U.S. Defends Laptop Searches At The Border

U.S. Defends Laptop Searches At The Border

features.csmonitor.com

In some cases, the officers go through the files while the traveler is standing there. In others, they take the device for several hours and download the hard drive’s content. After that, it’s unclear what happens to the data.The Department of Homeland Security contends these searches and seizures of electronic files are vital to detecting terrorists and child pornographers. It also says it has the constitutional authority to do them without a warrant or probable cause.

But many people in the business community disagree, saying DHS is overstepping the Fourth Amendment bounds of permissible routine searches.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 12-7-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

Woo-hoo! Unwarranted Lap-top seizures and file downloads, courtesy of the Nazi-DHS!

Bye-Bye 4th amendment, hello to the Fascist Police State! And backed by the ever-complicit, croney-laden and corrupted "justice" system!

Seig Heil!

lol

3...2...1 Till the "if you have nothing to hide, why worry about it" crowd shows up....

“A laptop can hold [the equivalent of] a major university’s library: It can contain your full life,” says Peter Swire, a professor of law at Ohio State University in Columbus. “The government’s never gotten to search your entire life, so this is unprecedented in scale what the government can get.”

In recent court challenges, lower courts have ruled that laptop searches at the border are reasonable, just like searches of a person’s baggage or other physical property.

features.csmonitor.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


if i do ever go to the US

first clean my PC

even so i dont have the stuff, i will get the most Hard core adult pictures from
google.

and just have that on there so when they do search my Laptop they will have something to look at

WOW! They are admittingly breaking copyright laws!!! Time to get those copyright lawyers into action folks! There's alot of money to be made here!

There have been other threads on this. Two points to make:

1. Encryption is not a solution since if customs detects encrypted data then From The Guardian

The border agent is likely to start this whole process with a "please type in your password". Of course you can refuse, but the agent can search you further, detain you longer, refuse you entry into the country and otherwise ruin your day.

and the Washington Post

The U.S. government has argued in a pending court case that its authority to protect the country's border extends to looking at information stored in electronic devices such as laptops without any suspicion of a crime. In border searches, it regards a laptop the same as a suitcase.

"It should not matter . . . whether documents and pictures are kept in 'hard copy' form in an executive's briefcase or stored digitally in a computer. The authority of customs officials to search the former should extend equally to searches of the latter," the government argued in the child pornography case being heard by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.

2. Move all data you need off your laptop to an accessible on line repository, on your own web server for example. Wipe the drive clean of all data. After clearing customs, download all you data onto the laptop. Since the ruling applies to all electronic devices, this is also recommended for PDAs, MP3 players and iPods.

A higher level of security can be obtained by reinstalling your OS and applications after clearing customs since

www.cnet.com Another problem is that if customs agents have physical possession of your laptop and you can't see what they're doing, they can install spyware. (They have the technical ability to do so; let's put aside for the moment in which circumstances they would have the legal authority to do so. Besides, in some non-democratic regimes, questions about due process are irrelevant.)

There are at least three cases in which the Feds have, with a court order, installed spyware on a suspect's computer. As encryption becomes more popular, so will the use of fedware. There may be no easy way to detect it--security software vendors generally say they will--short of booting off of a DVD or another trusted device and checking the operating system for tampering. Linux users can use a Knoppix CD or DVD for this.

The time to think about securing your laptop is not while you are waiting in the customs line. Being smart and practicing good security protocols will generally help you keep your privacy intact. At least for now.

Recommended links

Laptop Boarder Guide

Guide for taking Laptop into the US

ACLU Northern Cal

A couple of personal recommendations for those that are more tech savvy.

1. Version Control Systems are for more than source code. Use CVS on line for your daily work and keep nothing on your laptop.

2. If you do encrypt, consider the privacy features of Truecrypt

I think that wiping your laptop or other equipment before any searches will land you in more trouble. They will question why you need to be carrying such a piece of equipment if you have NOTHING on it. You will be accused of hiding something. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I sometimes wonder if they WANT people to stop traveling altogether by introducing these intrusive rules. They can strip you, touch you, scan you and your property, detain you and probably eventually, have a PARTY with your daughters,wives and girlfriends, all in the name of national security. I think it's time everyone said aloud 'enoughs enough. terrorism may be a threat but we'll take our chances thanks'!!!

reply to post by sayzaar


be honest

i wiped my laptop and filled it with porn because i find these new measures pathetic and i thought to my self i might aswell treat the person searching my Laptop to some action

Originally posted by sayzaar
I think that wiping your laptop or other equipment before any searches will land you in more trouble. They will question why you need to be carrying such a piece of equipment if you have NOTHING on it.

Computers are nothing but tools, you don't have to have any data on it to be useful. I have at least a half dozen email accounts and most of them are not stored in outlook or anything else they are stored and accessed on the web.

If anyone wants to search my personal files or my personal computer they better have a warrant. Otherwise they need to be crucified and have their skin peeled back and a load of bugs dropped on them for invading my privacy.

I don't plan on visiting any borders soon, but it is about time we create a high voltage security system for our laptop keyboards.

ZAPPPPP!!!! :lo:

reply to post by MrMysticism


A self fulfilling prophecy, they might get huh? If we aren't terrorist yet, they will abuse us until we become their personal terrorist by booby trapping our computers to terrorize them as they terrorize us at the checkpoints.

Originally posted by sayzaar
I think that wiping your laptop or other equipment before any searches will land you in more trouble. They will question why you need to be carrying such a piece of equipment if you have NOTHING on it. You will be accused of hiding something. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I sometimes wonder if they WANT people to stop traveling altogether by introducing these intrusive rules. They can strip you, touch you, scan you and your property, detain you and probably eventually, have a PARTY with your daughters,wives and girlfriends, all in the name of national security. I think it's time everyone said aloud 'enoughs enough. terrorism may be a threat but we'll take our chances thanks'!!!

I suspect that we have not gone far enough over the edge for the lack of incriminating evidence being itself incriminating. But your point is a good one. There are two possible ways to handle this.

1. A laptop is a tool and, as long as it has software like a browser, it has a valid use even without data on it.

2. Put some window dressing data in there. A couple of boring memos, a love letter to your wife, or someone else's wife, a whole bunch of pictures from cousin Jake's wedding.

So do you feel like a spy yet?

[edit on 12-7-2008 by metamagic]

I learned not to take my good laptop on trips with me, after on a college choir tour, my lappy's lcd was stepped on ($200 self fix). So now, I travel with my old laptop, my "craptop," so to speak.

I can surf the internet, and access anything I need by putting it on a dynamic dns server I have running at the family buisiness, or by dumping it on my webhost.

Even so, the feds can easily hack into gmail or hotmail at will, whether google or msn realize it or not, despite the fact they probably aren't going to hand it over willingly...we're totally open, for the most part.

You're just as vulnerable online, unless you run peerguardian or ipblock (linux and osx), and make sure to block turkish ip's, as well as all government ip's.

reply to post by joesomebody


if they hack the emails what are they going to find?
thousends of Spam emails
and the cheapiest place to buy Vigra

My only fear is being added to some list in some govt computer for excersising my freedoms, by reading materials that may be considered "bad." The govt can't really keep me from reading about and learning about what I choose. Emails don't bug me, becuase I'm boring for the most part, although many emails containing passwords reside in people's inboxes, thanks to online forums and the like.

Survivalist books, and other "scary" documents I have read for sheer curiosity's sake could come back to haunt me despite the freedoms that this country is supposed to offer.

Oh, and use Linux. If your computer boots up to the bash instead of Xwindows, you first have to login and startx to use anything graphically, which is enough to confuse people who are considered "1337" in regard to windoze. LoL.

[edit on 12-7-2008 by joesomebody]

reply to post by joesomebody


Yeah, I suppose if I comes down to it we can create false interfaces, boot to a command prompt, create dummy or false drive partitions, multiple boots & multiple O/S's etc.

With drives as big as they are today you could easily hide half the drive from view and they wouldn't be the wiser.

TrueCrypt does some of that, and encrypts and stegonograph-izes the real stuff, too.

Originally posted by sayzaar
and probably eventually, have a PARTY with your daughters,wives and girlfriends, all in the name of national security. I think it's time everyone said aloud 'enoughs enough. terrorism may be a threat but we'll take our chances thanks'!!!

I think you're right, unless we do something to stop what they're getting away with now, taking your daughters, wives, girlfriends along with your laptop seems like the next step. This isn't a free country anymore, seems like the only freedom we have left is the freedom to do what they tell us to do, we have let them slowly take away one right after another. This is no longer the America it was meant to be and it's only going to get progressively worse unless we do something to put an end to it.



We have a right to our privacy. Traveling to another country isn't probable cause for search and seziure. If we allow them to continue these ss tactics before we know it every cop will have the authority to do the same to anybody walking down the street, or driving with a laptop, cell phone, ipod, or mp3 player. It's a madd, madd world we live in today and it just keeps getting worse !



It's funny our troops are off fighting for other peoples freedoms, but what i wanna know is who the hell is fighting for ours ?

In some cases, the officers go through the files while the traveler is standing there. In others, they take the device for several hours and download the hard drive’s content. After that, it’s unclear what happens to the data.The Department of Homeland Security contends these searches and seizures of electronic files are vital to detecting terrorists and child pornographers. It also says it has the constitutional authority to do them without a warrant or probable cause.

I find it incredible that it is okay for the Department of Homeland Security to pirate software and violate copyrights at the same time as they invade the privacy of the citizens.

What a joke.

Only thing more asinine would be if the files that they steal/pirate were to come up on P2P.
DocMoreau

[edit on 13/7/2008 by DocMoreau]

Of course, the Feds can be trusted with your data, they are the good guys after all....right?
I know there have been cases in the past where federal agents have used information from wiretaps etc to gain an edge in investments, before the news hit the mainstream. Any business exec traveling overseas with information on mergers and acquisitions, new product releases, in fact anything that may increase the corporations stock price, is an open target. They always use the old excuse of child pornography or, in more recent times, illegal copyrighted material to bring in these rules. Is some spotty youth with a bunch of MP3's on his iPod such a threat that it needs federal attention? And, since when did taxpayers sign off on funding corporate copyright policing?


[edit on 13-7-2008 by Britguy]

Instructions to easily pass US Border.. Data intact.

1. Take a regular condom or non latex if required.
2. Insert your 2.5" HDD into said condom.
3. Insert the complete bulky package up your rectum.


Job done.