Be very, very careful next time you make that trek to the Antipodes – Australian Customs officials have been given the right to search incoming passengers’ laptops and cellphones for pornography.
A new question has appeared on the country’s Incoming Passenger Cards asking if travelers are carrying any pornography.
And a senior customs official, Richard Janeczko, has been quoted as saying that materials ‘stored on electronic media devices such as laptops, thumb drives and iPhones’ are on their target list.
The Australian Sex Party (yes, really) is up in arms about the plan, and is demanding an enquiry.
“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,” warns president Fiona Patten.
The question also applies to a wide range of perfectly legal magazines and movies.
Customs documents say that no consultation was needed as the changes are of a ‘minor or machinery nature’. Patten says the changes appear to have been introduced at the instigation of National Party senator Barnaby Joyce and Liberal senator, Eric Abetz.
“How can the Minister call this monstrous invasion of people’s privacy and the criminalisation of hundreds of thousands of people who will answer ‘No’ to this question out of embarrassment, a ‘minor’ or ‘machinery’ change?” she asks.
