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Hello, everyone, and please accept my apologies if this is a painfully naive, and/or redundant question. I've just joined the forum because I'll be moving to Cambodia from the United States in about six weeks -- so I'm just getting my feet wet in the discussion fora like this one. Thanks for being patient and understanding.

My question today is this: I own a 20TB personal movie collection which I keep stored on four external hard drives, and an I/T friend of mine here in the states predicted a "near-100% chance" that these would be interdicted by Cambodian customs officials at the airport. That sounded ... well, improbable, to say the least, so I was wondering if anyone here would like to weigh in? He seems to have based this prediction on what he fancies as insider-status on the question of internationalized intellectual property, but his sentiments are like nothing I've heard anecdotally or come to expect about the process of arriving in Phnom Penh on an E-class visa. Surely people who come to the Kingdom to work must bring significant data storage capabilities with them all the time, no?

Thanks in advance and, again, sorry if this post is in any way annoying.

Personally I've never had any of my external drives looked at over a period of the 7 years I've lived here. I only carry two drives though and don't have any movies. That's all I can help with.

Your friend is a dweeb.
You have 100% chance of no inspection.

I must have flown into Cambodia 100+ times, often with 1-2 HDD's. Not once have I been stopped for an inspection.

I've never actually seen anyone stopped at customs at the airport, and all sorts of shit has rolled off the conveyor. Just hand over your completed customs form and waltz on through. It would be far too much effort for no reward for them to bother looking on hard drives, anyhow. Shipping things in via mail is different, but it's the duty they want not the stuff on it. I don't think there is even a performing rights group here, I saw one of the cinema owners here say they had no-one to pay, so basically every film shown is a bootleg. The country is awash with counterfeit goods, too.

Dangerous Dave wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2017 10:44 pm... a "near-100% chance" that these would be interdicted by Cambodian customs officials at the airport. That sounded ... well, improbable ...

Yes, it is improbable, and it would be really new, but there is a first time for everything.

Why don't you encrypt the hard drives? In that case, they would contain seemingly random nonsense, while you would need the encryption key to turn them back into proper media files. Then, you can always claim: "Yes, it is random nonsense. An encryption key only exists in your fantasy and certainly not in mine."

Under linux, something like this should work out of the box:

$ dd if=/dev/sda | openssl aes -d -salt -k "Your-Password-Here" | dd of=/dev/sdb

You see, the output of ideal encryption, i.e. using a one-time pad, is a stream of data that is indistinguisable from random noise. An algorithm such as AES tries to achieve that without having to store the one-time pad, but by generating it from a password. Therefore, encrypted data is pretty much indistinguishable from random nonsense, while the algorithm was specifically designed to make sure that it passes the tests of randomness as to make it impossible to prove that it would not be random nonsense. A customs official cannot do what mathematics does not allow him to do.

In that sense, if you do it correctly, it will be impossible to challenge your claim that "My drives are full of random shit."

cptrelentless wrote: ↑Fri Jun 16, 2017 8:33 am I saw one of the cinema owners here say they had no-one to pay, so basically every film shown is a bootleg.

The major cinemas show real movies.

I have never flown in directly to Cambodia, always flew to Bangkok and travelled overland. I have done this so many times I can't remember how many times. But never had my luggage searched. There could always be a first time I suppose.

Yep.

Over 80 entries to Cambodia over 16 years. Never once been stopped and searched.

I have a similar sized collection and bought a copy of much of it in with no problems. I always have an external HDD with me when I fly in. No problems.

Why not get your IT friend to explain the basis for his strong assertion.

Then tell him he is talking out of his ass.


Mind you he may know better than a group of anonymous people on an internet message board, that have been there and done that.

LaudJohn wrote: ↑Fri Jun 16, 2017 1:31 pmOver 80 entries to Cambodia over 16 years. Never once been stopped and searched.

Eventually, they may catch up with the Joneses. That is why you'd better learn basic encryption. The more people regularly use it, the less they can do anything about it. So, it is in my own interest to prod everybody else to learn it. That will allow me to better hide in the crowd. So, let's axiomatize in this game that everybody who doesn't know how to encrypt his files, is a traitor.

$ man openssl

NAME
openssl - OpenSSL command line tool

SYNOPSIS
openssl command [ command_opts ] [ command_args ]

openssl [ list-standard-commands | list-message-digest-commands | list-cipher-commands | list-cipher-algorithms | list-message-digest-algorithms | list-
public-key-algorithms]

openssl no-XXX [ arbitrary options ]

DESCRIPTION
OpenSSL is a cryptography toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) network protocols and related
cryptography standards required by them.

The openssl program is a command line tool for using the various cryptography functions of OpenSSL's crypto library from the shell.


The openssl program is a good starting point. Not knowing how to use this program (just the basics), amounts to high treason.