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Examining the Search and Seizure of Electronics at Airports
Angus McKraken brings us a Washington Post story about how travelers are seeking more well-defined policies and rules about the search and seizure of electronic devices by U.S. Customs officials. The EFF has already taken legal action over similar concerns. We recently discussed the related issue of requiring people to disclose their passwords in order to search their private data. From the Post:
"Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had 'a security concern' with her. 'I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight,' she said. 'I was assured that my laptop would be given back to me in 10 or 15 days,' said Udy, who continues to fly into and out of the United States. She said the federal agent copied her log-on and password, and asked her to show him a recent document and how she gains access to Microsoft Word. She was asked to pull up her e-mail but could not because of lack of Internet access. With ACTE's help, she pressed for relief. More than a year later, Udy has received neither her laptop nor an explanation."
Y'all just keep on sleepwalking, the government is taking care of everything...
. . . this is all part of that One Laptop Per Child thingie . . .happens all the time at airports, or roadside checkpoints in Africa . . .
. . . nothing new here, move along, sans laptop . . .
If you RTFA, the examples appear to be cases of traveling while being Muslim, Middle Eastern or Asian. Any examples of Nordic blondes or Irish Redheads getting the same treatment?
where a traveler would be better off shipping his or her laptop separately rather than trying to take it on a plane. This is starting to get out of hand: confiscating personal property without cause? What the Hell? The government must be running short on laptops, I guess. Twenty years ago I'd have said this could never happen here, if anyone had asked. Sorry to see that I'd have been wrong.
.44 Magnum and a box of cartridges in her suitcase. Nobody noticed, nobody cared, she didn't even think twice about it (I'll tell you though, had there been any boxcutter-wielding bastards on that plane she'd have killed them all. You don't know my aunt.) Can you imagine trying that today? One group of Islamic assholes causes some damage and just look at what we've done to ourselves.
In 1984, I remember my aunt flew from Chicago to Boston, with a
I'm still proud of my country but not as much as I used to be. That bothers me. What also bothers me is that bad behavior on the part of the TSA and other government organs is in danger of becoming institutionalized, which will make it very difficult to eliminate.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I am unclear if that is being offered as an option. If I cannot take my laptop with me on a business trip, there is no point in doing the trip. I am a Software Engineer and my laptop is the primary tool with which I do my job. If I do not have it, I cannot work. Furthermore, in many cases the contents of my laptop are far more valuable than the device itself. As far as I am concerned, the device is disposable, the data is what is valuable. Yes, I keep a backup, but there is always that last little bit I have just done that is not in the backup yet....
All it means is that those retards would be more likely to confiscate it because they don't recognize what it is.
This can also be done with a normal PC and OSx86. My install will not boot into Mac OS without the install DVD in the drive. I do my work in Mac, put the DVD in my checked bag, then get on the plane. It'll boot straight into Windows without the disc, and since Windows can't read HFS+ it doesn't see the Mac partition.
OSx86 FTW
The answer, of course, is to rely on your employer. Let me explain.
Go ahead and fight them. I mean - do not let them search your laptop until forced to do so. Cite your company's information as the reason. Perhaps individual privacy is gone but we still have some sanctity for corporate data. It doesn't even have to be trademark/copyright/legally protected data. It just has to be data that your company deems 'private and confidential'. If people start missing flights because of over-ambitious TSA agents, eventually, businesses will start screaming about these searches....if they aren't already. Not only are they overly intrusive but they are causing losses in a very real way. Measurable losses.
Anyone from Oracle or MSFT read this post? How would you feel about your laptop being held like this? How about someone from Adobe or Boeing? What about the big-3 car companies? Consulting companies?
There are lots of businesses that require international travel and I am betting they don't want some $10.50/hr TSA employee reading your laptop anymore than you do. I expect employers to enter the fray any second now. They will not stand for this unless there are some checks and balances. They have no interest in writing off confiscated assets because of over zealous TSA agents and they are (unfortunately) our best defense.
That's not a fix. That's a workaround, and a shitty one at that! The real fix is to destroy the TSA, and get our civil liberties back!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
If someone really wanted to do something, he/she could just blow up the hundreds of people waiting at the bottleneck BEFORE security screening. I guess one could make a trigger mechanism that would be set off by the metal detector itself... dammit, now I'm thinking like an engineer/terrorist!
You can't take the sky from me...
Irag II: Saddam had WMD (used it on Kurdish villagers in the 80s).
Like a true American, you not only spelled the name of the country wrong (and the Freudian subtlety of the misspelling is particularly telling), you forgot to mention a) why the US did nothing about that back in the 80s aside from affirming our "friendship" to Saddam and giving him another $1 billion in military aid right after and b) where Saddam had gotten the technology for that gas and its means of distribution. (I'll give you a hint: you were trying to defend that country's "honor")
The spread of communism was feared.
And, what happens when the spread of American-brand "democracy" is feared? It's only so long before everyone gets tired of having "freedom" bombed into them.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
But what can you do?
Now of course, Airports are beyond miserable. Amen to that.
FWIW, this is why I won't be going back to the US any time soon (although I've been there several times in the past, and to Canada). I really like the US, I like the people and the country. Americans are some of the warmest most friendly and helpful people anywhere in the world. I have relatives there and I could quite happily spend my holidays there every year, one state at a time.
The US tourist board run adverts on TV telling us to come visit at DiscoverAmerica.com, which - given the way they treat you when you do get there, post 9/11 - is entirely a mixed message it seems to me. Trips there are nothing but a hassle with endless queuing and stupid security checks. I've had on multiple trips and the absolutely insane delays and had to deal with concentration-camp guards that pass for Airport security staff that ask you stupid pointless questions and what you do for a living.
For example, on our last trip (which I didn't want to go on, but a relative had just died, and there was a service):
We didn't have all the technical details of where we were staying at every point in our trip - we didn't need them - but they detained us because we didn't have them. They then directed us to a computer and let us *Google for them*. We filled out the details and they let us on our way. I have no idea what the point in that was. I could have named any hotel chain in a nearby city and said "oh yeah, that one", it's not like they called to check.
You certainly can't expect to turn up and just "take each day as it comes" as they expect you to say exactly where you will be and where you are staying. Personally I like to be spontaneous and free wheeling while I'm on holiday - especially when I'm visiting somewhere like the US where there is so much to see. On the last two trips I did multiple flights internally too, that was also an unbelievable hassle. Even the major airports are not designed to have large queues like there are now - clearly waiting areas and shopping areas have been altered to turn them into giant queuing zones.
Of course there are queues at UK airports and some silly rules (e.g. flying from Heathrow to a domestic airport requires you take off your shoes, but fly back to Heathrow from a domestic airport and you don't have to) but the delays don't seem any worse than pre 9/11, especially now that new faster facilities are available. The security staff are by and large pretty chilled out. I've heard of some abuses by immigration officials specifically (who seem to be hired primarily on the basis of how much they hate foreigners), but I've also seen them shrug off abuse and being ranted at at by drunk passengers late for a flight for having to wait all of 10 minutes to go through security (from guys who were quite obviously in the bar when they should have been checking in).
I'm looking forward to a future administration sorting this mess out and restoring some semblance of normality, I just hope that happens sooner rather than later. I know the US economy is a behemoth but the current regime has got to be hurting trade and tourism and impacting on the bottom line (I'm sure it's denting consumer confidence too, and so helping to depress the domestic market).
Irag II: Saddam had WMD (used it on Kurdish villagers in the 80s). Was required to get rid of it (90s), but failed to do so under UN supervision or to properly document it so that the UN could verify after the fact.
Sonny, as an American, I can tell you have been drinking the Kool-aid far too long. Did you not watch the events leading upto and after the Iraq invasion? Yah know, where they couldn't find evidence of WMD's? A little fact like that just might piss some people off.
Here is my little paranoid fantasy of why the US invaded Iraq. First, there is oil. The US has enough, but the powers that be want more. Second, there is this little quote by President George W. Bush: "After all, this is the guy that tried to kill my dad at one time." Thus a personal vendetta that has killed thousands of American solders. Killed many, many more Iraqi civilians. Left a wake of casualties.
Wake the fuck up.