Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-airport-security-demands-access-to-tourists-private-email-accounts.premium-1.434509

by mxfh • 14 years ago

49 80 14 years ago

haaretz.com

tnash11• 14 years ago

Before any kind of Israel bashing starts, I want to say that unless you have lived under constant threat to your life like nearly all Israelis have during some point of their life, you cannot really grasp the lengths you will go to to preserve your life and the lives of your family.

Nonetheless, this does seem a little overboard. From having personally been grilled by Israeli airport security, I can say that they are very thorough. I doubt they really need this intrusion to determine if someone is a threat, as it is easier for them to just not grant access, but I suppose if someone really needed to get into the country they could be willing to divulge the information.

Security, in any form, is annoying. Implement two-factor on your gmail account, and it will occasionally annoy you when you have to dig out your phone for the code, and that's just to protect your email from prying eyes! What if you had to legitimately protect your life and the lives of your family? What kind of inconvenience would you accept for that protection?

(Edit) Why is this downvoted? What did I say that did not add to the conversation? Just because you disagree with me? That's rather childish. I think my point is rather poignant, that security is a necessary evil, and that for some it is more necessary than others.

potatolicious3• 14 years ago

> "you cannot really grasp the lengths you will go to to preserve your life and the lives of your family"

This justifies things... how?

Not to mention that imminent danger has been the mother of a huge number of evils in our time, and since time immemorial.

tnash11• 14 years ago

So you're saying if someone were pointing a gun at your family, and you also had a gun pointed at them, you would refuse to use it out of a belief that you occupy some moral high ground?

toomuchtodo2• 14 years ago

Unless you're a grossly incompetent terrorist, searching through your email isn't going to help you determine how much of a threat you are.

Israel can continue what they're doing, but without any US policy or financial support if they continue to do so towards US citizens/legal residents.

makomk3• 14 years ago

It's not going to help them determine how much of a threat someone is in terms of killing people. It's a very good way of determining how much of a threat someone's likely to be in terms of drawing attentions to the less savoury aspects of Israel's treatment of its Arab population.

Edit: Good guess apparently. Look at the search keywords here: http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/do-you-feel-more-arab-or-more-...

potatolicious3• 14 years ago

I don't support this sort of invasion of privacy, but FWIW most terrorists are grossly incompetent. We're not dealing with shadowy cabals of Dr. Evils, terrorists we've been able to apprehend have inevitably turned out to be strictly amateur.

What they lack in operational sophistication they make up in dedication and deadliness.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

I would demand that my government did go around and committed genocide on my neighbors. I would demand that they treat the palestinians as humans -- so they wouldn't want to kill me.

But that is just me.

_pius• 14 years ago

This is a really poor frame. People who disagree with this practice are not "Israel bashing," they're disagreeing with this policy. It's inappropriate to preemptively insinuate that those who disagree about a civil liberties issue are anti-Semitic.

tnash11• 14 years ago

Well, you know, it's just, I've been on the internet. People tend to take things to extremes. Tech people tend to be liberal, and most liberals in the US have an anti-Israeli view. I prefer not to divulge my political leanings (but just because I agree with someone else on one point does not mean I agree with them on any other) but I know a very great deal about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and its implications. I want to educate, and I don't want to see mindless bashing of Israel like I see on pretty much every tech forum where the topic comes up.

marcf10• 14 years ago

You will notice this isn't about security but about identifying pro-Palestinian activists:

Quote: "The agent, suspecting Tamari was involved in pro-Palestinian activism, wanted to inspect her private email account for incriminating evidence. The 42-year-old American of Palestinian descent refused and was swiftly expelled from the country."

http://www.timesofisrael.com/pro-palestinian-activist-says-s...

antr2• 14 years ago

couldn't you just give a bogus email account, like an old hotmail account? It has my real name, and probably plenty of spam waiting to be opened, but that is about it. If airport security says anything against it I can simply say that I do not use email that often.

Am I being too naive?

pavel_lishin2• 14 years ago

Well, the penalty for disallowing access seems to be a refusal to allow you into the country. I imagine that giving access to a legitimate but old and useless e-mail address would be taken as a refusal, and you'd just get back on your plane and go home.

toomuchtodo2• 14 years ago

It appears that even giving them your real email account will get you refused from the country.

As a US citizen, I'm disappointed in Israel, and would prefer even less of my tax dollars are used to support them after this.

antr2• 14 years ago

but then, how might they know that I have other personal accounts? Are they going to put on a lie detector and ask me if I have a gmail account?

m0nty• 14 years ago

The people most likely to maintain several "live" email accounts to get through this situation? Those with criminal intent. So once again this is a perfect way to make innocent people (who value their privacy and won't co-operate) look like a security threat.

slantyyz• 14 years ago

I don't even know my e-mail password (1password) and I don't take my laptop with me on trips, so I guess I'd be in really big trouble.

koide2• 14 years ago

They may have more and better reasons than most to be obnoxious in airport security, but this measure is nothing more than security theater (or worse,) yet again.

Now that this measure is public, any terrorist worth his salt will prepare a plausible and innocent looking email account.

alt_• 14 years ago

No real content in the article for non-subscribers.

Reddit comment[0] has (a) full story[1].

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ulvaj/israel_airp...

[1] http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/do-you-feel-more-arab-or-more-...

JumpCrisscross• 14 years ago

We may need a HN Guideline about paywalls

mxfh• 14 years ago

The paywall wasn't up when it was posted.

davidf183• 14 years ago

You could also just "google" for the headline to read the entire story....

davidf183• 14 years ago

I'm an American who has been to Israel countless times and unless you've been there you can't imagine the security situation. At the last moment I was saved from a terrorist attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_BMW_attack when I went into a corner store to buy a candy bar hearing gunshots with girls running into the store before I could make my purchase. I have eaten at several locations that were later bombed by terrorists.

I have been in Israel where terrorist bombs have blown up buses or the open market just a mile or so from where I was.

A major difference between America and Israel: In America they search your bags on the way out of a store. In Israel they search your bags on the way in.

SODaniel• 14 years ago

Still no justification to require overly invasive security measures such as requiring access to personal communication etc.

Also completely useless for anything than purely 'selecting' who you let in since I am going to assume a terrorist wouldn't exactly use terrorist185@hotmail.com and then hand the email over when asked.

mayanksinghal• 14 years ago

Exactly and Israel is not the only country that faces terrorism. India does as well, and as an Indian - I would out-rightly reject any such measures.

planetguy• 14 years ago

> Still no justification to require overly invasive security measures such as requiring access to personal communication etc

Israel is full of overly invasive security measures. The alternative is probably just to bar access to the country altogether, or at least bar it to people of certain backgrounds.

davidf183• 14 years ago

I wouldn't second guess Israeli security measures...unlike TSA, these are highly trained people who undoubtedly have military training since with few exceptions (Arab or Orthodox Jewish) not only men but women are drafted for military service.

If you don't like the security measures then don't go there.

ceejayoz• 14 years ago

OK, but would you have been saved by a check of someone's e-mail accounts? Surely a terrorist trying to fly into Israel is going to set up fluffypuppies@gmail.com as a front account to provide.

AJ007• 14 years ago

This just sounds like an attempt to keep individuals of certain backgrounds out of a country. Ask a lot of invasive information and then refuse them entry. Entry information such as this should be aggregated in to travel warnings given about a particular country to minimize wasting a citizen time & money.

Stories on how foreign countries treat privacy are important. American companies, in some part, have turned places like China in to zero-privacy zones that would have left George Orwell's head spinning.

The post-FB generation of start ups should take very hard lines on privacy and build tools that employ obfuscation & client side decryption. For example, when logging in from an unverified sources (or foreign IP), the email account could reveal only commercial email.

Sadly that isn't what is happening. Just today I got a pop up for Dropbox containing a pre-checked box to "Automatically import when removable devices are connected." Import what? All photos. Sorry if I don't want to store pictures of my girlfriends naked in my Dropbox account.

By the way, what country is known for harassing Americans at their border: Canada. I'd rather travel to Mexico in the middle of a drug war.

pyre• 14 years ago

   By the way, what country is known for harassing Americans at 
   their border: Canada. I'd rather travel to Mexico in the
   middle of a drug war.

I've had the opposite experience. As an American citizen, I've gotten a worse experience going Canada => US than vice-versa. I've personally only been harassed once by Canadian border patrol, and at one point I was crossing the border every day for work (note: This is without any sort of 'special' clearance like the Nexus Pass).

That said, I went to Tijuana once when there was apparently a 3-day riot at some high-security prison nearby and it took 4 hours in a 2-mile long line to get back across the border. I'd imagine that a drug war would be even worse.

Canada• 14 years ago

It's a disgrace in both directions. Neither Americans or Canadians should tolerate the rude and invasive treatment we suffer at our borders.

marcf10• 14 years ago

AJ007 wrote:

> This just sounds like an attempt to keep individuals of certain backgrounds out of a country.

Absolutely correct. The security officials believed that the individuals where pro-Palestinian activists. Here is a quote and article that details this:

"The agent, suspecting Tamari was involved in pro-Palestinian activism, wanted to inspect her private email account for incriminating evidence. The 42-year-old American of Palestinian descent refused and was swiftly expelled from the country."

http://www.timesofisrael.com/pro-palestinian-activist-says-s...

nyellin7• 14 years ago

Please do not make broad statements about Israel based on one article.

Israel allows civil unions, allows homosexuals to serve in the military without restrictions, supports Muslim private schools, pays for Islamic religious activities, and generally respects human rights. [1]

We also have our warts, like everyone country does. Israeli politicians have attempted to pass our own Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act. We have our equivalents of the TSA, FBI, and CIA - and for us they are an existential necessity.

Keep in mind that many - probably most - Israelis will be equally disturbed by this. Israel's Supreme Court has an excellent track record of ruling against military and government action. Their decisions are binding - there is no one above the law in Israel. Prime ministers, presidents, and intelligence organizations alike have been prosecuted.

We're also only 60 years old, and have fought 7 major wars in that time, twice in such dire situations that it was widely believed we would fight to the last dead man and lose. Compare with other countries, or just MKULTRA, before you judge us so quickly.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Israel

Edit: This is almost a societal-version of the fundamental attribution error. When your country does something wrong, you blame it on the politician or individual. When you hear about the same thing happening in another country, you wonder why that country is so backwards and evil.

ajross3• 14 years ago

> Please do not make broad statements about Israel based on one article.

Have any been made? The discussion here, at least, seems very civil and focused on the issue at hand. Israel is indeed a very laudable nation and people in many ways.

But this behavior is awful, and has to be condemned.

nyellin7• 14 years ago

Then let me clarify: I condemn this as well. It has to stop.

There have been comments below calling for America to stop supporting Israeli. I want to point out how exceptionally uncommon this type of behavior is.

makomk3• 14 years ago

What nyellin means by "Israel allows civil unions" is that, starting in 2011, they actually allow a man and a woman who aren't religious and who can prove this to the satisfaction of the religious authorities to get married. Prior to that it was actually impossible for many heterosexual Israeli citizens to get married within Israel because they were only considered Jewish by Israeli law and not by the Jewish religious authorities. As far as I can tell civil unions still don't extend to same-sex couples.

excuse-me2• 14 years ago

So Israel allows mixed-sex marriages? Urghh that's just gross!

nyellin7• 14 years ago

No, I deliberately used the term "civil union", not "marriage" for that reason. The distinction is hairy, so I'm just going to quote Wikipedia:

Israeli law recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere... It does not, however, allow same-sex couples to marry on Israeli soil. Civil marriage doesn't exist in Israel for heterosexual couples, either, (except where both spouses are non-Jewish) and therefore only a marriage sanctioned by religious authorities can take place within Israel.

The State of Israel allows foreign partners of its homosexual citizenry to receive residency permits. The Civil Service Commission extends spousal benefits and pensions to the partners of homosexual employees. The Israeli State Attorney's Office has extended the spousal exemption from property-transfer taxes to same-sex couples. Israel's attorney general has granted legal recognition to same-sex couples in financial and other business matters. Attorney General Meni Mazuz said the couples will be treated the same as common-law spouses, recognizing them as legal units for tax, real estate, and financial purposes. Mazuz made his decision by refusing to appeal a district court ruling in an inheritance case that recognized the legality of a same-sex union, his office said in a statement. Mazuz did differentiate, however, between recognizing same-sex unions for financial and practical purposes, as he did, and changing the law to officially sanction the unions, which would be a matter for parliament, according to the statement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Israel#Recogniti...

marcf10• 14 years ago

nyellin wrote:

> We also have our warts...

But you didn't mention the elephant in the room in your comment, which is pretty strange:

Israel also has run a 40+ year occupation that denies non-Jewish residents of rights and freedoms while subsidizing Jewish settlements in and around the disenfranchised non-Jewish population. Many many people, including former Israeli PMs and many respected academics, consider Israel's occupation and its settlement practices to be a form of apartheid or leading to it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analog...

nyellin7• 14 years ago

Because anyone who thinks the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a simple resolution is likely unaware of all the facts.

Furthermore, this is a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians without Israeli citizenship, not Jews and non-Jews. Obviously the two are related, but the ultimate question is whether Palestinians without Israeli citizenship, living in the West Bank, should be granted citizenship or not. Israeli Arabs living in Jerusalem, Haifa, etc. were granted full rights in '48, or when Israel annexed the area. Israel hasn't annexed the West Bank, so non-Israelis in the West Bank are stuck as citizens of no country.

Calling Israel an apartheid severely downplays the horror of what happened in South Africa. It seems odd to point out that I learn at university alongside Israeli Arabs and ride on buses next to them, because of course I do. Why wouldn't I?

getpost2• 14 years ago

How long before every government requires this kind of disclosure? What other types of invasive personal disclosure (e.g., cell phone records, health records) will be required, now that it's possible because the data is online?

Requiring this disclosure at an international border is just a convenient pretext in the emerging dystopia. Human and civil rights need to be updated in light of emerging technologies.

Unfortunately, that seems unlikely given, for example, the US government doesn't honor even its own outdated Bill of Rights in the most basic ways (i.e., by asserting its authority to kill US citizens on the President's word).

nivertech2• 14 years ago

She probably lied about the purpose of her visit. If somebody read the linked articles, it's clear that this has noting to do with her ethnic background, but with her anti-Israeli political and economical activities. Not a terrorist, but still we have full right not letting her in.

marcf10• 14 years ago

Israel does prevent those with sympathy to the Palestinians from entering Israel.

I posted this quote/article in response to another comment but it is pertinent here:

http://www.timesofisrael.com/pro-palestinian-activist-says-s...

getpost2• 14 years ago

On another note, this gives me an idea for a product. Auto-delete all email in your main account after some designated period or other rule(s), but keep separate encrypted backup.

jancurn• 14 years ago

I've had also quite strange experience when departing from the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv two months ago. Neglecting the fact I got a very thorough security check for no apparent reason, have been asked questions like "Did you like it in Syria?", and got my pants wiped with a bomb detectors, the most humiliating thing that happened was that they asked me to unlock my iPhone and then walked away with it for a good few minutes.

I have no idea what did they do with the phone, did they read my emails? check my photos? installed some spyware? I have no idea, but I'm sure if I rejected to unlock it, I would be missed my flight. I felt like crap after that.

Interestingly, they didn't care about my second phone, an old Nokia, probably iPhone is more popular.

Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

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