Inspection of files on the Ukrainian border: personal experience
Returning a few days ago on a train from Simferopol to St. Petersburg, I was faced with the fact that at the border a Ukrainian customs officer became interested in the contents of a netbook. Earlier on Habré I met mentions of such a search, but I did not see any detailed text, so I decided to write it myself — so that those who cross the border know in advance what to expect. If others in the comments complement the story with their own experience, it will be generally fine.
On the way to the Crimea, I crossed the Ukrainian border without problems - I just filled out the form received from the conductor, gave her half to the customs officer and showed me my passport. On the way back, he gave the other half and showed the passport, but the customs officer started asking questions: first he asked about the purpose of the visit, the amount of money being taken and the like, and then asked to show the contents of the small handbag. There was a netbook in it - and the customs officer, seeing him, asked if I’m not bringing prohibited files (“with violence, extremism”). Having received a negative answer, he said to include a netbook. I don’t know for sure whether he has the right to demand this under Ukrainian law, but there wasn’t anything special about a netbook, so he turned it on, and Ubuntu got out of sleep mode. The customs officer asked, “What is this, Linux? Ubuntu, yes? ”, And then said“ show screen with all disks ”, which, frankly, baffled, because in Linux the file system is different from Windows, and there is no such screen in the file manager. Then he asked if there was a Windows netbook, and, having received a positive answer, he said to download it. When he saw Windows 7, he asked with interest whether it started up normally on a low-powered netbook, tried to open “my computer”, ran into difficulties due to a uniquely configured Windows (there are no icons on the desktop at all, and the height of the start menu is reduced to the limit) and said do it for him. There he entered "* .wmv" in the search window, made sure that the wmv files on the netbook are only system, changed to "* .avi" and began to study the long list of video files that dropped out: "What is this,“ IT CROUD ”? And here "S04E01", the series means. Only feature films and TV shows, yes? ”After that, he checked on other video extensions, carefully reviewing the file lists, but without launching any. Then he asked if there was a flash drive, and then studied its contents. It seemed to stop him only because the time the train had been parked was limited, and in the end he just said goodbye and left a few minutes before departure.
What was he really looking for? Perhaps it’s really manifestations of extremism, but rather, as Zakhar Mai wrote about a similar situation, he wanted to find porn and take a bribe for closing his eyes to this. This explains why video files were of particular interest, and the general idiocy of what is happening - it is very foolish to try to resist the entry of extremist files into the country with the help of their brief search in laptops, when the Internet was invented.
What can they do with you if they find something? I don’t know about extremism. If you find porn - as May says , in the Criminal Code of Ukraine it is forbidden to only store pornography for the purpose of selling it, that is, legally you are innocent, but there is an opportunity to extort bribes (“resist that for personal use and not sale - we drop from train clarify ").
What are the chances of getting into this situation? Most people do not look in their luggage, that is, put the laptop in a bag on the border - and then, if you are not asked to open it, then they simply don’t know about it, and even from those laptops that see, only some of them check. In addition, if you are really looking for porn, then, probably, women’s laptops show far less interest than men’s.
How to hide video files from customs? (I don’t encourage extremism, but let's say you have your own home-video on your laptop and you don’t want to be picked at it.) In a Windows-Linux dual-boot situation, you can simply store them in a Linux partition that is from under Windows not visible; customs officers, it seems, are not strong in searching on Linux, and if you turn on Windows from hibernation in front of them, they don’t even know what Linux you have. If there is only Windows, then resorting to some kind of hellish cryptography is also not necessary: ​​I think that it is enough to temporarily move the files to the digicam / phone / player or give them names that resemble system files (the main thing is the non-video extension) and place in the Windows service directory.
On the way to the Crimea, I crossed the Ukrainian border without problems - I just filled out the form received from the conductor, gave her half to the customs officer and showed me my passport. On the way back, he gave the other half and showed the passport, but the customs officer started asking questions: first he asked about the purpose of the visit, the amount of money being taken and the like, and then asked to show the contents of the small handbag. There was a netbook in it - and the customs officer, seeing him, asked if I’m not bringing prohibited files (“with violence, extremism”). Having received a negative answer, he said to include a netbook. I don’t know for sure whether he has the right to demand this under Ukrainian law, but there wasn’t anything special about a netbook, so he turned it on, and Ubuntu got out of sleep mode. The customs officer asked, “What is this, Linux? Ubuntu, yes? ”, And then said“ show screen with all disks ”, which, frankly, baffled, because in Linux the file system is different from Windows, and there is no such screen in the file manager. Then he asked if there was a Windows netbook, and, having received a positive answer, he said to download it. When he saw Windows 7, he asked with interest whether it started up normally on a low-powered netbook, tried to open “my computer”, ran into difficulties due to a uniquely configured Windows (there are no icons on the desktop at all, and the height of the start menu is reduced to the limit) and said do it for him. There he entered "* .wmv" in the search window, made sure that the wmv files on the netbook are only system, changed to "* .avi" and began to study the long list of video files that dropped out: "What is this,“ IT CROUD ”? And here "S04E01", the series means. Only feature films and TV shows, yes? ”After that, he checked on other video extensions, carefully reviewing the file lists, but without launching any. Then he asked if there was a flash drive, and then studied its contents. It seemed to stop him only because the time the train had been parked was limited, and in the end he just said goodbye and left a few minutes before departure.
What was he really looking for? Perhaps it’s really manifestations of extremism, but rather, as Zakhar Mai wrote about a similar situation, he wanted to find porn and take a bribe for closing his eyes to this. This explains why video files were of particular interest, and the general idiocy of what is happening - it is very foolish to try to resist the entry of extremist files into the country with the help of their brief search in laptops, when the Internet was invented.
What can they do with you if they find something? I don’t know about extremism. If you find porn - as May says , in the Criminal Code of Ukraine it is forbidden to only store pornography for the purpose of selling it, that is, legally you are innocent, but there is an opportunity to extort bribes (“resist that for personal use and not sale - we drop from train clarify ").
What are the chances of getting into this situation? Most people do not look in their luggage, that is, put the laptop in a bag on the border - and then, if you are not asked to open it, then they simply don’t know about it, and even from those laptops that see, only some of them check. In addition, if you are really looking for porn, then, probably, women’s laptops show far less interest than men’s.
How to hide video files from customs? (I don’t encourage extremism, but let's say you have your own home-video on your laptop and you don’t want to be picked at it.) In a Windows-Linux dual-boot situation, you can simply store them in a Linux partition that is from under Windows not visible; customs officers, it seems, are not strong in searching on Linux, and if you turn on Windows from hibernation in front of them, they don’t even know what Linux you have. If there is only Windows, then resorting to some kind of hellish cryptography is also not necessary: ​​I think that it is enough to temporarily move the files to the digicam / phone / player or give them names that resemble system files (the main thing is the non-video extension) and place in the Windows service directory.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/284532/
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