From the NZ Herald:
A backpacker coming home for Christmas had every bit of electronic equipment stripped from him at the airport.
A Customs officer at Auckland International Airport took law graduate Sam Blackman’s two smartphones, iPad, an external hard drive and laptop – and demanded his passwords.
Mr Blackman, 27, who was breaking up travelling with his journalist fiance Imogen Crispe for a month back in New Zealand for Christmas, was initially given no reason why the gear was taken.
The only possibility of why it occurred was his attendance – and tweeting – of a London meeting on mass surveillance sparked by the Snowden revelations, he said.
However, a Customs official has since told him they were searching everything for objectionable material under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993.
Mr Blackman said he did not have anything of that nature and could not understand why he had been targeted.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Let’s start out with a positive tone.
First, It is absolutely outrageous that Mr. Blackman was stopped and searched, especially since
it was done without any warning or (immediate) justification. The fact the authorities can get away
with such a brazen abuse of an individuals rights is an absolute smear on even the most fundamental democratic principles. In a modern democracy, everyone should the basic human right to freely-associate
without fear that their most private conversations and thoughts can be collected by the authorities and used against them. I condemn the NZ authorities if what is set out in this post is true.
Of course, there are reasons why the authorities might have good reason to monitor certain individuals – but most agree that should be done only under the most extreme of circumstances (e.g. proven criminal or terrorist activities that could lead to the harm of innocent citizens etc), and then only under most strict guidelines (e.g. by court order or legislative over-site etc).
It goes without saying that Rog’s outrageous treatment by the British and American authorities also falls into this category. I, along with many were absolutely disgusted and frightened by what happen to Rog and his family with the Climate-Gate emails incident.
Having said all of this, I have need to inject a note of reality into all of these discussions.
The Governments of many developed countries [Both Western and non-Western] have been collecting universal meta-data from their citizens since [at least] the mid 1990’s. The US Government has been doing it since the early 1990’s and the Soviet Block Governments even earlier than that.
As early as 1993 [and most likely earlier] the US government had special centers (e.g. run by the NSA) which filtered all fixed and mobile phone calls looking for specific key words (e.g. bomb, rocket launcher etc). If these key words were found, that conversation was flagged and if resources became available, the call/calls might be monitored for security purposes. Anyone associated with the U.S. government knew this was taking place. The only people who didn’t were either brain dead or on life support. Everyone I knew joked about saying the words “Hijack” and “Cuba” in the same conversation and how this would result in a late night visit from the men-in-black (euphemism for Government agents) who would drag you off into the night.
The fact that most developed Governments have been trawling through our meta-data for well over two decades somehow seems to be lost in this debate. Where was the outrage back in the 1990’s? At what point did we accept(/consciously realize) that peace-time Governments were listening to our every conservation?
What has changed is that our governments not only have access to our phone calls but also all of the other forms of communication we use in our modern life (e.g. the Internet, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter etc).
Clearly, the horse has bolted from the stable long ago when it comes to Government filtering and monitoring our meta-data. Only a complete moron would feign outrage that their conversations are being trawled by unknown powers, since any self-respecting geek in a basement can get the necessary software to monitor the internet and phone traffic of anyone they want.
What we need collectively do is sit down and decide for ourselves (as citizens of a democracy):
a) what forms of meta-data can be legitimately collected by Government authorities and private entities.
b) under what circumstances can the authorities and entities link a particular set of meta-data to individuals or groups.
c) what rules and over-sites need to be set in place to go beyond the general collection of meta-data to actually monitoring the communication traffic of an individual or group
d) what are the rules which govern the storage and dissemination of information that has ben collected on
and individual or group.
I’ll stop here but clearly this is a complex subject and it has now become critical that if we want to defend and keep much of our most cherished democratic freedoms we must stand up and be counted.
The authorities were either acting within their legal powers or not. If they were within them, NZ people should and no doubt will be questioning whether the powers themselves are excessive.
If not, anyone treated like that ought to have grounds for legal action.
(NB I’m not a qualified lawyer but am an ex law student).
On the one hand, I’m outraged at what on the surface of it appears to be an unjustified, and unreasonable search and seizure of Mr. Blackman’s property. I think anyone would be outraged to be treated like this, [especially Tallbloke] especially it it turns out that you were targeted for political reasons that may have much to do with a possible connection to protests against the type of now nearly universal surveillance under which we all live.
On the other hand, the seizure of Mr. Blackman’s equipment seem to have taken place at an airport by customs officers, officials who are normally given great latitude in conducting searches on the public [citizen and non-citizen alike] in order to prevent contraband from entering the country. This could be a complicated case to sort out.
If contraband can be encrypted and stored digitally the authorities might have a strong case for demanding passwords and encryption keys to see if your ‘digital suitcase’ contains contraband. There are many places still, even in the ‘free world’, where if customs agents believe you have something hidden in your luggage, they will TEAR IT TO PIECES to find out – your suitcase that is. If they don’t find anything they’ll give you a roll of duct-tape and a form to fill out to get some compensation for the damage to your luggage. C’est la vie a l’aéroport.
I know nothing of Mr. Blackman, could be just some guy nabbed for no good reason at all – [yet another] complete, incompetent mistake by authorities. He could be a radical activista disguised as a journalist. OR, he could be a cyber-bomb throwing, Guy Faulks-mask-wearing, Anonymous-anarchist, crypto-terrorist who could legally only be searched or apprehended when crossing a national boundary, by government officials trying diligently to protect ME from the truck-bomb wielding, kaffiyah-wearing, crypto-terrorsts at large in the world.
Which is it?? Not enough information, no opinion yet. I bet Tallbloke does though!
W^3
Looks to me like the kid is being harassed for no good reason. The message is clear. Try to stand up for your rights in the ‘free world’ and expect you can expect bureaucratic aggravation.
The NAZIS are back.
Someone must have slandered Mr Blackman
I’m a Kiwi living in the UK and have done so since 1979. NZ is the perfect country for the western powers to experiment on. Encompassed within its 4 million plus people are most of the demographics likely to be encountered across the western world. So for little outlay big corporations soon learn what works and what doesn’t. So you will see many pieces of technology rolled out in NZ before anywhere else.
On my visits home during the 90’s and early 2000’s I complained about what I saw as an encroachment in surveillance and how the people were being fooled into thinking technology was a way of solving human issues. For example the drivers licence turning into a photo id by stealth by making it a criminal offence not to be without. This fell on deaf ears as New Zealanders in general feel they have nothing to worry about from the wider bad world.
NZ was one of the first countries with Universal suffrage and has many firsts to its name and Kiwis are justly proud of this heritage. But just like everywhere else they have fallen under the spell of environmentalism and dumbing down of education. This results in the occasional excess by authorities, which should enrage everyone, but for some reason doesn’t. New Zealanders think they are leaders in a clean environment but they are not and don’t like to hear it pointed out. Just like everywhere else to protect the environment you first have to understand it, and that I’m afraid with the current state of science that is impossible unless you look it up yourself.