New Zealand to fine travelers who refuse to unlock devices
 

Just read today on the AP:

https://apnews.com/bad059b0f137479680aa6c63b67935d7

Might influence my decision on some leisure travel (sigh).

Sounds like you'd be better off not leaving your home!
While the measure is stringent, the vast majority travelers will be unaffected ...

(chuckle) I think that's extreme. To reiterate, I wrote "Might influence", and that would apply to considerations of travel to NZ. It certainly won't keep me at home from traveling to many other places around the world I have in mind.

Seems like an ill-conceived law and the last sentence of the article perfectly articulates why:

Creates a problem for people who are required by law to keep confidential certain information which may be on their devices.

Friend travels with classified stuff. You can get around this. Problem easy solved.

What does the poster have on their phone that means he'd change travel plans?

Wasn't really interested in going before, and this might just make the decision a little easier. I have no fear for myself, really, but would just avoid as a protest.

I really don't understand why any non New Zealanders are the least bit fussed about this. For a foreigner the rule, at least implicitly, was give us your password or we can simply not let you in the country. The only people this change really applies to is New Zealanders who they can't refuse entry so it gives them some leverage in that space but for a non citizen if you don't want to hand over the password and don't want to pay the fine you can just refuse and be refused entry which is exactly the position you're in now.

I've seen non-citizens of New Zealand allowed entry into New Zealand despite not being able/willing to provide the access codes for locked electronic devices when asked for them. That didn't result in a fine, nor did it necessarily result in being refused entry. ;)

Where in official governmental publication do you get that the fine doesn't apply to non-citizens who are unable/uwilling to provide the access codes for electronic devices when asked for them by the New Zealand authorities at ports of entry/exit?

What sophisticated transborder criminals do is to do what non-criminals increasingly do: use relatively cheap smartphones acquired at the destination and use them as clients to remotely view/control/access offshore devices to access the information/communications they want, and doing this in conjunction with wiping out their home/travel device just before check-in/showing up at the airport terminal.

I'm sure that if the government starts checking out every 17-year old kid's smartphone/laptop at AKL when arriving from abroad, then they are likely to find a lot of foolish kids who have violated one or more laws. But we all know that governments tend to use these kind of laws to also do targeted discrimination, more so against ethnic and religious minorities. Either way, expect there to be a lot of "other" teenagers caught up in prosecution when/if the authorities decide to go after say teenage boys at ports of entry in New Zealand.

"Expect"? New Zealand isn't the US: government conducted targeted discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities isn't exactly their thing.

If it is that much of an issue, why not just do what they suggest in the last sentence:
I've heard of several Americans who do just that. As they are getting off of the aircraft after international travel, they simply wipe their device. If anything happens with Customs and Immigration their device doesn't have anything on it. Once in the country, they download everything from the cloud. That whole thing only takes a few minutes to accomplish (with a decent WiFi connection).