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.