Not Hong Kong, but the last time I flew into Tokyo from Bangkok my suitcase was searched for drugs.  Japanese Customs -- who didn't speak English -- brought out a book with various photos of hard drugs like cannabis, cocaine, needles, etc. and pointed at the English words which asked if I possessed any of it.

Anyways, back on topic.  If I ever buy pirated DVDs I'll just copy the disc (with DVDDecrypter or DVDFab to break the copy protection and region coding) to my laptop.  These days with my netbook which doesn't have a DVD drive, I'll just watch the movie in my hotel room then throw it out.

you use an external dvd drive for your netbook i presume?

Most if not all pirated dvds are region free.  But ripping the disc into hard drive is a good way to avoid the risk of getting caught in possession of pirated discs.

I have a friend who flew back home to the mid West.  He had to go into a private room where a lady searched his laptop.  She asked him to turn it on first. He believes why he was targeted was the places he went to.  He was a single white male about 50, traveling alone and not on a business trip. They looked at his passport and saw certain places he had traveled to. He believes they were looking for kiddy pron. They also went into his luggage. Everything was done quickly and wasn't thorough.

Its totally not worth buying the pirated stuff from China.  Too risky getting back into HK and then if your travelling back to NA, then you have to go through customs again.  I think your best bet is to rip the movies onto you laptop and take it home from there.  I have heard of stories ofguys getting caught at the HK boarder and then incur huge fines.  Even when I was in HK, I didn't see a lot of place selling the pirated stuff, definitely not as much as a few years ago.

For a strictly educational conversation only - I would find burning an image quicker if you are overseas. As someone mentioned, most of these dvds were not copyrighted and already region free. When you encode the movie say with dvdshrink or handbrake, the speed of the encode will depend on your processing power as the video will have to be re-encoded to avi, xvid, or h.264 for you ipad/iphone folks. A dvd copy is a block by block copy so its a matter of read speed of cdrom/write speed of hd. Or go ghetto and just copy the vob files - its mpeg2 afterall. It'll be faster without having to spend lots of time in a hotel room waiting for all the encoding to be completed. More time outside to look for more movies or boobies!

I have never heard of someone having the contents of their computer searched?? I would think that that should violate some laws here in the US and is out of the jurisdiction/mandate of the TSA. I would be calling a lawyer and some ACLU folks. I understand searching a bag for physical explosives and drugs, but you don't have the authority to search my laptop for digital content as I could have confidential financial information relating to the company (which is traded publicly on NYSE) that I currently work for. That's crazy! But an encrypted hidden partition will take care of what you need to hide until your lawyer arrives - truecrypt (freeware). I certainly don't endorse using Truecrypt to hide kiddy porn or crap like that, but I would endorse using it for hiding...say a self made video of you and some slutty chick in a motel room from your suspicious and invasive wife/gf.

I don't know, but buying fake DVDs have lost appeal on me. Torrent seems the best source if such movie/song/photo/whatever out there.

Until HK government cracks down on these downloads or Netvigator/Cable/BB100 limits volume of DLs, I'll live with this method.

I can believe this and think it's a good idea for customs agents.  I imagine I was searched because they saw that I flew in from Thailand.  Even if they wanted to search my camera, all I took were photos of the cities and beaches.

I had another friend who flew into San Francisco then back home to NY from China. He's been to Thailand also. He's Asian traveling alone, single early 50's. It was either in SF or NY but I don't recall. They wanted to look at tapes from his video camera.  He said he dropped his camera and it's broken. The camera doesn't opening correctly.  There was a dent on his camera and he show it to the guy.  The truth was, he did drop it but it was still working and you have to play with door a little. The custom guy then didn't bother and continue with his search of the rest of his luggage.

Well at airports I am asked to turn on my laptop and ipad - they told me they just want to see that its an operational electronic equipment and not something "else" (like drugs or explosives) packed into the shell of the electronics. There were not necessarily looking through the contents of what was on my laptop/camera/ipad though.

Sometimes they do this to catch guys that participate in sex with a minor.  I also had a friend who was with a group of guys returning back from tahiland to l.a.  At the l.a airport they were stopped and had their laptops and cameras searched.  On the camera they found a picture of a kid, and decided to keep allllll of their laptops and cameras as evidence.  The photo of the kid was any one of those innocent photos that you would take of some cute kid on the street.  Long story short, they didn't get their laptop/camera's back for about 6 months.

unless you're traveling into/from israel. security there is really really tight.

there are records of people having their contents of laptops/mobile devices searched due to suspicion of having pro-Hamas/Hezbollah or anti jewish media or contents

Ah I see. Never been to Israel before, so I've not experienced that level of security. But given the kind of terrorism I've seen on the news and heard from Jewish friends that served in the IDF - I don't blame them at all. I'm just a friendly ABC traveling abroad for punting - I'm a 141 lover not a fighter!

In terms of the TSA looking through my camera - sure why not. I'll be accomodating. Anyways, any pictures I took with a WG is in another sd card which I've taken the time to encrypt on my laptop prior to transporting it back to the US. Though I have not been asked to show TSA the contents of my camera, I have been asked to turn on my laptop for them to inspect. It was at this point that I told them they are not permitted to review the contents of my business laptop as it contains sensitive financial information regarding the company I work for. And if they are adamant about pushing the subject then I will need to call the corporate lawyers at the head office. They backed down a bit at that point and simply asked me to turn it on, but did not request for me to login for them to inspect the contents.

I did not push that point because I am some ACLU card carrying liberal trying to give big brother a hard time. But the mandate of the TSA is to ensure our safety when traveling and the mandate of customs is to ensure that pirated goods/illegal agriculture do not make it into our borders. We pay taxes for these bureaucracies, I do not see where their roles extend to policing would-be pedophiles. That is the jurisdiction of the FBI and due process should be applied in such cases. The feds cannot knock on your door and say I want to search everything you've got because I suspect you are doing something illegal, they need probably cause and then a warrant. As a matter of academic legal argument - they also cannot use TSA's authority to search your bags (intended for anti-terrorism) to circumvent the requirement of a warrant on an un-related investigation by another law enforcement agency. Before I board a plan, you are here to search for dangerous materials so search for that. Not evidence that I might have inappropriate pictures in my laptop, or that perhaps I have insider trading information on my laptop. You are not here to investigate domestic crimes nor are you trained to. But this is all of course only applicable to US agents (TSA/Border/Feds) on US soil. What security guards in other countries do - is up to their local laws. For the record though, I wasn't simply being a prick. I do have sensitive preliminary quarterly financials stored in my laptop which, if the appropriate person could read and understand, could use that information for insider trading (buy or dump a bunch of our stocks early) before our quarterly profits are announced.

was there last year in israel for a business related trip, sure is tough there the security that is. heck, even getting the visa to go there took a few months for clearance.

and the main reason why alot of us get asked to switch our laptops on is due to the fear of explosives hidden inside or some shit along those lines.

oh as for TSA... only recognizable in states i think? i was warned not to use TSA locks when going to israel.

Thank you. I'm planing trip to Hong Kong so this post is very useful for me.

you mean this thread. anyway have fun in HK, just don'tget caught with your 'loot' when you return to whereveryou came from!

Found some other pictures at HK airport...These pictures are from a cabinet after leavring HK Immigration.

[ Last edited by  Weelock at 9-2-2011 12:10 ]

and what's the rationale for displaying such stuff at the immigration? especially the counterfeit goods?

like the customs are gonna pull over anyone who passes immigration who unwittingly have a branded wallet.

queer

I guess Customs are telling ppl "don't think we are stupid, we've confiscated these, so we know that LV bag of your is fake"... Which doesn't matter, considering the amount of fake that circulate today it must be harder for them to spot a real one among the sea of fakes...

I don't think it matter if you have a few movies or 2 to 3 fake bags. Customs are more likely after things like drugs, guns, bombs, weapons, animals, plants, and terrorist. Now if they find 20 to 30 movies, then there is a problem.