Suit: Airport searches of laptops, other devices intrusive – CNN.com — If I was doing the searches you can be sure I’d want to get a look inside the laptops and briefcases of every investment banker who passed by. You betcha!
The Customs and Border Protection defends the searches, saying the agency does not need to show probable cause to look inside suitcases or laptops.
“We have broad search authority at the borders to determine admissibility and look for anything that may be in violation of criminal law,” says agency spokeswoman Lynn Hollinger.
Hollinger says electronic devices could contain evidence of possible ties to terrorism, narcotics smuggling, child pornography and other criminal activities.
Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, equates searches of electronic devices to those of papers in briefcases.
“You forgo your right to privacy when you are seeking admission into the country,” he says. “This is the kind of scrutiny the American public expects.”
Actually, no.
Are they going to look through my books, too? My magazines? My business papers? If I have a big pile of drives loaded with data, are they going to detain me for 20 hours to manually search them all, or just run a forensics tool looking for kiddie pron file signatures? Will that tool flag my Clancy ebooks, and other fictional terrorism stuff?
These people are morons if they think this will ever work.
A search of suitcases doesn’t bother me. Carry-on luggage could contain items which are a immediate threat to all passengers.
Searching hard-drives, however, is a different story. Am I going to write a virus that’ll take over the airplane??? No immediate threat…no search. I mean, if my laptop can contain possible ties to terrorism, or drug trafficking, or pr0n…it could do it in my house or apartment even easier. Does that mean they can search there as well? Just because someone could have evidence of a crime doesn’t mean you can look for it.
That being said, the guy compares digital files to papers in a briefcase. He shouldn’t be allowed to go through those papers either.
What seems really strange about this kind of search is that I doubt the minimum wage TSA screeners have any clue what they’re seeing unless there are pictures.
Boy if there ever was a make work this would be it. After all if there wasn’t anything important they wouldn’t have to look in there? They have nothing to hide. Right?
Speaking of pron… here’s an interesting case going on right now. Perhaps the solution is to encrypt and password-protect your data?
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080208/NEWS02/802080357/1003/NEWS02
#1 and #2–Could you two post something other than your adamant naivete that somehow the world should revolve around your infantile desire to keep secrets as you cross international borders?
Man caught crossing border with cocaine hidden in ice cream bars. Why that horible that they would search my food!!! I don’t like food once someone else has poked around it.
So because of YOUR personal desires, you want the border to be wide open to anyone who wishes to cross over with whatever information he wishes to bring and be free from challenge?? And yet I’ll bet you think Bush is doing a poor job of protecting us too?
You see kiddies, you can’t have it both ways. You have been forewarned of the governments position which is only reasonable, sane, and necessary.
Any actual analysis as to why this might be bad policy or how to do it better? ((Like profiling==but you are probably against that to because of blah blah)).
Well crap, guess I should have made the link shorter! But this is juicy:
“A grand jury subpoena to force Boucher to reveal the password was quashed by federal Magistrate Jerome Niedermeier on Nov. 29.
” ‘Producing the password, as if it were a key to a locked container, forces Boucher to produce the contents of his laptop,’ Niedermeier wrote. ‘The password is not a physical thing. If Boucher knows the password, it only exists in his mind.’ “
Just use truecrypt to encrypt everything… Let them crack 256bit AES just to look at your lousy vacation pictures!
Actually #6, I’m for profiling. Also, cocaine in ice cream is nothing like information on a hard-drive. One is a harmful substance, the other is a series of 0’s and 1’s. Straw-Man.
#5–Chris==interesting site there. Seems to me that if the gov has the right to inspect a computers files, then it should have the right to the encryption key as well.
Easy solution–put guy in jail until he decides to turn it over.
OFTLO should get after me on this. I say there is too much confusing a wish for anonymity with the right to privacy. You basically have a right to privacy in your private affairs. That doesn’t include crossing an international border.
Seems pretty simple to me regardless of how much of a privacy advocate one wished to be?
#9–not all 0’s and 1’s are equal. Silly to call data meaningless.
Folks, this isn’t about TSA screeners it is about Customs and Border Protection searches of those entering the country.
There is no way any court is going to question the ability for the federal government to inspect items at the border. And even the most liberal, left wing appeals judge or Supreme Court judge wouldn’t uphold the decision if they found a lower court crazy enough to issue the order in the first place.
This isn’t a new privacy issue. Customs has had the right and duty to check everything you brought into the country since we had a country.
#6, and they’re allowed to look at your ice cream, because it is a physical thing. Just as they’re allowed to look at my laptop or smartphone all day long if they want. It gets a little old after a few minutes, but if you’re really that interested in staring at my USB port, be my guest.
On the other hand, if I had a manila envelope full of confidential papers… let’s say medical records, we have a big problem.
Every laptop is a manila envelope.
And if a real terrorist is going to put a word document detailing his plans to set off a magical ticking bomb, I’m feeling so confident about his ineptitude that I really think its okay to let him through the border.
And while I’m on that note, I’d hate to see what customs does with all that confiscated kiddie porn.
#13–gee, I thought you were going to get me, but you slid off at the last moment. Just read post #12.
Make the distinction between what YOUR privacy rights are, the GOVERNMENTS duty to inspect at the borders, and the governments COMPETENCY at everything they do. 3 separate subjects. Don’t conflate, or you lose the debate.
Does anyone know of a single country that cannot search everyone and everything they like at the border?
THIS IS SO EASILY CIRCUMVENTED IT DEFIES BELIEF THAT ANY THINKS IT WOULD WORK
1.) put files in encrypted zip file on private, web-connected file server.
2.) enter u.s. without computer
3.) buy $1000 laptop
4.) download
BONUS? you get through customs FASTER than law-abiding citizens
UNBELIEVABLY STUPID!
This is a Customs Issue and not a TSA Issue as other have posted. If anyone who knows the Constitution will know this is perfectly legal and also not new.
#7
“Niedermeier wrote. ‘The password is not a physical thing. If Boucher knows the password, it only exists in his mind.’ “”
Yep and he can leave his laptop there to.
#9
“Also, cocaine in ice cream is nothing like information on a hard-drive. One is a harmful substance, the other is a series of 0’s and 1’s. Straw-Man.”
No it’s not those O’s and 1″s are information.
Let Nuclear secrets, Military Assets, Trade Secrets(Stolen), ects.
Check out Four arrested in US-China spy cases
http://tinyurl.com/32xnal
Lynn Hollinger needs an anal probe while being shoved through the metal detector
As long as they also do a body cavity search on every person coming in….
This is an incredibly useful approach to security if you’re planning to only catch utter morons.
Anyone with sinister intent and an IQ greater than their shoe size will simply use the internet instead of carrying the incriminating data with him! Especially now that it’s all over the press.
This is *only* useful for annoying innocent law-abiding people.
#16 & #20 And you wonder why they want to monitor international phone and internet access.
Can they go through all 4,000 messages in my Outlook folders? I need them cleaned out, will they do that for me while they’re looking at messages I sent to my patent attorney and my psychologist?
How about a roll of that cool yellow tape that says “Notebook is Attorney – Client Privilege” and a faxed court order attached to your notebook? Works every time. Let ’em call the judge. (No, I’m not an attorney, but I just might be a courier).
Or an AES-256 encrypted hard drive right down to the boot sector? Free software here: http://tinyurl.com/ysgrb8
You know, Big Bro knows what is best for you.
#21 And you wonder why they want to monitor international phone and internet access. yes, i wonder why indeed.
consider the great firewall of china:
the chinese government, who has the largest police force, who employs thousands of mathematicians, engineers and scientists and intelligence personnel, the best equipment money can buy, who has bottomless pockets, the collusion of every foreign company drooling to do business there, and zero moral/ethical qualms about spying on its own people and/or torturing them, etc, etc, etc
and guess what? THEY CAN’T MAKE IT WORK!!! THE INTERNET STILL ALLOWS PEOPLE TO SPEAK FREELY!!!
WHY?!?!? BECAUSE BLANKET SURVEILLANCE OF ENTIRE POPULATIONS IS MATHEMATICALLY UNFEASIBLE AND DOESN’T WORK!!!!!
YOU WILL ONLY CATCH STUPID PEOPLE THAT POSE NO REAL THREAT THAT WAY!!!!
this is just like the liquids at the airport: a showboating, expensive waste of everybody’s time and money that protects no one, but destroys the individual rights that conservatives once stood for but now are standing in line to abandon like lobotomized lemmings heading off to the cliff.
it just goes to show you how lazy and stupid americans are in general — they actually believe you can just sit there on your fat lazy ass and listen to billions of phone calls and e-mails and snoop through everyone’s computer and somehow terrorist plots are going to magically appear
imagine how easy criminal activity would be if all the cops did was listen to phone calls and e-mails and look through people’s computers.
counter-terrorism is hunting, not fishing, you have to actually learn your prey, his language, his culture, earn his trust, walk undetected among his own people, to root him out.
walking around like you think you’re clint eastwood is a good way to get made, or worse, killed.
wake up, chief.
bobbo said:
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I say there is too much confusing a wish for anonymity with the right to privacy. You basically have a right to privacy in your private affairs. That doesn’t include crossing an international border.
———-
So one’s private affairs are no longer private when one attempts to cross an international border? I guess that means they can compel you to answer any and all questions they can think of to ask you about your life, your business, your politics, your sexual likes and dislikes and history? “Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Democrat party?” How about “Have you ever stolen anything or cheated on your taxes or lied to your spouse/significant other?”
I suppose since “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects” is abridged at the border, all the other provisions of the Bill of Rights are void as well?
Oh, wait….
#26–Patso==you say: “So one’s private affairs are no longer private when one attempts to cross an international border?” /// Thats correct, with the minor correction that its not new, thats the way it always has been. You’ll see repeated posts above confirming this. So, your attitude falls directly into what you quote from me. No right to anonymity when crossing the international border.
Now, more specifically, this is about what your are bringing into the country with you. I don’t think that goes to what citizens private thoughts are–different subject, but nice try at conflating unrelated things.
I guess you want GOUSA to be open to terrorist operatives or you think there is some magic wand the Border Agents just aren’t using?
Patso–how would you protect our borders?==let everyone in without question or search at all -OR- as you suggest, just let everyone know ahead of time what will be searched and what won’t be?
Knock, Knock===is anybody home?
Ok, so I agree with the policy of “turn on that electoronic device to verify it’s not hidden bomb”. but I draw the line at “I have to look thru all your files to make sure you’re not a thought crime person”.
That irks me. But were I traveling, I’d put the files I *needed* on a website somewhere, with encryption. That still leaves upwards of 20 GB of OS files and programs.
So Mr/Ms TSA min wage drone is going to stand there, running my battery down looking thru all the OS and application files? So now instead of showing up a couple hours before flights, we should be there what, a day before?
Way to earn your wages I guess…
if they are using a software to scan it, it will most likely be CD based, and Windows dependant.. How would it handle Macbook Air, or a Linux notebook with no optical drive?
*sigh*… I can’t believe how many people on this post are belittling the TSA about this. This is US CUSTOMS, not TSA.
Now back to the matter at hand. I wonder how long it will be before customs simply ghosts your hard drive for later analysis? That way you can get on your merry way and they can send the ghost image to the lab for analysis.
How hard it is for customs to get some sort of high-speed ghosting machine they can plug into directly into hard drives?
Olo Baggins
Are they going to look through my books, too? My magazines?
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LOL!!! Where have you been? TSA agents ALREADY look at what reading material you have, in order to see if there is anything suspicious about your interests…
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/20/airport-cops-databas.html