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Laptops Searched and Confiscated at U.S. Border
An anonymous reader writes, "According to an article in the New York Times, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives is asking the U.S. government for more detailed guidelines on when and why a laptop gets confiscated at the U.S. border, which, anecdotally, is happening more often. The story includes a report from a business traveler who had her laptop confiscated over a year ago and has yet to have it returned." According to the article, a knowledgeable lawyer said: "[Border guards] don't need probable cause to perform... searches under the current law. They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations." And an ACTE exective is quoted, "Potentially, this is going to have a real effect on how international business is conducted."
"Sir, please place your laptop computer on the table for inspection."
"OK"
"Please turn it on, Sir."
"Um.. er.. ah.."
"Turn on the laptop, Sir!" (Suddenly it grows quiet as everyone stares, particularly some armed security personnel)
"Er ah, OK." Click. zwinnngg zwikka zwikka bweet.
"Pornographic wallpaper, no problem. Thousands of mp3's, no problem."
"Um-er-ah.
sniff sniff sniff Arf! whine Whine Arf! Arf!
"What's this then!?!"
"Huh?"
"Sir, we're going to have to confiscate this laptop computer, our highly trained canine has detected the presence of a banned and extremely dangerous substance!"
Read about it here and here
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Is that some Security Guards just want new laptops, and the law provides them plenty of holes to avoid having to answer for it.
- Kal`Goblez
Captain Encryption!
So, are these laptops auctioned off by the government?
What do yo mean you need to search for a laptop?
You need to search where?
That doesn't even make sense!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
*cries in corner*
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
I crossed the border twice on Sunday. They didn't care about my laptop. There's your anecdotal evidence.
This is why you should encrypt your hard drive. The French and Israeli intelligence services have been stealing laptops from hotels and airports for years. They take them, image them, then return them to the owner without them knowing that they were taken at all.
My laptop requires a password to wake from sleep or decrypt the contents of my home directory. Since this is seemingly not a search-warrant situation, am I in any way legally required to type / provide my password? What are they (legally at least) able to do if I refuse?
Canadian Customs has "searched" my laptop twice. Once I sat at the border for about four hours while the tried to figure out how to use the finder. U.S. customs took my laptop (a MacBook Pro) out of the case and looked at it, but I think they decided they didn't want to spend the time with it.
I shudder at how long it would take the good customs folks to work their way through a Linux box, or a decently encrypted hard drive.
In both of the Canadian searches, I was asked questions specifically based on email messages cached in my mail client. That was awful disturbing.
In the "long search" case they apparently also spent most of their time browsing the iPhoto and Photoshop albums and asked me a lot of questions about other places I had been.
Just use a stateless thin client laptop, no need for hard drive encryption and no way to intrude.
I had this happen to me last winter coming back from Canada. The officer had me turn on and log into my computer and then looked through my files for about 30 minutes. He only had me login as one account on the system, which isn't very smart if they're actually looking for anything. Also, if I had been doing something illegal and he found it, it would have been inadmissible since he was working on my laptop directly, not an imaged copy of my hard drive. Oh, and he didn't bother checking my iPod either.
Bradley Holt
Come on. Total bullshit. There is allmost certainly a ton of paperwork that goes along with every confiscation.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'm sorry sir, I am not able to log onto my computer here since you clearly have security cameras that will record my password. Then you will be able to see all my kidd ...... ummmm, then you will see all the open source projects I am working on.
Whether a laptop is seized or not depends on size and brightness of the screen, and if it might have DVD rom and good speakers.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
So say its a company laptop and has an encrypted disk and company policy forbids you from giving your passwords to anyone. What then?
It's kind of ridiculous that it's come to this, but encryption and self-emailing will at least get the porn^H^H^H^H information where it needs to go. How to keep your laptop from being seized is another matter. My tentative plan for next time I'm crossing the border is to pretend to be really sick (tissues in hand, pop Halls, etc.) while I'm being processed. Nobody will want to touch you or your belongings if they think it will cost them days of illness.
For all the love that the US government and big corporations seem to have for 'free trade' and 'globalization', they don't seem interested in open borders. I wonder why not? It's OK for corporations to ship jobs around the world to wherever labor conditions are the most favorable to them. But if workers try to migrate to where the hiring conditions are better, they are demonized as 'illegals'. It's OK for corporations to buy supplies from any country, getting the best deal in the process. But if consumers try to buy products from other parts of the world, that's a no-no (witness Lik-Sang). True globalization demands open borders. Fire the border guards. Tear down the fences.
Some will reply and tell me this is crazy. How it can never work. That somehow we just have to have walls. Why? And if walls are so good and necessary, would you support building them between the States? Why not?
You'd have to be pretty stupid to carry something that the law might be interested in on your laptop through customs. There's been another way for plenty of years.
Prolly out of fear of sony batteries....added with a hint of plutonium....Badum *ching*
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Don't like it, get the law changed.
Otherwise, all they'll get is a policy change... which is the equivalent of a "I promise" but without any garauntee or accountability.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's getting so that I don't want to travel to the States any more. They're getting waay too uptight.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Guess i wont be reading the rather potentially disturbing story.
I wonder how long it will be before local police start stopping people at random to do searches of laptop/mp3/pda contents. Much as they do now for random drug/seatbelt/terrorism/etc searches.
"its random so we arent violating anyones rights".. my ass.
Time for total encryption of anything you carry. Too bad i cant encrypt my ipod, or PDA.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You think so, eh? In this day and age of warrentless searches and guilt by profile, you think that would make any difference at all? Why not manufacture some "documents" and give it a try?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Time to set the password prompt to "NO SYSTEM DISK OR DISK ERROR" and make sure echo is off :-\
Belief is the currency of delusion.
For the same reason (in my case primarily travel between the US and Europe) I always keep all my private files on my personal server in the US. This way, all a potential thief or border agent would get is a relatively clean laptop with a few applications and games. All I'd lose would be a few saved game files, which are much more fun to recreate than rewriting a lost spreadsheet.
So you just put a backup on a internet accessable site, just in case your killer presentation is eaten by customs.. ( and be sure to email home your priceless family trip pictures )
A little planning is all that is needed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What's supposed to happen and what does happen are two different things. What processes are in place to ensure that is what happens?
Laptop rentals like car rentals... Just tell the rental company what software you need on the laptop when you reserve it, bring your USB file storage with all your files on it, and Bob's your uncle. Of course, this leaves out all the fine details, but anyone who has the resources to start such a business can work on that. *sigh* ah, the future... such a wondrous place, isn't it? And so... secure... /gam/
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
Whats so special about a laptop? Why not search the CD-ROM in my mp3 player or my USB keychain? Or better yet, just scan my freaking mind by doing the FBI psyche battery exam.
Have all those exploding Dell/Sony batteries been reclaimed yet? Perhaps we could all carry those laptops to the airport and then see how much they like to search these things. But then we'd probably be put on terrorist watch lists or something.
I think I'll be having my wife bring the laptop hard drive in her purse from now on.
From now on, I'm wiping all my personal files from my laptop before travelling. I'll do a clean install and SCP any required docs from my home server when I get to the hotel. For the return journey, I'll commit any changes to my home server, wipe the files from my laptop and reinstall.
None of my personal files are illegal or "top secret" but they're all "mind your own fucking business". It's an issue of trust and I have no faith in the Bush administration or its agents.
stealing. The US border guards are stealing computers. How about we make them stop stealing things?
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
It wont stop here, it will spread to europe, then the rest of the world.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So customs authorities have the power to inspect the data on your laptop, or presumably any other data-carrying device, without warrant or even cause.
But an obvious way around this search would be to transfer the data electronically, and perhaps rent a laptop in the US to retrieve it.
So my question is this. If searching files on a physical device is legal, would it not also be legal for customs to "inspect" all electronic data that crosses international borders? And in the same way that it is legal for the authorities to sieze a laptop for more intensive analysis, would it not also be legal for customs to "embargo" electronic transmissions until they can be analyzed? (Perhaps compelling the sender or receiver, whichever one is on their soil, to disclose the key?)
Think about the implications for a couple of minutes. This would put the Great Firewall of China to shame, and you have to know that somebody in the justice department is thinking about doing it.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
FedEx it to the hotel.
For many people outside of the USA having an encrypted HD is a matter of good business sense or national security, depending on where you work. For those who work outisde the USA in the defence area, and work colaboratively with people in the USA, this is now a major hassle. When crossing the border the software needed for decent security is now effectively banned from leaving the country and your laptop will be confiscated. The fact the software came from another country in the first place and the person is actually working for a friendly government and helping the USA government is seemingly irrelevant. The solution to this problem which many are taking is quite simple, limit helping the USA with any classified or confidential work. And before people reply "the USA doesn't need anyone else", please think about why you have huge national debt ...
I thought that after 911 the government departments were meant to be 'beating to the same drum' for national security and yet here we are, 5 years later, with a case of the geniuses that run border security stuffing up other government departments.
Did I miss something? IANAL, but the last time I checked, the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution explicitly prohibits search and seizure without probable cause. In fact, I just re-read it to make sure, and it doesn't say "except at border crossings."
Can someone enlighten me as to how ANY U.S. court has seen fit to uphold random seizure of personal property without even a hint of probable cause? Does this only apply to non-U.S. citizens? (yes, I did RTFA, but it didn't mention anything about that).
"Potentially, this is going to have a real effect on how international business is conducted."
Well, gee, then maybe you should be concentrating on ways to keep manufacturing and agriculture at home where they belong instead of conducting INTERNATIONAL business and enriching our enemies in Mexico, China, India, and Saudi Arabia?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
did you miss the funeral? how long has it been?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Funny that this article should come up right around the time the first federal judge addresses the question, and find that they do need to have reasonable suspicion.
law.com article
opinion
Of course, this is not the end of the matter, but highly relevant.
-puk
They arent exempt from search. Just doesn't happen as often, due to the volume.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sony batteries!
Ok, so you won't get your laptop back nor would it prevent being taken in the first place but, hey, at least you'll get the last laugh.
I wonder if user "usgovernment" with a feedback of 42k has any relevance here.
Have you read my journal today?
your ipod -is- encrypted if you're stupid enough to buy all of your music from the apple itunes music store with DRM.
Everyone here on slashdot is smart enough to keep backups anyways, so why is this even a problem?
h aha*
*hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaahha
So in other words, the slashbots are getting all worked up over FUD and hearsay. What else is new? Show me documented cases of this and maybe you'll have a point.
If the paperwork isn't filled out, it didn't happen!
I'm a u.s. citizen and had my laptop confiscated at the canadian border when re-entering the u.s. about three years ago. They also held me in a cell for a few hours until a person from ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) could arrive to interrogate me and my friends. After a few hours they let me through, turned around my canadian friends, and kept my laptop. They returned the laptop to me about four months later (with a burned copy of an EnCase client cd left in the cd rom drive).
I had nothing to hide and there was nothing I could imagine useful to them on that laptop. If I thought I had something to hide or a reason the government would think I was up to something that would warrant their taking my laptop (something more than my political activism), I would not have carried it across the border. In any event, this taught me me a few things: 1) always encrypt entire partitions, including one's root partition, not individual files as I had been doing, 2) don't carry one's private encryption key when crossing borders [or in any obvious way the rest of the time], 3) always keep plenty of encrypted backups in different physical locations so that you can be back up to speed as soon as possible if your laptop is taken, 4) avoid carrying electronics across the border at all if one can't afford to replace the hardware soon afterward.
Personally, it made me happy to know the government spent time and resources copying and possibly picking through my innocuous files while there were other people out there busy with bringing an end to a government that found such activity useful.
Funny side note: my canadian friends, after being turned around and having to cross back to the canadian side a few hours later, were asked by the canadian border person, "why were you there at u.s. customs so long?"
My friends told them, "they said our friend was a suspected terrorist."
The canadian border person *laughed*, said "those americans are crazy", and let them on their way without any further hassle.
So, why wouldn't I just have two partitions, dual-boot, and on the plane make sure it's setup to boot the 'boring' partition?
Think the customs guys will notice that dmesg shows the drive has more space than df -k does?
They _are_ comfortable with emacs in a text window, right? That's what _I_ boot into
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
If you're stopped, and the officer asks for permission to search your car without getting a warrent, you have just given them permission to search your laptop.
There was a recent court case in the past year or so which upheld this interpretation.
While this might not technically qualify as "automatic", it's pretty close to it since most people blindly give their permission because they are intimidated, and either don't understand their rights, or too lazy to care.
Article contradicts itself by first saying US Customs can confisicate without reason and then saying the a Federal Court ruled it needs at least "reasonable suspicion". I would have thought the latter to be correct according to the wording of the 5th Amendment that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, which is generally held to be at least reasonable suspicion.
Granted while data can potentially have more value than the laptop itself, people can encrypt hardrives, play a game of three card monte with harddrives the clean one in the machine with just enough information to seem like its not new (and thus get slapped with duty charges) and the real HD in transport via UPS/FedEx or something, and the contents on a drive accessible from anywhere on the net. But what about the laptop itself, its not like you can go down to the all night conviencestore grab some milk bread and a replacement laptop. They aren't that cheap, if your on the go all the time, it might be your main/only machine to work on. I personally could not afford to have my laptop taken away, it would leave me computerless... and I would figure about 8 hours before the withdrawl symptoms happen.
Have you ever even traveled overseas before? It's like you just lifted this information from an Orwell novel or made it up off the top of your head just to be an anonymous contrarian. Your language is stilted and sounds like something you heard somebody smarter saying years ago: "Your person" indeed. I'm no Richard Stallman, but I've traveled extensively in the Middle East, Lower Asia, and in Eastern and Western Europe. For an American, I do alright.
Everywhere I've gone, airport and border security has been lax. You are searched, but not invasively so. They ask questions about where you're going and why, but it's not Jeopardy-level stuff. A valid passport does its job for you. Nobody throws you in quarantine for having a cold or pretending to, for godsake. Why don't you do us all a favor and stop bothering us with this unrealistic Checkpoint Charlie crap you saw in a late-night Spike TV Jean Claude Van Damme movie.
Interestingly, it's only when you re-enter the United States as an American citizen that you are subject to the most harassment, at least at O'Hare and Kennedy. They are not afraid to use dogs to sniff you while you're waiting on your luggage. They will whip out the rubber gloves when handling your property, and they will give you that knowing look like "Give us any trouble, and these can be used for you."
But thrown into quarantine? Laptop and briefcase-toting American businessmen? Please get a clue.
Besides, in this "terrorist age", you're instantly guilty if you're hiding something.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
am I in any way legally required to type / provide my password?
Nope. But then they're not legally required to let you into the country, either. I suspect if they really wanted to see what's on your hard drive, you'd be given the choice of giving them the password or sleeping in the airport arrival lounge until a Federal judge heard the case.
You haven't heard Homeland security's new slogan?
"Welcome to America. All your laptops are belong to us."
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
First of all, don't put it to sleep. Turn it off, so that the password they ask for will be a login password rather than some kind of state-restoration password.
Next, when they ask for a login password, give it to them. Give them a username too.
Now they log in. They see a very boring directory, which is very easy (and here's the important part: quick!) to search through. They yawn after a very brief investigation, give the machine back, and you go on your way.
Why did everything work out? Because you gave them a username and password that you don't use everyday, so all your personal stuff isn't sitting in there, needing to be sorted though looking for stuff related to kiddie porn, terrorism, drugdealing, and .. (oh damn, what's the 4th horseman? I forgot.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
They _are_ comfortable with emacs in a text window, right? That's what _I_ boot into :-)
::Pop quiz::
If the customs officials have no clue what your computer is doing, their likely reaction would be to:
A) Pat you on the back, apologize for wasting your time, and send you on your way.
B) Put you in a holding cell while they spent hours attempting to figure out your notebook.
How does appearing like you have something to hide help you at all? Best to make it boot into an innocuous windows partition.
Actually that's a bit dangerous. If they realize you're lying, and can convince a Federal jury that you were, then you can be sent to prison, even if you were concealing something harmless. Just ask Martha Stewart.
In fact, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they'd rather you lied than flat out refused, since once you've lied and they know it you're on a serious hook, and they can then negotiate with you for what they really want. You're much better off just politely refusing.
"Nice laptop, give it to me!"
A couple companies ago I ran into some Canadians who stole US data then simply put the data on harddrvies that they carried across the CANADIAN border, mailed them to an address, went back to Canada. Went through customs normally, got visas (1 of the guys got delayed 2 weeks for no given reason), and came into the company, opened their package. Viola.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
The border guards can detain you for 3 days, or until things move.
Can I refuse to hand the laptop over, turn around, and go home? If I was heading down 'cross the border and the Americans tried to take my work laptop, I'd probably turn around and go home. I'm pretty sure my boss would rather not have a copy of the product's source floating around god knows where, even if it is encrypted.
an overlooked aspect of this is that in the great "Homeland Security" reorganization, Imiigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) somehow got tasked with responsibility for kiddie pr0n. When the local cops execute a search warrant and find kiddie pr0n? They don't call the FBI, but ICE. Testifying in Federal Court at plea bargains and sentencings in the great Midwest? ICE agents.
I hazard a guess that the laptop snooping allows ICE to bump up its arrest stats, and thus their budget. That it's concentrating on something pretty much completely orthogonal to goal that would make sense is merely a side effect of the Dubyah administration's vision, leadership and foresight.
"This is why you should encrypt your hard drive."
.jpg or .avi's.
The trick to hiding something is to make it look innocent.
Encrypting your whole hard drive just screams "kiddie porn" or
"terrorist's handbook here" to any agent that looks. And the first
thing he will do is ask for the password. You'd better hand
it over or get ready for a quick trip to Gitmo.
Instead, have a normal drive with a normal OS install. When
they scan the 200,000 files on an average drive they'll find
nothing unusual. Certainly no
But on that drive have a file named "corrupted.doc" or
something like that. It is really a Truecrypt file/drive.
You mount it manually when you log in and all your important
stuff is in there.
If they log in and search and manage to find "corrupted.doc"
(which they wont be looking for), they will ask what it is.
You can say it was an important doc file but it got corrupted
and you were hoping to find someone to fix it. It sure will
look corrupt thanks to Truecrypt not putting any sort of signature
at the start of the file.
My father is an immigration attorney (MFIAIA) near the Canadian border and we were chatting about this several weeks ago as it occasionally happens to his clients. Apparently, border agents largely trawl through people's email inboxes searching for evidence of work outside the scope of their current visa. People entering the US on valid visas have few options but to submit their laptop or face denial of entry and possible revocation of their visa and denial of pending applications.
Even if people utilized file or disk level encryption, I wonder if they would force people to surrender encryption keys and passwords. I suggested that he advise clients to look into that sort of solution, but it may not do any good. It would also be interesting to know how and where the information is stored and for how long.
This will work like gangbusters if you're running an OS on the laptop that actually employs access rights (*cough* Linux *cough* *cough*). Then there will be no practical way to access your personal, home directory files from the dummy account anyway. Unless security personnel ask for a root password (unlikely) you should be fine.
You don't get out much - we've just had a wave of "no carry on luggage" as a sideshow to The War On Moisture.
Interestingly Singapore Airlines now has little notes in the dinner sets appologising for the plastic knives 'where required by local administrations'
In a recent court case the judge in fact ruled that the border search exemption does not apply to laptop searches. I think it was on deciscion of the day or something.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
What the article does not make clear is WHY they have to search laptops. The article says something about the "U.S. government need[ing] to protect its borders"... from what? What are they looking for? Jüri Lina or Noam Chomsky ebooks? Bookmarks to rense.com or to whatreallyhappened.com? Software to remotely activate Russian nuclear weapons? I mean, you can't import cocaine or weapons in a laptop! (Unless, of course, you put them IN the laptop, but then it's the X-Rays' job to find them in this case, and there would be no reason to even boot the computer...) And I don't think it's the TSA's job to be looking for pirated media (which can be very hard to prove that are illegal; what if those Buddha Bar mp3's you have are a backup of the CD you left back home?) I don't understand.
Refer to the following article:
2 1200
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/17/15
Make some type of thermite packing around HD... Press button if gard asks for laptop... done, no more sensative data.
Be sure to warn the guard first that your company's privacy policy covers the computer so they don't think your a TERRORIST or Kiddie PORNSTER...
Seriously, this is just FUD because of the election.. I'd like to see the NAMES of a company that can say their equipment was confiscated for no reason and they lost the only copy of something... I'll go one step further and state WHY would you keep trade secrets on a laptop! I bet LAPTOP THEFT occures more frequently then US Border Guard confiscation.
Just a tool to inject more fear of the current government into the sheep. Hopefully folks are smarter than that here... Oh, its Slashdot.. nevermind.
REMEMBER: PHYSICAL SECURITY is the FIRST line of security. A LAPTOP is not secure by any means! So DO NOT trust your most secure data to be left on it.
Here is a quiz... What is more likely:
1) So company XYZ creates new global changing product and G.I. Joe takes laptop... Next year the government is releasing new dept of defense underware that doesn't chaife.
2) So company XYZ creates new global changing product and G.I. Joe takes laptop... Because company was a front for $$$ laundring and had financial records of bank accounts of terrorists, etc..
3) So company XYZ creates new global changing product and G.I. Joe takes laptop... Because company was an independent contractor to Government funded research and employee was trying to smuggle product home for personal gain or export. (terrorists...)
4) So company XYZ creates new global changing product and competitor does distract-switch @ airport/border. company goes bankrupt because competitor went to market faster.
5) So company XYZ creates new global changing product and laptop is stolen for a quick sale for $50 & "rock" to the local head thug who then turns around and uses it for a child porn server.
If you said 4, I think you might have a clue. Look at HP... corporite espionage is alive and well.
So, Lesson is to keep ALL important data secured and encrypted on servers with Encrypted PTPT between client/server and LIMIT the access to ONLY THOSE THAT NEED, not the every saleman in the company that might cross a border.
So much FUD... so little brains.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
What happened to all the "conservatives"? Am I the only conservative who actually believes in limited government? That may be the most tangible benefit of a Democratic victory in an (any) election--the conservatives would be (ostensibly, if dishonestly) anti-government again. Right now we're stuck with the dichotomy that government-funded healthcare is creeping totalitarianism, but government torture is innocuous. Strange world we live in.
On the other hand, I took a ferryboat from Egypt to Jordan, and while the customs process still involved them poking though your bags, they were friendly about it. The tables where they handled the locals had a big pile between them of confiscated contraband, mostly videotapes and hash. They didn't give the people a hard time, just took their stuff, and of course presumably took it away at the end of their shift to go sell it, because that *is* the reason you get a job as a third-world customs inspector.
The worst I've seen border-guard thugs do was drag some Turkish guy off a train at the Germany-Czechoslovakia border; I don't remember which direction he'd been travelling, so I don't know if it was the Germans or Czechs being racist about Turks. It was early-90s, post-Communist, so it wasn't quite like the Soviets any more, but East European border guards were still getting jobs for the fun of shouting at people rather than confiscating contraband.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I think the Feds snarled at him, but at least it was back before they could throw people in Gitmo.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I used to do business with a Vancouver-based tech firm in the late 80s. One of their people was a dual citizen, and he'd occasionally smuggle lab equipment back and forth across the border in his car because he was tired of having it held up by Canadian customs when he shipped it formally.
My other dealings with Canadian officials have been relatively uneventful. On one trip we had papers saying our cat had all her shots, but she was hiding under the car seat asleep when we got to customs and they didn't notice her. I did get pulled over for speeding by a cop who on foot - he was standing by the side of the road with a radar gun, catching people coming over the hill from out in the country when they got to the town speed limit - but he decided that since we had a US rental car, the paperwork would be too much work to be worth the bother.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That's why I set up a phone home feature on my laptop with remote access and security at every point. Once a thief/tsa/whoever gets into the OS, assuming they connect it to the internet, I can track the laptop down to an IP address, destroy data, mess around, etc...
I personally don't care if the custom guys want to take my "executive data" . We actually force our laptops to save by default to our home directory on our intranet. if we don't have the laptop joined to the network it will prompt with a few errors, but we require everyone to connect via citrix to our backend so they can save those important documents to our network.
If we actualy save data to our personally laptops, they'll have to get through out lawyers to get at the data legally..
I'm Canadian so we still have rights, if you use your corporate laptop for personal use that's your own problem.. but we'll still protect you (aka. the corp lawyers)
In the US, can't comment.. but I use my laptop for pure corporate use, so good luck trying to find anything that is ACTUALLY incriminating.. take the laptop, eh, no big deal... I'll just order another one..
I'm sure everything is hackable, but if that were the case why give anyone in the business laptops?
MrJyynxx
I work at the Border at a International Airport. We don't "just" take a laptop. Its a massive amount of paperwork, custody logs and signing every single time some one has control of the laptop. If it was taken, its been my experience that it is related to 1. Evidence of a crime, be it technology transfers, money laundering or not manifesting goods that are being imported. 2. Kiddie porn. You would be floored to see how many times I nail some pervert coming back on a "business trip" with this, this dreck on his machine. So before you start with the tin foil hats or accusing us of taking these machines home, you find out who and what the person is making the claim
FUCKING ASSHOLES!
/ Backup/Acronis-True-Image-Corporate-Workstation.ht ml
How long before Blackberries and other PDAs befall this same bs?
This ought to or might ramp up sales of Dell Latitudes. (I dunno about Inspirons and Precisions...). With the Latitude, it's easy to leave out two screws and slide out and swap the hard drives out (compared to many other l/ts that require removing the keyboards or opening up the chassis...). Just buy an extra caddy from Dell, configure a PERMANENTLY-dedicated disk for the border nazis and then when you're done with your main disk, slip in the just-for-the-border-nazis disk and when they need a boot up, boot it up. If you're brazen, have the boot up image say something nasty.... (Be SURE to isolate the other disk. If these rent-a-dummies DO confiscate it, hopefully they don't thing to rummage your pockets.) This just underscores that in computer THEFT (by burglar with a mission or agent with a warrant), it's NOT the hardware so much as the DATA and the DISK you care about.
But, that just opens up the REAL question: If this is a government action (vice a border agent action) is it the LAPTOP or the HARD DRIVE the government wants? If they're taking specific hardware, it's probably because they're PROFILING their marks, maybe looking for suspicious devices that they thing held or will hold a bomb. Maybe in reality, only devices with offending MAC addresses are targeted in some cases. Still, in this case you better back up your main disk and expect to lose it with the JFTBN disk. They'll just go into your purse or pocket and demand you surrender it, too. So, I suspect they are after data, not laptops. Or, the guards want the laptops and the agencies want the hard drives...
Now that this scenario is posited, they may as well just electronically confiscate a COPY of the disk using:
http://www.logicube.com/markets/forensics.asp
or
http://www.newfreedownloads.com/Windows-Utilities
and STOP STEALING PEOPLE'S HARDWARE and risking the WRATH of the populace.
I mean, in this day and age, short of a concern of EVERY hard disk and machine being digitally booby-trapped, there is no sane reason for taking people's hardware when for $1,500 on a Logicube, amortized across the 3,000 or 4,000 machines they might have warrants to sieze and search, they minimize the risk of SHEER outrage on the part of visitors, citizens and others. But of course they won't do this shit to diplomats, because they've got immunity. I've said before, and I'll say again: You can, with a warrant, CLONE my disk and copy my papers (If you bring a hand/wand scanner), but if you TAKE my shit, you better lock my ass up FOREVER and throw away the key cuz as long as I am mobile and able... err, umm, better not say that again.... sheesh...
How can I get diplomatic immunity from another country so as to not be searched and screwed with? How can we ALL do it? Oh, we can't.
I suspect next that in-flight nationality & customs declaration forms will have a section for passengers to, "under penalty of perjury, a $100,000 fine and imprisonment up to 15 years affirm/swear/attest that they did not encrypt, digitally booby-trap, or erase their disks nor switch them out with nor secretly give them to other passengers in an attempt to avoid a hard-drive road-block...."
Well, if this becomes a REAL problem and keeps up, I imagine concerned companies will forbid employees' taking company laptops overseas, will force them to rent or go with disposable laptops, and installing self-destructing hard drives which are used ONLY for VPN authentication/access/work and then disposal before leaving a foreign country. Individuals might follow suit.
More crap for the people to get worked up over (if it gets out of hand)...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I mean, anal probing by by finger or by laptop? Having a laptop crammed up my ass would be quite a shocker, especially if the battery blows up. Give a new meaning to any Lithium-Hide-dried batteries...
Butt, I don't want Dell Hell in my ass, nor Gateway having a gateway into there. Nor the Sony Boys and their assploding battries...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Thank you. If I had mod points I'd give you one, but instead here's a link to the case you mentioned.
--MarkusQ
Please, somebody mod this one up...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
There's a joke in Russian cryptographers community: "The speed of password cracking is exponentially proportional to the temperature of soldering iron [crammed in someone's ass]".
Either the Thug Classico, which is a Pint Glass with ice almost to the top, Absolut Mandarin poured in just over half way, then Red Bull to top the glass off (About 2/3 of a can.)
Funny, when I was in the Army we used to drink the same thing, only with unflavored vodka.
And without the Red Bull.
Or the ice.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
When I returned home from my last Vietnam vacation the customs guard asked about what I had done on vacation and had me power up my laptop and show him our vacation photos.
This was in July of 2003. I was very suprised by his request to look at my vacation photos. The guy didn't even blink at the small bundle of DVD movies I had purchased in HCM city (Siagon)
http://www.Slaveway.com
Well to the Komrade who extracts the SEEKRETS: KONGRATS, SOLDERER of Fortune...
But it STEENKS in here, Komrade...
Dasvidanya... Have some Tranya...
Don't ddrop de soap, Komrade...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
You can go as far back as McCarthy, and he openly undermined President Truman, flouting his authority on multiple occasions while troops were dying in Korea. So, since Republicans believe that Democrats are traitors, and Republicans aren't "real" conservatives because they don't support the President if he isn't from their party, who are the conservatives?
I've never heard, seen, or read your definition before, actually. I've always heard conservatism grouped with skepticism of government power, concern for fiscal responsibility, and things like that. How long have you had this definition of "real" conservatism? Does it extend to the last President, or did you come up with this only recently? Words sometimes do change meaning and usage over time, but rarely does the shift in meaning coincide so neatly with one politician's term of office.
Did you support the last President? Would you support a President Hillary Clinton, or a President Obama, or would you undermine them at every turn like the Republicans did to Bill Clinton during his tenure? Are YOU a "real" conservative by your own definition? Or are you a political shill? I really am curious.
Secondarily, are you saying that conservatives would always support the sitting President in time of war, even if they thought he or she was wrong?
I've traveled back and forth between the US and Canada a number of times.... sometimes en-route from other destinations like Oz.
I've never had a problem but I have been worried.
Worst case I had was comming back from Oz via LA and being terribly sick. IMHO they should not have let me on the plane, I was infected and infectous with a bad cold/flu.
Yes I had something to declare... I had over $30,000 to declare. When I arrived in Calgary I had not filled in my little something to declare ticket. When I walked up to the customs officer I said I'd like to speak to a supervisor. I was told no way... do I have something to declare? I said Yes I do and I haven't listed it because I'm too sick and besides you can't clear it anyways. Then I was asked how much? Am I over the limit? I said I'm pretty sure I'm over the limit. Its over $30,000 and I'll need a certified cheque for the GST because that alone will be more than $2000 bux. So she says (get this) "I think you need to see a supervisor".
About 2 minutes later the supervisor showed up and I explained I'm an importer and these are commercial goods and I'm way too sick... can we do it Wednesday or Thursday? Do you have a safe room to store it?
Funny. Yes they did. I felt better by Wednesday and phoned them and got the exchange rates and figured out the GST and got the certified cheque and made it back to the airport. They were very curtious. They didn't even open any of the boxes. 2 hours later my courier picked up the stuff and all was fine.
I don't know about others... I travel on a business Visa. My company is a registered importer/exporter and we keep our nose clean. I've just never had any problems.
Of course, I don't own a lap top and I wouldn't keep emails on it anyways. Emails stay on my mail server.
What many of you chaps write scares me. Last time I went to Oz I rented a machine in Oz. I don't like laptops anyways. However I was thinking of getting a toteable and maybe now I won't. What happens if you try to carry a hard drive through customs?
Maybe this is a business opportunity. Leave your peecee at home and rent one here. eh? Instead of rent-a-car, rent-a-peecee. Hmmm....
-------------
BTW - I have had merchandise inspected. There has never been a problem. I have all the paperwork and I often clear myself to save the big bux. THe closest I came to a problem whas when they looked at a photocopied manifest from a supplier in California. These are suppose to be originals. Well - they had the boxes and could have looked in them. The parts were as stated. Perhaps over 10 years with a fully wiped nose does make a difference.
...it's about the laptop itself, which could be/contain a bomb. Just a guess
The approach the White House is taking to, well, everything, is bound to trickle down, because everyone in the world would find it convenient to be free of oversight and accountability. If the position of the upper government is "trust us, and no, you can't check, because that would help the terrorists," then that incredibly convenient pretext for hiding everything they do will trickle down the ladder.
THAT, not an irrational hatred of Bush, was why the civil libertarians yelled so loudly about the White House redefining torture, due process, habeus corpus, and everything else. If one government agency can just sign a document to lock you up for as long as they want, exempting themselves from judicial or legislative oversight, redefining or ignoring laws they don't like, then well, hell, EVERYONE wants to do that, and it will trickle down to your local police department eventually. It happened with the war on drugs, and the war on terrorism is a lot more useful. Ever hear of civil asset forfeiture? Ostensibly, it was a critical tool to go after the drug dealers, but over 80% of people whose assets (cars, houses, boats, even cash) were seized WERE NEVER CHARGED. This happened under Clinton, too. Government abuses power. That is a truism, and it doesn't stop being a truism just because you voted for a particular administration. The "conservatives" have gotten so excited about being able to remake the world however they wanted that they have become the very totalitarians they claimed to fear from liberalism.
But back to the police and those laptops. You seem to think that there is some independent life-force or truth-force in existence that will spontaneously, without any legislative mandates, cause the police departments across the country to do the right thing even when no one is watching over their shoulder. That is naive to the point of hilarity. People don't handle power well. Would you like to give high school teachers the ability to strip-search any student at will, with no legislative oversight, and just assume that they won't abuse that? Do you hate teachers? No, and I don't hate cops either, but if you remove oversight that was provided by due process and probable cause, and excuse them from having to justify their actions before a judge and risk censure, then their authority will be abused for gain. It's just human nature.
It does not apply only to US citizens, and it does not apply only within the borders of the US. The US government shall not do this to anyone, anywhere. Full stop. End of fucking discussion!
Why the fuck is this so damn hard for everyone -- including federal judges -- to understand?!!!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
you knew ubuntu's growth was being driven frome *somewhere*, didn't you?
bguug... border guard's ubuntu user's group...
amerikkka doesn't seem like a qualitative difference from the present, just a quantitative difference.
this is sad.
Well, Windows might get me into much more trouble, since it would be obvious that I'd stolen Microsofts source code and ported it to a PPC mac!
Of course, I could run an OS-9 or OS-X partition just the same. hell, I imagine OS-X with a primary user with a 'hidden' home directory would be fine. According to my friend, customs was looking for illegal copyright materials and spent about 20 minutes browsing his (windows) laptop.
Given how easy it is to swap drives in some machines, you could just swap out the hard drive, unless they go thru all your prosessions very closely...
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
If you are a US citizen, they cannot deny you entry in the US, I would imagine. The only reason they could is if they are not satisfied that your documentation proves you are who you are. Highly unlikely.
They could presumably confiscate anything that you tried to bring in on reasonable ground - "It's encrypted, so we have to take it and study it..." and if they ever found anything before the statute of limitations ran out, I suppose you could be charged. I also suspect there's a "put up or shut up" procedure, but given the cost of lawyers, I suspect a new laptop would be chepaer.
For Canadians going into the US, they can do whatever they want to you and you object at your peril. Having said that, they seem to be more anal about 30-year old juvenile convictions than laptops. The "moral turpitude" clause can cover just about any arrest. They can ask if you've been "arrested", not just "convicted".
For foreigners coming into Canada, the usual hassle I've seen is "are you coming here to do work, bringing commercial samples"? They often have to educate Americans that Canada is not yet the 51st state, and petty bureacracy must be served before you can do sales, demo's, trade shows or consulting.
Jesus H. Christ on a pogostick, you folks can't look past your own navels. This is news?
I was prepared for this *three* years ago. Here's a clue: This isn't about politcal ideology anymore. It's about power, and survival. The day you stop thinking in "left/right" terms that colorize things the way the powerful in American want it, will be the day you suddenly realize just how much we have lost, what we still stand to loose, and what sheep we have been, slowly being lead to slaughter by "our own kind".
The upcoming "Recession" is accelerating. Two years ago, the housing market was "hot"; and there were warnings EVERYWHERE that it was a bubble. Now, the average citizen is overextended on credit AND a mortgage, AND is working furiously robbing Peter to pay Paul (or in this case, borrowing from MasterCard to pay the Bank Mortgage). The goverment is up to its ears in debt; and if that debt was recalled (by say, oh, the Japanse, or the Saudis, or one of the many many many other countries that buy our debt but secretly hate our guts), we couldn't repay it, because "we've" floated the US dollar way past the point of no return. All around me I can see people being laid off, jobs literally "leaving", and the number of homeless are growing each day. I also see a few people driving cars that cost more than what my grandparents paid for their house, and my grandparents had to pay a 30 year mortgage like everyone else; what does that say about the cost of living now? 50 year mortgages are now being accepted; how much longer before it's a 99-year lease and you die in debt, passing the debt to your children? The M3 doesn't exist anymore, because according to the fed it "doesn't represent any data of value", but the reality is that the M3 actually can guage how bad inflation will be because it indexes the amount of money loaned out (ie. debt sold) over time.
The Great Depression had approximately one-quarter of all people in the United States unemployed. What happens to a country when it passes more than half of all people unemployed? How can you keep a bank solvent with it has a default rate on mortgages that exceeds more than 1 in 3, but only 10% of its assets can be liquified on demand? Hell, would there even be someone to buy a house, when no-one has work or money? You do realize that the FDIC has STOPPED insuring bank savings accounts years ago, right? That nice, fat 401(k), well, you did remember that there was no guarantee of safety in it, right?
Much of this has already been discussed on Slashdot, yet none of you seem to remember what you read. You call me a troll, but I say you are worse: you are ignorant, and that is something that you can cure but choose not to do so.
First sentence in his post was:
So, why wouldn't I just have two partitions, dual-boot, and on the plane make sure it's setup to boot the 'boring' partition?
Great reading comprehension skills there...
Customs has been known to accidentally destroy small aircraft on arrival if they are suspected of carrying drugs. No liability for them when nothing is found.
The authority for the searches is 19 USC 1467.
The authority for lack of liability for the damage caused is "sovereign immunity", as reference in this case: Mid-South Holding Co. v. United States, which involved property damage sustained by a vessel during a search by the United States Customs Service and the United States Coast Guard ("Customs Service"). The Customs Service was called in to search the fishing vessel ABNER'S CHOICE on a tip that she was involved in narcotics trafficking. While the agents discovered no contraband, they were alleged to have unplugged the vessel's bilge pump during the search, which caused her to sink the following day. The vessel owners brought suit against the United States under the Suits in Admiralty Act ("SAA") to recover the value of the lost vessel. The United States gained summary judgment on the grounds that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the court concluded the United States enjoyed sovereign immunity in this case.
To quote from TrueCrypt's website: TrueCrypt can run in so-called 'traveller' mode, which means that it does not have to be installed on the operating system under which it is run.
This means you do not have a program list entry if you do not install it; all you have to do is keep the TrueCrypt.exe somewhere on the drive or on a separate thumbdrive (you should probably rename it to something like spellcheck.exe). But even if you do install it, you still get plausible deniability with TrueCrypt's two-container-model: you can create a secondary encrypted container within an encrypted container, so that you basically get two different contents depending on what password you use to open it. If you want to hide your PR0N stash, just put tax stuff, bills and personal data into the other container and if someone asks you to uncrypt this file, just show them the "sensitive data" you're protecting. It is impossible to prove the existence of a second data set.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
It was said in another thread here that certain custom have been using EnCase software to make an image of a HD and to read its data. So I went to EnCase website and I read the .pdf there. It says:
[...] Encrypted Volumes and Hard Drive Encryption: EnCase can analyze and acquire mounted encrypted volumes, such as PGP and DriveCrypt, and give examiners full access to data on hard drives that are wrapped with encryption technology, such as SafeBoot.
What does that mean? "give examiners full access to data on hard drives that are wrapped with encryption technology"
to make it unfeasible to get the data from the HDD.
Or did you forget that?
..scenario.
am i too late?
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
One more reason on the growing list of "why to avoid the USA when travelling".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I have told this story a few times on /. but here it goes again
Last year I went with my wife and son to Adelaide for a short holiday. Coming back I left my laptop in the checked in luggage (having too much stuff to carry on board). At the time it only ran Mandrake. The laptop was fully charged because I always ran it on mains power.
Boarding time arrived and thw airline announced a delay to "change a wheel". I could see the plane right outside the windows. Adelaide airport is pretty small. No wheels got changed.
We got home and I got the laptop out. The battery was totally flat. After all the warnings not to use a laptop during takeoff and landings did these guys leave my laptop running in the cargo hold? Did they do that because it doesn't have a "start" button?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Going to New Zealand and back so I used "Secure Empty Trash" on my laptop to get rid of all the horse porn, am I safe? :)
dd if=/dev/urandom of=secrets.bin bs=1024 count=1000
[Insert pithy quote here]
Before you cross the border, re-Ghost your laptop to its original state, and carry all your important data on a thumb drive located in your asshole.
Seriously, this is just more hoax crap. I've never seen so much garbage posted as serious news.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
Barring all rediculous notions of conspiracy or paranoia, let's talk about the guy at the Airport who bears the safety of the entire country upon his weary shoulders. Let's call him Earl.
Earl is usually a male between the age of 25-45 years old. Earl does not have a broad college education and isn't too likely to own a computer. Earl probably lives near the airport in a bad neighborhood.
Earl spends six hours a day on his feet, shuffling air-travellers through metal detectors at a pace of fifteen or so per minute. Hundreds a day. If he has seen the same person twice, he wouldn't know it. Earl works five days a week, and gets some overtime during the holidays. He makes about 10-12 bucks an hour.
Earl's training was a ritual cleansing of his spirit. They showed him videos of plane-crash sites, audio from hijackings and the 9/11 replay loop interlaced with tips on 'recognising suspicious behavior' and 'how to spot a fake ID' followed by about a list of 1001 places to hide a bomb.
So, here we have an exhausted, middle-aged man who's basically been told that it's up to him to defend the country. Whether he believes that or not, he knows he better not screw up.
There you are: A Young 20-something with your laptop, a little nervous for flying and jittery on caffiene, perhaps unconciously looking around a little too much because it's been a long wait. God help me, maybe you're a little tan...
What's an Earl to do?
But I suppose I'm thinking like a criminal here. Pop the harddrive, and if they give you grief about that..you give them the blank loaded one. I'm not so much concerned about them searching my laptop, outside of kiddie porn there is little they can prove right there on the spot is illegal. (Oh, my mp3 collection is based on my CD collection at home, as is my DVD collection and my certificate of proof of license is right there under it). I'm more concerned about my work laptop walking away with my latest 1 gig project report on it never to be seen again. Shame this sort of thing never happens to people important enough to affect change....
Customs is considered to operate outside the bounds of law because they are determining if someone is allowed in to the country. If they weren't technically outside the country already, the visitor or immigrant would already be in the country and there would be nothing for Customs to do.
They've taken advantage of that for decades.
I personally have had my car trashed because of the jackboot mentality of US Customs, and much, much worse. I know others who have had the same happen to them.
And there is NOTHING we are legally allowed to do about it from out of country.
Totalitarian is as totalitarian does, no matter how much the US prattles about "freedom" or "democracy."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I use the graphical login screen in GRUB, and fly fairly frequently. I think I'll make a custom version, just for use in airports. How about a nice shot of the twin-towers burning, with the login text in Arabic, and maybe some choice jihadist slogan at the top of the screen? On login, I could have the system display messages like: .NOT FOUND
SCANNING for radio transmission devices. . . . . DEVICES FOUND
SCANNING for evildoer dongle . . . . . . . . . NO DEVICE FOUND
SCANNING for secured network connection . . . . . .
SECURITY COMPROMISED. BOOTING INTO DECOY LINUX
Then boot into a plain vanilla Linux with power-puff girls wallpaper. For good measure maybe I should have a large secondary partition filled with completely random data.
That's your reason, right there.
So don't carry important information in PCs when crossing the border, just like you don't carry too much (or too little) money when walking in South Central, L.A.
What would or could customs officials do if you just brought in a hard drive? Without a computer handy to view the contents of the hard drive, would the confiscate it out of hand or would they let you in because it was too burdensome to view the contents right there? If any one knows the answer to this question, I'd love to hear it.
I suppose it's somewhat related to the encryption question... if your data is encrypted, do the custom officials ask for you to unencrypt it so they can see it?
As others have posted, I'm more concerned about loss of data rather than letting others view it. So... encryption is not a solution for me. Backup copies are a solution, but maybe this hard-drive only trick can work.
--
when will the right to bear arms be extended to include a right to bear computers?
...pop the hard drive out and pack it elsewhere.
Duh.
BWilde.
Simple solution.. if air travel gets much more restrictive, it'll be easier to just prepare a Ghost image of a drive with all your business required programs/data, leave it on the company servers, and arrange for a rented laptop at the destination. Scan it of course to ensure it isn't trojanned, then download your drive image. Route around the airport authorities as damage..
Informative?...Are you fucking kidding me! What ass hat moderator did this shit. Do us a favor and shoot yourself. Also, take the time to read the moderator guidelines. I understand it's not law but not adhearing to those guidelines ruins part of what makes Slashdot so great. Can someone with points please mod the parent properly.
Oh yes, Egypt is a very service-oriented nation. If you know the word "baksheesh" then you're already there. Those tips better flow to the guy who helped lug your bags, to the man at the hotel who told you about a nice place to eat and so on! If you're American or British, do not exchange out all your money into Egyptian Pounds. For the purposes of "baksheesh", many people are really, really pleased about getting dollars or GBP--the latter of which is often worth 10 times the native currency and holds its value a lot better. Practice saying these words, spelled phonetically, in Arabic--they will come in handy:
;)
la shokrun ("la shoke-ron") - it means "no thank you"
la - means "no", pronounced as in the word "ma" or "hah"
shoke - as in the word "spoke" or "bloke"
ron - as in the word "gone"
My girlfriend was spotted by the monument police. I didn't mean to trivialize them earlier--Egyptian policemen carry prominently displayed automatic weapons, and in the nicer parts of Cairo (such as Zemalek), you will see them literally at every street corner. The monument officials are deliberately made out to be less threatening looking, but they are no less willing to beat ass. I personally witnessed one repeatedly punching a bedouin in the head for getting too close to the tourists at the Pyramids. These people really don't mess around.
You will find that the tourist sites are surprisingly unaccommodating to tourists. You do a lot of walking, climbing, and in some cases a lot of baking out in the hot Egyptian sun. Last I was there, I climbed inside the largest of the pyramids by ascending a rickety vertical ladder that was perhaps 30 - 50 meters long. One misstep and your vacation gets much less enjoyable.
The thing with photographs and the monuments is that you can take pictures of some, but not at others. My girlfriend was spotted taking photos in a tomb and the "no pictures" policy was loosely interpreted by the official as a "permanently confiscate the camera" policy. Like I said, it took money to fix the problem, which was kind of crappy. There may not be a place to put your camera if you've transitioned from a "pictures OK" to a "pictures not OK" area, and depending on the circumstances, they may balk at the idea of your even having the camera out in the first place. Something small and easily concealed is the ticket, and yeah, I would absolutely upload shots on a daily basis. I did it with my laptop--every day I would dump shots onto the hard drive. At the very least, you're insuring against losing your pics if the camera gets damaged or "lost".
If you're going to the Pyramids or to Luxor, hire out a personal guide from a travel company. Seriously. The better ones have Egyptology degrees and will tell you anything you want to know about what you see. Due to the exchange rates, your dollars, GBP, Euros, or whatever else will probably stretch very far in Egypt, and you might be surprised by how cheap the guides can be. The guide becomes the "designated picture taker" and "camera carrier" too
Hope that helps. Have a great time!
If you are were running linux you could check /var/log/[syslog|messages] etc and see when the laptop was booted and shutdown...
You didn't look in /var/log/messages?
Rich
Sometimes, listening to such stories, I want to become a terrorist myself!...
Do not underestimate the fact that some people are just a couple of steps before doing something criminal, and the rest of the community, with their actions and the lack of trust, just pushes them to do it!
Sometimes I go into supermarkets dressed up rather untidily. The guard watches me, follows me, then he does something else... It never occurs to me of stealing something except for those moments, really!...
We could make the cost of ridiculous safety measures higher than the cost of their lack somehow, in order to stop such safety insanity...
Fortune Rota Volvitur
Even during that entire time, nobody stopped me from bringing my laptop...
Oh well. Security rocks.