US Courts Consider Legality of Laptop Inspection

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.

Comments

next will be...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Welcome to the USA.

Re:next will be...

[BalanceOfJudgement]

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.

Re:next will be...

[hey!]

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

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. Of course the Crown was never an absolute monarchy, it was never anything like the crown of France, or Spain. The barons had this thing called the Magna Carta.

There were always a few Whigged out eccentrics who thought ordinary people had, not just a few basic rights, but something called liberty. Many people toyed with such views in their phase of youthful indiscretion, but it was the overseas provincials who really bought into the whole delusion. So much so that when they gained their independence, they set up their entire government the exact way they thought the government in London was operating all along. There were a few republican small r twists. The King was called the President and he was elected every four years. The House of Lords was called the Senate (wealthy provincialism is no barrier to having a fine library of Latin works) and the commons was called the House of Representatives. But pretty much they took the customary powers of each piece of the English government (as they understood them) and put them down in a document that ensured that government would be weak and far away, just like in the good old days before the King started taking an interest in Colonial affairs.

They didn't bother to write everything down, like exactly when warrants are needed, because everybody already knew how that was supposed to work. Which is why the Constitution didn't have a Bill of Rights to begin with. Once it was proposed, it wasn't really a controversial idea; some people had a bee in their bonnet about what seemed perfectly clear to most people, so they did what Americans always do when faced with a complex philosophical problem like the relationship of the people to the government. They put together a quick patch that seemed to cover most of the things people were most concerned about, got it passed, and got on with the business of innovation, territorial expansion, and generally making money.

Consequently, a lot of what they put down is open to interpretation. Interpretation being what it is, this is sometimes a good thing, and sometimes a bad thing. 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. Whether it did or not would probably have been clear to every patriotic American in the first decades of independence.

Which doesn't mean they'd actually agree on anything, other than the meaning was plain one way or another.

But

[kieran]

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

Re:But

[eln]

Not that the Bill of Rights has much sway in cases where "terrorism" or "national security" can be applied, but the 5th amendment applies to "persons" rather than "citizens" (this distinction is made several times in the Constitution), and thus applies equally to anyone under US jurisdiction, whether they are a citizen or not.

So, if we actually followed the Bill of Rights, no one should be compelled to give that information, regardless of where they come from.

How I do it...

[WED Fan]

I encode all my dangerous stuff with everyday words and string them into mundane sentances disguised as personal communication.

There, everything you need to construct your own death star is in the line above. Oh, and some extra information is hidden in this line about exhaust ports. Damn, I just realized, my encoding for "exhaust ports" renders as "exhaust ports". Well, back to the drawing board.

Just create a dummy account?

[SCHecklerX]

I don't think you'd need to encrypt anything. Your laptop won't be on when they begin their inspection, right? So add another account that you fully cooperate with them with that has access to nothing, and maybe has some default pictures and stuff for them to browse around with. Configure login script to fix whatever they screw up on that account on each login. Log into *that* one for them to do their probing. They won't have any way of knowing it isn't your main account. Heck, make that a nice self-healing account that friends can use. Bonus!

If you assume somewhat more sophisticated inspectors, you may want to put what can be construed as nefarious software (nmap, tcpdump, nessus, kismet, etc) in a more secure than normal place.

Now, if you expect the thing to be confiscated, that is a different story.

Terminal A?

[delire]

As a heavy terminal user I long since lost interest in running a desktop environment. This has become a problem when I travel internationally, something I do very often.

On two separate occassions I've been asked to boot my machine. On both occassions the security officials became quite disturbed when they saw a text only boot sequence. One asked me to turn the machine off immediately and after 30 minutes I was able to explain what was on my computer in a way they liked. The second incident was worse. Once my laptop had come out of suspend-to-RAM the security guy demanded "Log into your computer please". On seeing a single maximised xterm he became nervous. He held me until an official came down from upstairs, who promptly laughed warmly and said "It's unix. It's OK".

I know a couple of other people that have been in very similar situations.

These days I have a session manager such that I can boot into a clean GNOME desktop should such a situation arise, complete with soothing coastal background image.

The rationale for having me boot my computer apparently was that it may be a bomb, not that my contents might be suspicious. The logic of having me sit in front of them and power on a bomb just to find out if it is, in fact, a bomb still escapes me to this day. Nearly as bizarre as the giant liquids disposal vat at security check: "Please mix your bomb ingredients in this packed airport instead of on the plane. Thankyou."

The 4th does not apply to border searches

[sirwired]

The 4th amendment does not apply to searches at the border, and it never has. Throughout modern history, every country in the world (the U.S. included) has reserved the right to search anything and everything entering the country, save diplomatic pouches.

The 4th amendment only covers "unreasonable" search and seizure. Border searches are considered reasonable, and therefore require no warrant. This was formally codified by the 1st Congress (thank you Findlaw), who could be assumed to know the intentions of the founding fathers. More intrusive operations over and above a cursory search (such as X-Rays, or I supposed computer checks) only require "reasonable suspicion", as opposed to the more strict "probable cause".

The current version of the law states:
19 USC 1581:
(a) Customs officers
Any officer of the customs may at any time go on board of any vessel
or vehicle at any place in the United States or within the customs
waters or, as he may be authorized, within a customs-enforcement area
established under the Anti-Smuggling Act [19 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.], or at
any other authorized place, without as well as within his district, and
examine the manifest and other documents and papers and examine,
inspect, and search the vessel or vehicle and every part thereof and any
person, trunk, package, or cargo on board, and to this end may hail and
stop such vessel or vehicle, and use all necessary force to compel
compliance.

I would think a search of the hard drive falls well within a "package".

SirWired

Ridiculous

[poptones]

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.