Go to New Zealand, and you'll be fined up to $5,000NZ (about a sixpack worth of bottle caps) for not handing over your passwords so that their customs inspectors can check your phone contents.

https://www.news.com.au/travel/worl...s-story/cf28326c5976104e5d56066783032e44

StevieC, thanks for posting.

This is the 'new' World we live in.
People had better learn to question the security of any products they own/buy.

Don't forget your Computer may have a 'small' camera for video chatting.
If you don't use it, put some black tape over it.

You should wipe your phone when crossing borders. Then restore it when you get through.

Waste of time. There are ways to obscure your data so the average person can't find it. Simply switching to a "guest" profile would be enough to fool most people.

Don't keep sensitive information on your personal device.

I'm guessing the people searching phones would be onto that. I don't have sensitive info on my phone. That doesn't mean I want some government worker looking at anything of mine.

All laptops now have cameras in them. Big brother is watching you and your family unless you disable them. They just plain and simple have to much control over your electronics.

A small piece of electrical tape, or some paint can fix this.

They have microphones, too. They will stick subversives like you in Room 101.

If people hook all this wifi crap to their network they are begging for trouble and almost deserve it for some of the stupid devices of worthless value ...

You may be as surprised as I was when I was issued a laptop to work from home that the computer does NOT have a webcam. I guess it was a cost-savings measure as it doesn't have an externally-removable battery, either.

I think it's the EU that mandates a physical switch for the camera on laptops. I just put the McCafe stickers over mine and the microphone hole. They are easily removed if I want to use them and can be put back multiple times. Not sure if you have the McCafe collector stickers for a free cup of coffee on the sides of your McDonalds coffee cups in the U.S. like we do here but they are perfect sized and don't leave good on the camera lense.

Stevie, I know people give you grief about paranoia, but you do remember that I have no cell phone and use Linux and am fully capable of using GPG. I have none of these "enabled" devices whatsoever. I guess for me, I pick some of the low hanging fruit. If the NSA has me on a watch list and is determined that my trash is worthy of a read or they're cross referencing my BITOG posts, all the power to them. On the other hand, I'm not in a terrible rush to be purposely carrying a communications device that also has GPS capabilities built in, much less a fridge that can connect to the internet.

I'm lucky, I guess, or cursed, in that I have never been a fan of multipurpose devices. If I want to place a phone call, I have one on the wall. I want to check the time, I look at my watch. I want to know where I am, I look at a map. I want to listen to music, I turn on the radio or pop in a CD.

I've had cases where people flat out refuse to believe that I have no cell phone, particularly in a business environment. They think I'm a Luddite of some sort or hate technology, or am incompetent with it. Of course, my response would be to set them in front of a Linux system opened to the command line and watch them struggle, or tell them to compose and save a properly formatted email in Emacs, and watch them be lost.