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US Courts Consider Legality of Laptop Inspection

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the my-porn-is-all-grown-up-anyway dept.

ceide2000 writes "The government contends that it is perfectly free to inspect every laptop that enters the country, whether or not there is anything suspicious about the computer or its owner. Rummaging through a computer's hard drive, the government says, is no different from looking through a suitcase. One federal appeals court has agreed, and a second seems ready to follow suit." This story follows up on a story about laptop confiscation at the borders from a few months ago.

17 of 595 comments (clear)

  1. next will be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    next is your banking information, previous employments, medical history and telephone calls made in the past 6 months.

    Welcome to the USA.

    1. Re:next will be... by BalanceOfJudgement · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Doesn't citizenry fall within 'The people'?


      The citizenry is a subset of the people. The word 'citizen' was left out of the Bill of Rights on purpose - the colonial British were fond of stripping citizenship in order to carry out all manner of injustice on people.

      Not to mention the fact that the political philosophy that gave birth to our nation does not limit human rights to "citizens" of some hypothetical state, but applies it to all humans equally. It would have been hypocritical for our founders to then limit recognized human rights to citizens only.

      Which, incidentally, is why I don't buy any of the government's arguments about why imprisoning people in Guantanamo is legal.
      --

      We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
    2. Re:next will be... by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What we need is another ammendment that extends the protections of the bill of rights to anywhere under the control/power of the US (so they can't claim that the customs line isn't US territory) or their agents (so extraordinary rendition is prima facia illegal). That, and actually applying the 4th/14th to property seizure.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
    3. Re:next will be... by BalanceOfJudgement · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The British Crown would not have stripped colonials of citizenship, for the simple reason they didn't have citizenship. Nor did any resident of Britain from the lowliest Cockney tinker to the haughtiest peer of the realm, for the simple reason the Crown didn't have citizens, it had subjects.


      I should have chosen my words more carefully: they'd be stripped of the protections of the Magna Carta and associated law by merely declaring them enemies of the crown. Such abuse is well documented.

      Although I agree with your philosophy, I don't think your argument holds water.

      Fair enough.

      As much as I agree that the people have human rights, and the Bill of Rights reflects this, people can and do make serious arguments that it doesn't apply to people who are aliens.


      And on principle I simply can't accept those arguments. Anyone who is believed to have done something so heinous should have such evidence presented against them in a public court of law. Law, justice, its practice, and people's faith in the fairness of that law is seriously compromised when "justice" becomes something done in secret. I think the value of transparency and general faith in the principles of one's government are greater than the value of some supposed secret.

      Whether it did or not would probably have been clear to every patriotic American in the first decades of independence.

      I ponder on that point frequently; it's unfortunate more of our founders' ideas weren't explicitly written down. So much of what they took for granted has changed. They KNEW it was inevitable that we'd lose sight of the principles on which this country was founded; Jefferson wrote extensively on the subject.

      Then, sometimes I think that BECAUSE they knew it was inevitable, they didn't attempt to stave it off; and instead allowed for the situation when revolutions would have to be fought again, because attempting to hold off the need for revolutions pretty much prolongs the inevitable.

      And then, sometimes, I get tired of thinking of the whole thing and wish I could be as indifferent as everyone else seems to be..
      --

      We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
    4. Re:next will be... by BalanceOfJudgement · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I do see this as rational and understandable, but I cannot accept it as "applies it to all humans equally" and not calling it "hypocritical".


      I was the GP.

      At any rate - yes, our founders struggled with the seeming hypocrisy of the issue for the rest of their lives. Jefferson was especially bothered by it, which is why he freed his slaves in his will. It was a terrible compromise made so that the US could be formed at all; the Southern States would not have joined the Revolutionary War had they not been promised that they would be able to keep their slaves, nor would they have ratified the US Constitution. In that case, unity was chosen as a higher value than the ideals the nation was founded on.

      Some call the Civil War the "last battle of the American Revolution" precisely because it finally addressed that issue.

      Killing people from your own nation just because they want to get rid of government is bit puzzling to me. Should the south be considered conquered territory? This sure sounds like flaming but I really want to know.


      I'm American; personally? I don't justify it. Some say it was an overall good because it eliminated slavery, which is a fair enough argument; the problem I have with it is that the Civil War was used to justify solidifying the power of the Federal Government over the many US States. It was at that point that the centralized power of the US began to grow, and we see what the effect of that concentration of power has been.

      Abraham Lincoln justified the war in legalese by saying there was no justification to dissolve the union, or more precisely, that there is no exit clause in the Constitution if States decided they no longer wanted to be part of it. It was a calculated risk backed up by military force but the justification he used has always been questionable.

      It was a laudable goal to eliminate slavery, but that wasn't the reason the Civil War started; it was only a very small part of it. Not until 1863 did Lincoln say that abolishing slavery was one of the goals; prior to that, it was all about putting down the rebellion.
      --

      We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
  2. But by kieran · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can they demand you decrypt data or, worse, provide the key?

    1. Re:But by BeanThere · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You could try answering the question instead of giving a snarky response ... the article "discusses" it, yes, but doesn't completely clarify the issue - the bottom line is that the 5th amendment 'probably applies' (I presume only to citizens?), but I'm guessing you're likely to be subjected to a fairly rigorous police-state-like series of events if you try to refuse to give your password. If you're just a tourist and not a citizen, you're probably a lot worse off too, I'm not sure what would happen.

  3. Suitcase opening... HAH! by guitaristx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is not suitcase snooping, this is opening a sealed envelope found within my suitcase and reading the contents even though both the suitcase and envelope test negative on the bomb sniffer.

    --
    I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
  4. No you have a choice. by winkydink · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A. You can decrypt the data
    B. You can go back where you came from

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

    1. Re:No you have a choice. by Asic+Eng · · Score: 4, Insightful
      B. You can go back where you came from

      What if you came from the US? I know that many Americans are ok with tourists to the US having no privacy rights, but what about US citizens - is it ok that a citizen loses his rights as soon as he encounters US borders? It seems the 4th amendment ought to protect you against "unreasonable searches and seizures". It's certainly reasonable to search a suitcase for illegal drugs, explosives or quantities of goods which exceed the import limits. All of these things are directly border-related. However is it reasonable to search a laptop at the border? Sure a laptop might contain illegal files, but that's always the case. So if it's reasonable to search for these at the border, it should be reasonable to search for these on all computers all of the time.

  5. 4th Amendment by Antony-Kyre · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I guess if they're going to ignore the 4th Amendment when it comes to suitcases, they might as well ignore it when it comes to laptops. After all, who is to say what it means for "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,"

  6. they can stick theyre hand up your butt by BlueshiftVFX · · Score: 3, Insightful

    they can stick theyre hand up your butt, why would you be worried about your laptop. your laptop won't cry in the shower to boy george after it's violating probing.

  7. You're doing it the hard way. by Reziac · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If I wanted to get information across the border without being noticed, I'd put it on an FTP site and email the link and login info to myself, to a webmail account that I can access anywhere merely by memorizing the username and password. No need to even have the POP3 access info on the laptop, let alone the "incriminating data".

    In fact if transporting data is your only reason for entering the country, just upload the nefarious data to one of the free FTP sites, and email the link to your partners-in-crime. Why risk being caught at the border??

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  8. Re:New plan for border agents... by R2.0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Folder on desktop named "Kiddie pics?" Check.

    After they see the "kiddie pics" folder, you get segregated. Now sit on your ass for a couple hours while they call a higher level agent to OPEN the folder.

    "Thousands of JPGs within? Check."

    Sit through another couple of hours of interrogation, trying to get you to reveal what's in the folder. Then they call a computer forensics "expert" to analyze the files.

    "All JPGs are hello.jpg? Checkmate"

    They spend another few hours trying to determine if the Goatse Guy is under 16. Then they call in a higher level computer forensics "expert" to analyze the files for steganography.

    By that time, you may as well BE the Goatse Guy - you are about as fucked as you are ever going to get.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  9. Ridiculous by poptones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They are not looking for passwords to nuclear reactor equipment - the clowns at the border probably wouldn't recognize such lists unless they were marked "passwords to nuclear reactor equipment." They're not even looking for bootlegged movies because they'd be detaining damn near everyone with a laptop.

    No, they are pretty much just looking for naughty pix of little kids - that's it. And much as someone might find that offensive, sorry it just aint "dangerous."

    It's encouraging to see ONE judge in this country got it right - _personal_ computers are an extension of our mind and deserve the utmost protection.

  10. Re:SmartCard by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is possible to encrypt the contents of the hard drive using a SmartCard, then mail the SmartCard to your destination in advance of your border crossing. By doing so, it would be absolutely impossible* for you to give them access to your data. And while they may have the legal authority to search your laptop at the border, they do NOT have the authority to break in to your destination address and take the SmartCard (without probable cause, warrant, etc.).


    No. But if I'm understanding some other posters here, they DO have the authority to simply keep your laptop. That seems to be the problem with most of these "solutions": no, the Feds don't get to see your data. But you're out maybe $1500 worth of laptop that you'll never see again.

    Chris Mattern
  11. 4th Ammedment is fine... by mi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable [emphasis mine -mi] searches and seizures

    Kinda vague, is not it? What's reasonable? Up to the courts, really...

    And the courts have determined, that such "administrative searches" are Ok "as long as they are "conducted as part of a scheme that has as its purpose something "other than the gathering of evidence for criminal prosecutions."

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.