusing to decrypt your computer can land you in the clink.

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Four-months-jail-for-refusing-to-disclose-password-1102546.html

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Well, if they copy the contents of my MP3 player, they’re automatically guilty of approximately 24,976 counts of copyright infringement. Given the current rate ($2,250 per violation) that comes to a total of $56,196,000 or £36,775,575.49. And that’s just one person.

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Actually they’d mark you as the guilty party… well, just because. It’s your own damn fault you’re not rich or powerful.

(probably trumped up charges that you were operating an illegal file server)

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Given that article 7 has no provisions for accessing, but merely for examining objects and containers. This is clearly just an ignorant write up of an ignorant victim of an ignorant official performing an illegal search.

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That is literally true:

If you have data, you must be up to something. Therefore reasonable cause has been established. Makes sense to me.

It isn’t just an absence of 5th amendment (which has been a matter of some judicial indecision on password disclosure); but the presence of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act Part III, which is… surprisingly frank… on the ability to demand crypto keys under all kinds of circumstances.

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An IDE 40 gig Travelstar…your data is probably half corrupted anyway.

How would you feel if they told you they were going to keep all your photographs, your documents, your address book, your financial data, your browsing history, your emails, your chat logs, your electronic diary, your music and recordings and anything else they liked for at least six years - indeed maybe they’d keep them until you reached the age of a hundred in case they might prove useful one day?

I don’t see the distinction between the border and everywhere else. However, I think the physicality of the border search makes for a good example of what a normal day of NSA dataveillance is like.

Добро пожаловать в Соединенное Королевство.
That is all.

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As I recall, it’s a criminal offence not to give police your passwords when they’ve got your data.

Its Write Only Memory.

I never cross a border with an unsanitised laptop. Either I re-image it before the trip or I move anything comprimising off it before I go.

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Can’t the USA border personnel also sieze your electronics and keep them indefinitely for no reason in particular? I recall something like that being in the news several years ago.

Yeah my wife is currently freaking out about going to and more coming back from canada with her laptop. I told if she is that freaked then put your data on a server that you can get to remotely then use a throwaway laptop with a clean OS install on it. But honestly we profile as boring white suburban family and the most we get is an extra question about booze/guns/tobacco/anything expensive bought on occasion.

I’d possibly do it if they produced a warrant. Still would rather have my lawyer fight it before doing anything.

In the US the government can search anyone without suspicion within 100 miles of our land and coastal borders.
Which includes almost 2/3 of our population.

A columnist for the New Statesman notes that the child sex crimes link is speculative.

t may well be that Lancashire police break the encryption code.It could be that there is sordid material yet to be revealed which may have warranted a charge and even conviction of a serious sexual offence. We simply do not know. And neither do the Lancashire police.

However, in the meantime, an individual is now publicly associated with a serious investigation in respect of which was neither charged nor convicted; a police force publishes press releases as if they were tabloid stories and also furnishes highly-prejudicial information, but passes the buck if the press publishes it (which, of course, they will do); and the rest of us are really none the wiser whether a four month custodial sentence in this case was because of the gravity of the original suspicions or just for the implausibility of not knowing or noting down a 40 to 50 character password.

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Are they taking measures to ensure they don’t also download a plethora of viruses and malware?
A lot of peoples devices may very well be infected without the users knowledge, and I guess real criminals would deliberately carry the most heinous and damaging bugs.