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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."
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?
Yes but, can Captain Encryption get me my computer back?
Better yet, can Captain Encryption keep the G-men from stealing it in the first place?
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?
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 ----
What's supposed to happen and what does happen are two different things. What processes are in place to ensure that is what happens?
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'
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).
It's an issue of trust and I have no faith in the Bush administration or its agents.
I have no faith in any administration or its agents. I wish the rest of the world would wise up to this. Government is not now, never has been, nor ever will be our friend.
If the paperwork isn't filled out, it didn't happen!
They're just stalling. They're not interested in your laptop per se, more in your reaction to having your laptop studied.
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.
Spot on. Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, made the Coast Guard the cornerstone of his plan for collecting revenues. There's even an urban legend that the Coast Guard 'Cutters' (first boats commissioned by the U.S.) were to fight 'revenue cutters'.
/.groupthink will mod me for speaking truth, but then, what else is new?)
Because this was part of international commerce, it was outside the protection of domestic rights.
Another example of this is how enemy combatants are typically not covered under domestic rights such as right to a lawyer, speedy trial, habeas corpus, etc. Somehow, this has been forgotten or ignored recently.
(Of course, I'm sure
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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.
It does not matter if a federal judge disagrees. This has been settled decades ago by the supreme court.
You mean, like how the right to abortion was decided decades ago by the supreme court and now there's all sorts of fussing that the law needs to be changed?
i am a soviet space shuttle
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.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. While most police forces are still subject to civilian control, Customs officials in the US and Canada increasingly do not operate transparently. In the absence of clear civilian control, they and all other police forces inevitably descend into corruption and abuse.
Western police are not immune to this. "Our cops don't do that!"... BS. I don't know why we (westerners) think that we're inherently better human beings than say, Soviet Russian police. Nothing about us makes our societies better, it is our political and economic freedom that has made us better. Define power roles and remove the controls... the "Stanford Prison Experiment" could easily have been a prototype for Abu Ghraib.
When you consider that Customs officials increasingly don't have to answer to anyone, and there is no longer any useful process of complaint or appeal, it is inevitable that they will abuse their power. After all, you could be a terrorist/communist/anarchist/whatever it was 150 years ago.
As for customs guards, the fact that you're a business traveller, earn 10x what they do, and that this is the only context in which they will ever have power over you will surely cause them to abuse their authority. This is human nature.
The Supreme Court also settled decades ago that people of African decent were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
Fortunately, the opinions of the Court alter neither the text of the Constitution nor the nature of reality; they merely decide what degree of illiteracy and delusion the U.S. Government will operate under.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
All the extra paperwork sounds nice in theory, but if something gets misfiled, how can John Q Public get his computer back? I used to be supportive of the T.S.A. until they harassed me for no good reason, then trashed my car at the border. No apologies. Had to look for my passport and driver's license. Laptop dumped on the back floor. D.M.V. documents from the glove box ended up on the back floor. I spent an hour getting my car back together. I've traveled for over 10 years to 18-19 countries. Never treated so rudely. I went to the office to make a complaint and was patronized. Interviewed in the front lobby with agents passing by. Abolish the T.S.A.!
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
Your approach should be mandatory for any corporate or government laptop containing customer related data.
IMHO, this is the principle driver behind these problems. The belief that "it can't happen here!" is what invariably leads to it happening due to the level of denial. It also contains copious helpings of "we are better than everyone else", another precursor to many social issues. It's like the 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq; many people simply do not believe that their own country is capable of doing such things so therefore the study must be wrong. If you ask me, all of this belongs on the same page as holocaust denial and religion. It's a complete failure to accept facts that go against your predisposed beliefs. Often the truth hurts.
Even if that 650,000 figure is correct, we, the United States of America, did not kill all those people. Most were killed by other Iraqis, by Syrians, by Lebanese, by Jordanians.
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