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Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Travelers arriving in New Zealand may be asked to enter their authentication code or fingerprint to allow customs officers to search their electronic devices. And if they do not comply? They could be fined up to NZ $ 5,000, or about US $ 3,270.
This is due to the new legislation called the Customs and Excise Act 2018, which updates the wording of a 1996 law. The law, which came into force this week, also gives agents the ability to copy or clone data on desired devices.
"Travelers will probably not notice much difference at the border," the government said in a press release.
May be. But a spokesman for the New Zealand customs office admitted that this policy was taking place on new grounds.
"We are not aware of any other country that would have legislated for a sanction to be applied if people do not disclose their passwords," said Terry Brown, customs spokesman. The New York Times.
Customs now has the opportunity to search any device that an agent "has reasonable grounds to suspect". Brown said the agents will search the phone for theft mode and not include the data stored in the cloud. But if travelers do not provide authentication code, agents have the power to enter the device.
Thomas Beagle, chairman of the New South Wales Civil Liberties Council, described the new policy as "a serious attack on the privacy of the person who owns the device and the people with whom they communicated."
"Modern smartphones contain a large amount of extremely sensitive private information, including emails, letters, medical records, personal photos and very personal photos," Beagle said in a statement.
And he said that the plan for the agents to search the device but not the cloud does not make much sense, from the point of view of security.
"Any professional criminal could easily store his data on the Internet, travel with a phone cleared and restore them once he would have entered the country," he wrote. "Any criminal who fails to do so would surely pay $ 5,000 rather than revealing evidence of crimes that may involve a prison sentence."
The law applies to New Zealand and foreign travelers.
Last year, New Zealand airport officials searched for 540 aircraft and the agency expects the number to remain about the same, Radio New Zealand.
On Twitter, a New Zealander named Dylan Reeve it is noted that the overall review of the new policy could have a detrimental effect on the economy of his country: "All you want is a" tourist tax "of $ 35. coverage in the international media will further damage our tourism industry! "
In 2016, US customs officers searched approximately 23,877 aircraft – a sharp increase from 2015, when approximately 8,500 were searched.
In the United States, Border Services Officers are known to have confiscated aircraft from travelers, resulting in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In May, a federal judge ruled that the case could continue.
And as reported by NPR's Brian Naylor, the US rules in this area are not perfectly clear: "The ACLU says that Americans can refuse to give their password to CBP agents, but at the same time risk of being arrested and getting caught their devices.travel travelers may be denied access to the country if they refuse to comply with it. "
Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
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