Australian customs officers have been given new powers to search incoming travellers' laptops and mobile phones for pornography, a spokeswoman for the Australian sex industry says.
Fiona Patten, president of the Australian Sex Party, is demanding an inquiry into why a new question appears on Incoming Passenger Cards asking people if they are carrying "pornography".
Patten said officials now had an unfettered right to examine travellers' electronic devices, marking the beginning of a new era of official investigation into people's private lives. She questioned whether it was appropriate to search people for legal R18+ and X18+ material.
“Is it fair that customs officers rummage through someone's luggage and pull out a legal men's magazine or a lesbian journal in front of their children or their mother-in-law?” she said.
"If you and your partner have filmed or photographed yourselves making love in an exotic destination or even taking a bath, you will have to answer 'Yes' to the question or you will be breaking the law."
Customs confirmed the new reference to "pornography" on the Incoming Passenger Cards and the search powers, acknowledging that searches conducted by officers may involve the discovery of "personal or sensitive possessions".
A spokesman said officers were trained to apply "tact and discretion" in their dealings with passengers.
"Including an express reference to pornography is intended to enhance the interception of prohibited pornography at the border, by making passengers aware that some forms of pornography may be a prohibited import," the spokesman said.
The "pornography" question has appeared on the cards since September last year. The change was only spotted by Patten earlier this month and it had received little to no coverage in the media.
Colin Jacobs, chairman of the lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the change appeared to have sneaked under the radar "without any public consultation about the massive privacy issues".
"It's hard to fathom what the pressing concern could be that requires Australia to quiz every entrant to the country on their pornography habits, as if visitors would be aware of the nuances of the Australian classification scheme," he said.
"If this results in Customs trawling through more private information on laptops searching for contraband, I would say the solution is way worse than the problem."
Patten said if the question was designed to stop child pornography being smuggled into the country then the question should have been asked about "child pornography", without encompassing regular porn.
Hetty Johnson, chief executive of child protection group Bravehearts, agreed with Patten that the question was too broad. She said it should only apply to illegal pornography.
"If it said child porn I'd be 100 per cent behind it - if you're carrying child pornography then you deserve everything you get," she said in a phone interview.
The issue has echoes of the 1956 detention of famed British conductor and composer Sir Eugene Goossens who had his bag searched upon his return from Europe.
He was carrying material that was considered, at the time, pornographic and his reputation was subsequently ruined, forcing him to flee the country.
"The term pornography is not referred to at all in the federal Classification Act, which customs relies on to classify their material," Patten said.
- with AAP

ASHER MOSES
May 20, 2010 - 4:38PM

I always use a web storage account for my "classified" information. Don't want to have to explain anything to curious customs agents.
There are plenty of web storage providers and they are cheap, some will give you 2GB free. Others offer unlimited space for $5-10/month.
Upload before you leave and download when you get home... better yet if you are running a NAS with FTP you can upload straight to your NAS.

But my porns are many 1GB+ JAVs. I don't have the fast link to access them quickly online....

I am not quite sure about this law. Is it mainly for finding child porn??? It is ok to have adult porn in your computerr, right??

I'm not sure how they would apply this as pornography laws in Australia are mainly a state government responsibility. In some states it's illegal to sell X rated material, (although this is not enforced) and in others it is not.

Child pornography in any form is of course illegal countrywide and I think the wowsers in the customs department are using this as a cover to intimidate people.

So what happens if you have sensitive material that is encrypted in your laptop, and you are going to Australia?
For example, you're a software developer, product designer, or ad campaign manager...
Can they make you decrypt files?

If this info is leaked, can you sue them?

Sounds like an insane amount of power.... search and seizure without probable cause.....

Australia is often used as a proving ground for new laws and rules. If something like this gets through here lawmakers in other advanced economies will look at implementing something similar.

They're trying to censor the internet here now, you can bet there are politicians and lobby groups around the world looking to see how this will turn out.

Recently Ebay tried to force all sellers to open a paypal account in a bid to increase their profits, if it had worked you would have seen a roll out into other countries like the U.S. and U.K.

I agree that Australia is a testing ground for a lot of new laws.  They were the first to raise interest rates coming out of the global recession.  And now they are the first to tax commodities companies an addition 40% of profits.  Other countries may follow suit, especially cash strapped Europe.

Yeah it opens a can of worms.

Let's see how they enforce this thing. If it is too crazy, people will avoid going to Australia

You travel with your porn collection on your laptop? You don't need to worry about "professional" pornography, they are looking for child porn/child exploitation (the amateur stuff). Its no secret that certain countries in SE Asia are hotbeds for pedophiles and the customs agent knows this. If you have any nude pics of young girls its up to you to prove they are of age.

  

As far as encryption goes, you can receive jail time for not decrypting the data when asked.  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/11/ripa_iii_figures/

Of course there is the whole sticky 5th amendment: self incrimination debate around providing the passkey.

For me, why even deal with the hassle, simply spend the night before you leave uploading all photos/vids and download when you get home.

Just simply not have any porn in your laptop.  It's fairly simple.  Of perhaps have them all in a portable USB Pen and have the pen encrypted.

Don't let this stop you or anybody else from coming into the country. I'm convinced it's only political window dressing. The last couple of times I went through customs at Sydney airport, they simply checked my arrival card and passport, asked a few questions and waved me through, didn't even x-ray my bags. There were hoards of people waiting to get through and they are hard pressed to check everything on the card now without worrying about things like porn. Customs main focus in this country remains illegal drugs and the quarantine restrictions on flora and fauna, which is as it should be.

Everybody I know gets their porn online nowadays...

TRAVELLERS coming into Australia are being asked different questions depending on the card they are given by immigration officials.
The Government had pushed through the change in November last year, altering the first question on the Incoming Passenger Cards to ask travellers if they were carrying pornography.
Those answering "yes" will have their material examined by customs officials.
The change was labelled as "sneaky" and an "invasion of privacy" when revealed last week.
However the question is not being asked of all travellers, with an immigration spokesman saying there is no way of knowing how Older cards may be being used by travel agents and other operators beyond the large airlines.
The issue of bringing porn across the border was first raised by the Australian Sex Party who said many travellers will be embarrassed by the "invasion of privacy".
“Is it fair that customs officers rummage through someone’s luggage and pull out a legal men’s magazine or a lesbian journal in front of their children or their mother-in-law?” party leader Fiona Patten said.

"If you and your partner have filmed or photographed yourselves making love in an exotic destination or even taking a bath, you will have to answer ‘yes’ to the question or you will be breaking the law.”
Ms Patten said some travellers had not been asked to declare porn this year.
"I've had reports from people who have not had that question when they've come into the country in the past four weeks, but I've also had people confirm that they were asked that question."
A Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said the change was because the term “pornography” was more recognisable to travellers than the term “objectionable material”.
A poll of nearly 1500 news.com.au readers found that over 80 per cent believed the porn searches were an invasion of privacy.

Two different Incoming Passenger Cards are being used at Australian airports / supplied

My friend and I were talking about this the other day....
We came up with a scenario....  

Go into Australia WITHOUT a laptop, but come in with a thumb drive.
Tick the box that says you have porn on the customs card.

Have thumb drive loaded with a ton of high end viruses (on autoload exe's, and on the files themselves)

We didn't conclude what would happen afterwards....
but sure could be funny to see their computer network crash....

Not sure how much deniability you could muster.... "I didn't know my files were infected..."
or what you can do if they wipe out your files... "I had company data in there, and you wiped it! I'm suing!"

*disclaimer*
We wouldn't do it ourselves, but we wouldn't mind if other people did this
*end disclaimer*

This is big issue at the moment and I would be surprised if it does not get squashed as it is just unworkable.  There is backlash from privacy groups, and it will hurt tourism so expect the airlines, tourists businesses to lobby hard against this:  

• If traveller had illegal porn (e.g. underage, rape, snuff, bestiality, etc.) would they admit it?  NO.
  
• How do you define porn i.e. if it is not the above? It's way open to interpretation and confusion.
  
• If most people gave honest answer there would be some pics on their PCs which could fall into the net. The GF topless on the beach, the totally innocent pic of their 2 year old child at bath time (all parents have these somewhere).
  
• If most people answered yes, the passengers would be banked up back to the planes whilst customs searched thousands of laptops, cameras, etc.
  
• Btw, even if you delete pics from your HD, they are still there and will be found by the S/W used to search HDs.

I find it quite amusing when pedo's get busted by your friendly repair shop guys. No problem with them doing this, but I would bet $100 their primary goal is to look for porn to add to their own collections.

My personal view is the intent behind this is to strengthen powers of search and as an over-kill deterrent. I expect the questionnaire will be "softened", and customs will continue to do random searches looking for illegal images. Makes you wonder how they "profile" passengers for this ....

When I think of illegal porn I've only considered child porn, hadn't thought of all those other categories. Is bestiality illegal? Got to be a lot of New Zealanders breaking the law if that's the case.

I keep all my porn, downloaded TV shows, photos, etc. on a portable hard drive. Not so much to avoid detection as much as to free up space to do what I need it to do without it slowing down my computer because of all the stuff taking up space. I would think any half intelligent person who into say snuff movies would do something similar, why would he travel around with it.

Just had our minister in charge of censoring the internet on TV today as much as admitting that anyone wanting to get around the censor net can do so with a free VPN proxy.

Man, you will not be making any NZ friends!

Of course Bestiality is illegal in AUS .... better wipe your HD bro.

Just kidding!

Technically most HARD porn is only available for sale in the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) ... and NT?

IMO customs will not be too hard assed, they are after the same stuff we would object to being put up on this forum.  Mind you, unless sanity prevails we may get some zealots.

I couldn't care less about the new customs "law" but it's hard to fight for your legal privacy rights when some prick is "outing" you for having some innocent porn. We (Australians) should all fight this new draconian legislation at every chance. It does nothing to stop what we agree is wrong.

My concern is if I go to China, take some candid photos of a WG to include in a report, but can't upload them to sex141 because it's not accessible from mainland China.  So I leave them on my phone or camera until I'm back in Aus.

Now in theory, that would be importing pornography, even if just showing boobs, so I'd have to tick "yes" in case they search my phone.  And try explaining why I've been detained at the airport to my wife...

Even when you've off loaded all the incriminating porn onto a USB drive, you'll still have files lurking in your temp folder and download folder.  Even if it's totally legal stuff, I wouldn't trust to the goodwill of your average immigration officer.  Plus, asian women always look younger than their real age.  You get intercepted by an ill tempered immigration officer and he could really ruin your day just checking your temp folder.

A Melbourne man says his life has been ruined after Customs officers took his hard drive from him because it contained pornography.
Customs has recently started asking incoming travellers if they are carrying pornography in a bid to block illegal pornographic material entering the country.
Ross Mansfield had his hard drive confiscated a fortnight ago when he was coming home from a holiday in the Philippines.

"They said I had some suspicious material on there.
"I said 'I forgot to remove any porn because my friends in the Philippines, they download it, they're mutual friends'."
Mr Mansfield says despite the suspicious film was nothing more than standard porn.
"They (Customs) are violating my rights," he told AAP.
Despite defending the contents of the hard drive, Mr Mansfield admitted to not having seen the film and said "I don't know what it is".
Other movies included Adult Pretty Woman, Real Female Orgasm, Asian Babe Moans, My Friend's Hot Mum and Sexy Blond.
"They're all over 18.
"It's nothing underage."
The hard drive also contains about 5000 holiday photos and 30,000 songs.
Mr Mansfield threatened to sue Customs if any of the material was deleted.
"I've got my livelihood on there.
"I'm more worried about the fact that they try and wipe out what's on my hard drive.
"If they touch my stuff I would find a lawyer ... I would be after suing them."
Comment was sought from Customs.
AAP

Link here:
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/tra ... -20100602-wymn.html