But part of me just wants to tell the civil libertarians that if they’re going to be paranoid – justified or not – then bloody well adjust how you live your life rather than expect the world to adjust to your personal desires. Here’s the trigger:
Travelers who refuse to surrender passwords, codes, encryption keys and other information enabling access to electronic devices could be fined up to $5,000 in New Zealand (about US$3,300), according to new customs rules that went into effect Monday.
Border agents were already able to seize digital equipment, but the Customs and Excise Act of 2018 newly specifies that access to personal technology must be handed over as well. The law provides, however, that officials need to have “reasonable cause to suspect wrongdoing” before conducting a digital search — cold comfort for civil liberties advocates, who have sounded an alarm about the measure. [WaPo]
It’s a personal choice on my part to avoid having too much data on my phone. Sure, I could figure out how to completely encrypt all access and all data so I could use my phone to do my personal banking, lending, mortgages, all my software development for my employer, run a small, indie bank on the side, build a complete photography portfolio, manage half a dozen mistresses, AND store all the nuclear secrets I may or may not have stolen over the years.
And then lose the damn thing in the river, so of course now it’s de rigeur to save it all in The Cloud, except The Cloud is nothing more than an old-fashioned time-share system from forty years ago, meaning someone else controls the computer you just put all your vital information on.
And no matter how much you encrypt that data, if those computers are told not to let you access it, there’s not much you can do unless you’re a world-class hacker. And, of course, an EMP or possibly a really big solar flare could turn your data into a big old bang of dinosaur flatulence.
That’s paranoia. Unless your backup system is punch-cards.
In fact, and perhaps it’s already well-known, but I suspect many of us are more prisoners of our phones than find them truly beneficial. But trying to find a metric for that suggestion will be a challenge.
Sort of like the challenge Satan had with Saddam Hussein. If you don’t understand that one, it doesn’t really matter.
In any case, I keep some pictures of cats on my phone. And of some totally awesome orange lilies that has completely charmed me. I can read my mail, if I really want to – hint: more than half my mail is political spam from BOTH SIDES. There, now no one will steal my phone.
The rest is either not computer-bound, or is on my computers. I tend to be conservative about this crap.
And maybe I’m just crabby.
Yeah, crabby. I’ll grant that the New Zealand move could be a step along a path to a world with no privacy, or of government officials surreptitiously collecting information on you for their personal gain.
On the other hand, the New Zealanders think they’re safer with this law in place.
