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."

Comments

it isn't just the USA that does this...

[david_bonn]

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.

Would they search a video ipod?

[phatvw]

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.

This entire story is awfully disturbing.

[s20451]

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.

Re:This entire story is awfully disturbing.

[Rob_Warwick]

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?

As I understand US law (IANAL, I'm not even an American) there's a difference legally between data that's in transmission and in storage. One falls under wiretapping laws, one is just under search laws (if I remember).

Here's an mp3 of the talk where I heard about it at HOPE Number Six: http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/network_monito ring_and_the_law.mp3

Incidentally, the same conference that I had my laptop searched coming back from. Canadian customs officials, I'm a Canadian citizen. They used spotlight for a couple minutes in a back room and then returned it. I would /love/ to know if there is some legal info about this, since I would have been willing to assert my rights, I'm just not sure what they are in that situation. I figured that they have roughly the same rights as if I was carrying a stack of (paper) notebooks and wanted to read through 'em, but that'd be logical, and I've rarely seen the law work logically where a computer was involved.

Re:My Lack of Surprise

[bwd]

Customs agents don't derive their power to conduct warrantless searches at the border from legislation.

The Supreme Court has held in several cases, such as Hernandez and Ickes, that the ability to conduct searches is an inherent sovereign right of the country. The President, through Customs, is able to exercise this right through Article II.

Mailing you a clue by four

[BeeBeard]

Instead of seizing your computer, your person will be seized and thrown in quarantine.

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.

Required to enter *A* password

[Sloppy]

My laptop requires a password to wake from sleep or decrypt the contents of my home directory.

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.)

Re:Here's a Good Question

[ancientt]

I use TrueCrypt for my laptop. I don't have a password, I use a key on the work network protected by VPN (if you're not on the local network.) I literally cannot be forced give access to someone without setting up the VPN connection. Anything sensitive is on the encrypted partition. If I have to travel overseas, I will ask that they disable my VPN access until a mutually trusted aquaintance at my destination requests it be restored. I might go so far as to ask that I not know who is the responsible party.

If my laptop is confiscated, it will be a pain, but not terrible since the encrypted partition is backed up when I'm on the work network. If they must decrypt it, then they have to go through my company's security officer and the company's lawyers. If they take the laptop, then its my company's problem and they can decide if it's worth the legal fight.

Why? I handle other people's sensitive personal data (and try to keep even that at a minimum on my laptop.) I do what I can to protect the privacy of anyone who has trusted us to keep it private. If I'm dealing with someone who is trying to legally obtain the contents of the drive, they are forced to go through a legal process that protects our clients and by extension myself. If I'm dealing with a personal criminal with a gun, hopefully I can just hand over the laptop and valiently try to run away.

No lying to officials is necessary. I don't think I'd volunteer to explain that there is an encrypted partition, but if asked directly I can tell the truth.

If you're worried about it, you could probably set up the same with friends instead of a company and have most of the benefits.

If the climate is really nasty, then I'll probably just ship the drive. Boot? Sure, that's knoppix by they way, let me know if you need help finding the games.

now, yes, but why maintain it?

[misanthrope101]

The need for paperwork only comes with oversight. That is tied in with probable cause, the legislated, mandatory need to justify your actions, and basically the tacit assumption that your position puts you in a position where you can abuse your power, so you should be watched closely. Take away the probable cause, shield everything behind a wall of secrecy that you can't breach because "that might help the terrorists" and you have people who a) can take stuff, b) without having to justify it to anyone outside their office. How would complaints be filed, and to whom?

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.