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Laptops Can Be Searched At the Border
Nothing to Declare notes that a California appeals court has unanimously upheld a ruling that border security officers at international airports can search personal computers without requiring any specific evidence of criminal activity. The appeal was made by US resident Michael Timothy Arnold, charged with child pornography offenses after an airport search of his notebook PC in 2005. Might want to think hard about what's on your laptop if you're going to be passing through a US international airport.
It makes you wonder that if there hadn't been something like Child Porn on there if this would have been overruled.
If it'd been a violation of rights search where they searched and you sued just for that with no criminal conviction.
The sad part, is this sets a president if it is allowed to stand, and whittles away at everything else.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Just read about how DHS is setting up internal domestic check points: SlashDot
Search and siezure with NO EVIDENCE OF CRIMINAL ACTIVITY??
How is this even remotely legal?
Can this possibly set a precedent for searching other items?
Why are computers treated any differently than anything else?
What threat does data on a computer pose to an airplane?
I would think a backpack or suitcase would be able to do more damage.
I feel lightheaded...
Might want to think hard about what's on your laptop if you're going to be passing through a US international airport.
Might want to think hard about making a trip to the states even if you don't have anything untoward on your laptop.
So, an AC sends a link to "his blog", and the link is dead?
You sir, are made of fail.
How deeply can/do they search a laptop while I'm waiting to get on my plane?
:P
I know encryption gets their panties in a twist, but suppose I have data I want kept private is just burying it in a weird location good enough?
What are they actually looking for, and how would they be searching for it? Unlikely to get them disclosing said techniques publicly, so... Rampant speculation?
The next logical question is, if you password-protect and encrypt your hard drive to thwart precisely this kind of unwarranted and unjustifiable privacy invasion, can Customs force you to divulge your passwords?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. " I can see them checking your person before getting on a plane to make sure you're not carrying weapons... but what on your laptop could possibly endanger an airplane?
Such a sad state of affairs. A true invasion of privacy. So do they have permission to open up my server rack or hard drives i happen to be taking as carry on? How about my Ipod? Some idiot that thinks security out weighs privacy should be dealt with. The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither. Thomas Jefferson : American statesman (3rd US President: 1801-09), wrote Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)
1. send undercover agent with Child Porn on X, where X is the desired search target
2. pretend to succeed in apprehending the evil child pornographer
3. profit!
(Not that I don't agree with smacking down pedophiles--even executing them.)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Yet another reason to use encryption, if you hadn't enough already.
This should cause a nice bump for encrypted drive/volume software.
It's a real shame this revolved around a kiddie porn case that hinged on the admissibility of the evidence. Nobody wants to let the kiddie porn guy go, so the chances of getting a good precedent here were probably that much lower.
Heh, wonder if they were keen on checking out some racy spring break shots ;)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
If you manually fix the link, you're taken to a troll page.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Looks like it was just a troll who forgot to add "http://", check out the rest of the url....
Besides the fact this THIS IS A DUPE.
Fail is not a noun.
What about software, videos, MP3? What if they want proof of license? They could also decide to download your email inbox and address book. Why? Because They Can.
I know what's going on my laptop next time I cross the border. TrueCrypt. That's what.
With all of the digital media that we tote around on our 250GB hard drives (I in particular drag around 100 GB of media when on transcontinental trips), this sort of thing makes you wonder...if they are going to search and seize...without probable cause...whats next? Does the RIAA and the MPAA jump in too and try to catch people who enjoy their "own" in-flight entertainment? Being a firearms aficionado (I collect a library of guns and compete very heavily), I have learned that their are some entities in the government that dont really care about due process and what the law says...search/seizure. They glaze right over a lot of stuff. While I personally have never had ANY problems with the BATFE, I have heard countless stories of scary things that happen to innocent people and it takes a lot of money to clear their good name...but I digress.
This is old news.
And to those, who say: "encrypt and be happy!": I am sorry. Customs will KEEP your laptop. If you dont tell the password you will not get it back.
The only thing you CAN do is to go into the US with a completely clean (empty except for an OS) notebook and get your data via a secure internet connection from whereever it lies.
nautsch
If you find a typo, you may keep it.
Think of the children! Ok, there now that that's out of the way... I think he should appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. This is a constitutional matter given that the bill rights was violated. I don't mind crossing the border as my notebook uses whole disk encryption (I back the thing up constantly because a LOT of code lives on it.) and I use two factor auth, (a LOT of VERY valuable code) I don't care if they try to search it. If I trash the mini-SD (have an excrypted backup at home) disk that holds the second key (besides I don't know that code anyway), doesn't matter if I tell them the first one. Besides you can't be made to bear witness against yourself, hence you can't be ordered to produce a code anyway. They could waterboard me... but I'm not that important but in the end I know I'll end up in MinLove so why bother...
"Chinese Amazons, power armor, laser swords.... things just meant to be." - Shampoo, A Very Scary Bet
They can search your person for drugs, fruits, vegetables, undeclared trinkets, or whatever, all because they are allowed to control what flows into the country. Digital data is no different. Yes, they can't stop the Internet, but they can control video tapes and DVDs. That is digital data, and nobody cries when they bust illegal imports of movies. If you have sensitive data on your computer, PROTECT IT. It is easy enough encrypt your data. Border officials can't force you to decrypt your data. What are they going to do? Go Zoolander on it?
I'd specifically ask what the heck they were searching my laptop for.
Unless they declare what they are searching for, and have a list of exactly it is prepared ahead of time, then anything they find, I would argue, would be inadmissible in court.
While I think that child pornographers and those that subscribe/collect/view that kind of material are the lowest form of scum and villainy in the world, and deserve whatever crap they get in life, there is a line between sanity and insanity here that has been crossed.
Now if you're going to search for kiddie porn or whatever, then it should be clear that is what is being searched for before they leave whatever nation (where kiddie porn may or may not be legal) they were in previously.
Did I mention, I hate to fly these days, because I'm a big 6'5" and have a beard, so I must be bad, and I get all the "special" treatment by our fine TSA officials?
GRRRRRR.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm literally angry with rage!
If your laptop asks for a password at startup, can they legally compel you to provide it? If the court likened the laptop to luggage, I'd guess the answer is yes.
Are there any whole-disk deniable crypto systems available?
Enter password #1: Machine boots in to Windows XP Pro, stocked with a legal copy of Office and the Zune Desktop. Why, no one so boring could be bad!
Enter password #2: Machine boots in to your real system, full of suspicious looking MP3s. Also, your Firefox homepage is set to Craigslist Casual Encounters W4M.
Absolutely ridiculous.
There are thousands of business men and women traveling in and out of the country every day with proprietary information from every industry. Many corporations forbid others to access their assets without proper Non-Disclosure Agreements in place. So what will happen with they follow corporate policy and politely refuse the search?
Obviously the laptop will have a password so the the well trained security, (whom might I add can't even identify a Mac Air over a bomb) are going to detain you while they try to hack their way in? Not to mention some companies that have hard drive encryption in place.
They will either need to build bigger detaining rooms or fix this post 9-11 freak-out policy quick.
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
Does this mean that the border guards have the right to examine any paperwork I might be carrying?
Do they have the right to open a sealed envelope for example? I don't see much difference.
Install linux... Keeps the virus' and "bad people" out.
In all honesty, I can only assume that their laptop searches will be short and narrowed down to using the windows search option. I doubt that they'll have *nix "experts" on hand at the airport security checks.
Maybe it's time to look to storing all my data on that flash drive and just shipping it to myself on location. Or maybe back to the old days with new toys, putting the OS on the flash drive so that the laptop won't boot to the OS without it.
*shrugs*
So much easier to not enter/exit the US... glad to know the terror threat will slowly help choke off international collaboration efforts on US shores.
Guess FedEx / DHL will run out of Laptop sized boxes soon. All those business travellers opting to send their laptop home, instead of carrying it on the plane..
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Remember they don't have to let you in.
Just like if you won't let them search your locked luggage.
Yes, there are ways to get around it, it is a computer after all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Get a MacBook Air. Apparently they can't tell if its a bomb or not.
:P
That or load it with Linux, surely those low-IQ'd Americans wont be able to figure it out
So will they be hiring Hansel to search computers then?
I had to declare any fruits when I left San Francisco the other day.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fail Main Entry: 2fail Function: noun
Check out how the border patrol is detaining people domestically in this new story
Scene: Two bumbling customs officials at the International terminal departure area
/dev" like you showed me last week and there was this file called "urandom." I typed "cat urandom" and it's this huge encrypted file. See, it's still going. It must be kiddie porn. Or maybe it's a plot to kill the President. Yeah, that must be it, a plot to kill the President by giving him a heart attack by showing him kiddie porn.
Inspector Jimbob: Hey Joe, this guy has a Linux box, how do I read the files?
Inspector Joebob: Just click on the picture of a seashell and type "cat" and the name of the file.
(several minutes later)
Inspector Jimbob: I think we have a kiddie pevert here, I found a file that looks all encrypted.
Inspector Joebob: What file is it?
Inspector Jimbob: I did "cd
[end]
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
on your next border crossing load up your laptop with Cowboy Neal nudes and put them in a folder called "young nude" or something like that. I can guarantee that the border guard in question will no longer search hard drives :P
Take the hard drive out and mail it to whatever location you are going to. When they turn on your laptop and can't figure out why nothing comes up, just tell them there's no drive in it.
The search should be over at that point. Unless because of doing so they hold you for more questions.
"Why did you take out the hard drive in your computer?"
"I don't want you to read my personal stuff."*
*This is the same reason George Bush has given for why he doesn't use email. In his case, you represents the media.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
They just want my porn.
As has been noted by other posters, border searches have been allowed for years.
A lot of people also think border searches are to prevent bombs, guns, etc. These searches are not only limited to bombs, guns or other destructive devices. Going through customs you are asked if you have an contraband, fruit, etc. This is to prevent damage to the economy and ecology.
Kudzu is not a native plant to the US. It was imported into the US and now grows throughout the south eastern United States.
Mad cow disease was also a big issue with border control.
As for searches of laptops, is child pornography not a danger to society? Of course the question then becomes, what material becomes a "danger to society".
It's almost as if this would set precedent for legally scanning any and all data coming into any United States servers over the Internet, and going out.
will delay people from meeting flights and have very little effect of stopping bad digital media from entering the country. The cheapest, easiest and most secure would be to simply get an encrypted connection and download it like any other file. why would you be dumb enough to do all the really bad stuff in person?...
...the question I have... is that if you have locked user accounts, are you required to hand over the passwords to get in?... will they treat the password like locks on your luggage and demand that you don't secure your system too?...
I'm a Canadian, and I've heard of any number of incidents where border guards (ours, and the US's) have been known to confiscate property such as laptops etc.
The parent definitely raises a good point about just how long/deep they're allowed to search. Another question I would have is, are the airports allowed to search, or can they just take your laptop outright (like the border guards have been known to).
Overall, this whole thing happen is ludicrous. Bags and other articles are generally searched for the protection of other passengers on the plane, a laptop poses no such danger. Although there are cases where searches also uncover smuggling, etc, there is a limit to how far one can reasonably search, and/or how long it will take, whereas with a laptop there aren't any real such boundaries.
Moreover, the story indicates that the initial pictures found were of adults, but prompted the further search in which alleged underage material was found. Sounds like a easy thing to plant, rather than end up embarrassed that you were digging up pics of some guy with his wife.
On an International flight they can search anything!. Your Fourth Amendment does not apply.
Simple.
Tell the moon dogs, tell the March hare
Having gone to the U.S. many times, this is getting outrageous. I and many others will not be comfortable with having some grunt rummage through important business documents that shouldn't be yet available to public eyes.
I have no idea what you mean by "originally" but border searches have been allowed since the time of the ancient Greeks because the entry to the city was the place where you taxed goods. The aim is to stop smuggling of goods which haven't been taxed.
Under this logic, the search is even perfectly logical since you might be smuggling, for example, copies of software.
So as a parent, if I take a picture of my 6-month old baby girl in a bathtub, have the picture on my computer, and go traveling, I could be detained and locked up for child pornography? I'm sorry but I have little faith that our minimum wage earning security sloths will be able to tell the difference between proud parent images and kiddie porn.
I seem to remember a similar situation at a department store photo department. The teenager running the picture printer saw pictures of a 7 or 8-year old bare-chested child with long hair (it turned out later to be a boy), thought it was kiddie porn and called the cops.
I barely feel like they know how to do the job they have. Now were going to have them searching peoples laptops?
This is just plain stupid.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
4chan? Is that you?
clearly and plainly. imagine all your sensitive data, reports, charts, passwords to sensitive services, corporate info being handled by a border official. these republicans are really KILLING u.s. commerce and trade. fuck them.
Read radical news here
I assume that they're using Windows, so does that mean that data on ext2/3, ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, etc. partitions is safe from them?
Either the Democrats will do the right thing and work to reverse the expanded powers the government has taken for itself over the past 8 years, or the Republicans in Congress will get paranoid and work the press to help force a roll back of those powers so the Democratic president can't use them.
Just keep you laptop loaded with a bloated Vista install. The 5 minutes login time should discourage the snoopy. Then keep your real Linux workspace on a bootable 8GB flashdrive.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
And this is if you are white. If you are Arab or Muslim you have much bigger problems -- often regardless of innocence or guilt, your laptop/ipod/mobile phone will simply be "randomly" siezed at the border. Good luck getting it back.
"One member who responded to our survey said she has been waiting for a year to get her laptop and its contents back," said Susan Gurley, the group's executive director. "She said it was randomly seized. And since she hasn't been arrested, I assume she was just a regular business traveler, not a criminal."
... go to USA.
it makes perfect sense that people traveling with their laptop only bring "unimportant" information with them. What should a road-warrior expect, access to their data while they travel? Hogwash! There is no reason for them to ahve information that important on their laptop. It should be secured on the servers and accessed when needed.
My laptop (HP DV8320us) contains 2 HDDs. I store everything on the second drive.. in the bios, I can turn off the second drive. Laptop boots, windows is there, and a couple programs... wonder if they are smart enough to think about a second drive in a laptop?
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
If I was a foreign businessman entering the US I definately would not want proprietary business documents on my laptop just in case they kept a copy. Industrial espionage and such. So I guess what I would do is keep my documents on a server in my country and VPN into them from the most convienient connection.
Shh.
Will they also be searching my steam trunk full of punched cards? My box of microfiche? My ball of knotted twine?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
surely they're not gonna cavity search everyone...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Couldn't you just maintain multiple accounts on your hard drive? When they ask, boot into your special "Nothing To See Here" account that has pictures of cuddly kittens and amber waves of grain. Meanwhile, hidden behind the scenes in your FileVault or TrueCrypt partition, you have your "I Know This Is Wrong" account where you have all your real files and pictures of someone cuddly named Amber.
Now, if they were technologically adept, they'd all have USB drives for you to boot from, loading drive-scanning software to locate either (a) incriminating files or (b) encrypted partitions that they will then ask you to unlock.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
If they can't verify that your stuff is clear, they will simply detain it to examine it better. Just make sure your linux-based laptop isn't something expensive and desirable.
echo 'cat sig | sh' > sig
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/6D5D931898D8168188257432005AC9B8/$file/0650581.pdf?openelement
."
1. He was randomly chosen for secondary questioning. Perfectly legal and constitutional.
2. He left the images on the desktop in a folder. They were not hidden.
3. This cannot be a violation of the 4th amendment because it was a border search. Border searches have been challenged and found to be constitutional numerous times in the past.
4. United States v. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149, 153 (2004). Generally, "searches made at the border . . . are
reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border . . .
Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. at 152. Therefore, "[t]he luggage carried by a traveler entering the country may
4179 UNITED STATES v. ARNOLDbe searched at random by a customs officer . . . no matter how
great the traveler's desire to conceal the contents may be."
He made no attempt to conceal the images as they were left on the desktop, but even if he had attempted to conceal them it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
5. Courts have long held that searches of closed containers and their contents can be conducted at the border without particularized suspicion under the Fourth Amendment. This includes items such as a purse, wallet, or pockets. A laptop is no different.
6. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. at 152 (emphasis added), the Supreme Court has held open the possibility, "that some
searches of property are so destructive as to require" particularized suspicion. Id. at 155-56 (emphasis added) (holding that complete disassembly and reassembly of a car gas tank did not require particularized suspicion).
Since the search of his laptop did not require it to be damaged in any way, and the defendant also stated that his laptop was not damaged, it was again a legal search.
The only way he was going to get away with this is if he had shoved a memory stick up his butt and made sure he didn't do anything that caused suspicion.
T.R.U.E. C.R.Y.P.T. D.O.T. O.R.G.
.avi video file stored on a TrueCrypt volume (therefore, the video file is entirely encrypted). The user provides the correct password (and/or keyfile) and mounts (opens) the TrueCrypt volume. When the user double clicks the icon of the video file, the operating system launches the application associated with the file type - typically a media player. The media player then begins loading a small initial portion of the video file from the TrueCrypt-encrypted volume to RAM (memory) in order to play it. While the portion is being loaded, TrueCrypt is automatically decrypting it (in RAM). The decrypted portion of the video (stored in RAM) is then played by the media player. While this portion is being played, the media player begins loading next small portion of the video file from the TrueCrypt-encrypted volume to RAM (memory) and the process repeats. This process is called on-the-fly encryption/decryption and it works for all file types, not only for video files.
LEARN TO USE TRUE CRYPT or another encryption system TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM THE PRYING EYES OF BIG BROTHER AGENTS WITH THEIR ARROGANT AGENDA OF PRIVACY VIOLATIONS. DOUBLE ENCRYPT (AT LEAST).
From: http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/
rueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).
Files can be copied to and from a mounted TrueCrypt volume just like they are copied to/from any normal disk (for example, by simple drag-and-drop operations). Files are automatically being decrypted on-the-fly (in memory/RAM) while they are being read or copied from an encrypted TrueCrypt volume. Similarly, files that are being written or copied to the TrueCrypt volume are automatically being encrypted on-the-fly (right before they are written to the disk) in RAM. Note that this does not mean that the whole file that is to be encrypted/decrypted must be stored in RAM before it can be encrypted/decrypted. There are no extra memory (RAM) requirements for TrueCrypt. For an illustration of how this is accomplished, see the following paragraph.
Let's suppose that there is an
Note that TrueCrypt never saves any decrypted data to a disk - it only stores them temporarily in RAM (memory). Even when the volume is mounted, data stored in the volume is still encrypted. When you restart Windows or turn off your computer, the volume will be dismounted and files stored in it will be inaccessible (and encrypted). Even when power supply is suddenly interrupted (without proper system shut down), files stored in the volume are inaccessible (and encrypted). To make them accessible again, you have to mount the volume (and provide the correct password and/or keyfile).
They can't force you to give them your password, but they can ask you to log in to your computer without revealing your password to them.
The trick when using a *nix on your notebook is to create a session which drops to the console, or replaces your nice GNOME, KDE or Aqua environment with a full-screen xterm. Just to scare them... ;-)
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I am not allowed to show the files on my laptop to the customs agents due to HIPAA regulations. So I guess either I refuse, and go to jail, or allow them to look at it, and then go to jail once I set foot inside the U.S.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
My roommate keeps his home directory on his laptop truecrypted. He doesn't have anything to hide, but we both agree that this is more or bullshit.
I really wonder about the implementation of electronic data searches. Your average TSA-type person would seem to struggle with finding the 'any' key, never mind doing a deep search on a non-Windows computer. What are they going to do--a windows search for 'Secret Location of WMDs'? What really thrills me is some government stooge going through all my chat transcripts, emails, business, financial, and medical documents on my laptop with reckless abandon. There are files on my computer that I do not want run or modified. Of course, anyone who is trying to hide something will try to bury it with false file names and extensions. After all, on my computer, 'Great Aunt Margot's Corn Chowder Recipe.docx' is really the lost 18.5 minutes of the Watergate tapes. Then again, the best strategy might be to hide things in plain sight--after all when opening up a file called 'WINDOWS' you expect to see someone getting boned.
My solution:
When I go to travel, I edit my grub menu and enable (uncomment) "hiddenmenu", make sure the default is to boot to XP and the default timeout is just a couple seconds. If you want more stealth, force the machine to boot XP always, recoverable only if you boot off a Live CD (Knoppix, et al) and go re-enable booting to Linux. If you want even more, put your grub and /boot on a thumb drive.
Agent boots up the laptop, perfectly benign Win XP computer. If they want to clone the drive and examine it off-line at their leisure, they're more than welcome.
Of course, I've long ago forgotten my encryption password, so I can't boot into it even if compelled by a court. I guess that makes me a terrarist.
... if you password-protect and encrypt your hard drive to thwart precisely this kind of unwarranted and unjustifiable privacy invasion, can Customs force you to divulge your passwords?
Probably, just like they can force you to unlock a suitcase and let them examine the contents.
I've noticed several suggestions to just encrypt the filesystem with TrueCrypt or use passwords (BIOS, boot loader e.g. GRUB, OS username/password) and that if you refuse to decrypt for them by entering the password, they confiscate the device. Although it seems like the solution is, also aforementioned, to boot into a "dummy" OS with nothing special in it to conceal the fact that another OS with accessible data exists somewhere else on the drive. It would be as easy as using "e" to edit the commands in GRUB to change the root= option to boot the "real" root filesystem.
The object of this post is to consider a foreign government official that obviously has a reason for having something like TrueCrypt on there. What is the consequence in this case? Would such a person, with identification, be allowed to pass without a laptop search? How can security tell what a real foreign ID looks like when a person tries to identify himself as being part of a foreign government? Could I just, for example, fake a French federal agent ID and claim they must not force me to enter the password?
Might be an interesting scenario, I wonder what they'd do...
Gentoo Linux - Wouldn't have it any other way. And fuck beta.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
What's on my laptop is a 320 gigabyte AES-256 luks-encrypted LVM volume set sitting on an encrypted physical drive. This is unlocked using a 32-character passphrase which is not stored anywhere but in my brain. Without that passphrase you basically unpack a kernel and recognize the hardware... and that's it.
I use Ubuntu on my laptop, and this is all configured out of the box on that distro.
Requiring me to unlock my encrypted volume using that password immediately violates my 5th Amendment rights, and is hence, unconstitutional.
So once again, Privacy 1, Government 0.
They seem to keep forgetting that it is the PEOPLE who gives the government their power, not the reverse.
This is *exactly* why the average consumer should utilize encryption. Encryption isn't about hiding your information, it's about protecting your privacy. If you don't want the government to search your laptop all you have to do is encrypt your data. Granted, if you encrypt the whole disk you could be asked to provide the password. That's why you should use an encrypted volume. You can keep a few dummy files on your machine to throw off investigators and keep your private data on your encrypted volume. It staggers me that more people don't use encryption to keep their privacy intact.
While I'm pretty sure no one is going to read this, seeing how many comments have been made so far, I thought that I'd toss out some of my own nuttiness.
Insofar as I can tell, border areas (which includes international airports) are an odd variation of a no man's land. Legally, you are not in the country so the general laws do not apply, but you are in the power of the country, so laws specifically for this stuff do apply (and you can't just turn around and leave.) So assuming no other rules apply (treaties and whatnot) they can pretty much do whatever they want to you.
Since August 2007 the government has explicitly had permission to wiretap any phonecall or email coming into or out of the US http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/01/01/nsa.spying/index.html/.
is when I accidentally "learn" the misspelled word, and then it appears throughout the whole text -- 1 step forward, 2 steps back. I also hate that spelling checker is more wrong than right, about guessing my word. I usually end up using google, which seems to have the best guessing algorithm around.
damaged by dogma
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Note the word "unreasonable". One could argue that the federal government's constitutionally mandated powers regarding customs gives them the authority, digital goods have commercial value and may be subject to taxes, duties, or other controls. Therefore the reasonableness of the search with respect to the Constitution.
More importantly, in your passport application you agreed to be subject to all passport laws and regulations. You pre-agreed to the search before leaving, therefore no warrant is necessary.
So what happens if you have a bios password, they can search all they like, but can they demand true answers to questions without reasonable cause?
I'd like to see someone go in with an ac powered laptop with no hard drive and see what happens, or insert a switch inside that's hard to see and either prevents power on ohttp://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl#
Previewr switches between two harddrives.
The trick when using a *nix on your notebook is to create a session which drops to the console, or replaces your nice GNOME, KDE or Aqua environment with a full-screen xterm. Just to scare them... ;-)
;-)
Uh, I don't think attempting to scare law enforcement yields the same result as attempting to scare pointy headed bosses.
I really don't understand all the suggestions for keeping *crypt volumes and whatnot on your drive. If you're really dumb enough to try and bring illegal (digital) stuff across the border, you deserve to get caught IMHO. Just set up some download location or mail some DVDs for crying out loud.
So if you're not bringing anything illegal, why go about encrypting partitions on your drive? So you can stick it to the man? If they want to look at your laptop, they will. Customs have a right to search your belongings at the border, get over it already
They'd have an IT guy in the back. Bored with nothing to do for the last hour, he requests a laptop, please. A Macbook Air if you can get one. Ah, here it is. Yes - I'll crack the case, grab the drive, I won't even turn it on. Ah, one of the solid state drives! Haven't seen one of these yet. Plug this into the bus - sector copy - hey, looks like it worked. Wedge drive back into the Macbook Air, screw it all back together - voila. That took 15 minutes. What is this extra screw? I'll just throw it in the laptop bag. Here you go, sir, thank you, go on your way.
I find it interesting that this article comes up shortly after the Fujitsu 320GB 2.5" HDD with 256bit encryption article.
Just carry 2 drives - some laptops have easy-access hard drive bays, one of mine is hot-swappable out the side like a PCMCIA device. Put one old/cheapie in the computer as it goes through customs - it will speed up the scan too if it is just a bare bones Windows installation (I'm assuming they would be better/more readily equipped to handle that). Carry the other more important "stay outta my shit" one outside the machine where I doubt they will search your carry-ons for external drives. Maybe even disguise the sensitive drive in a digital photo bank: An external enclosure with its own battery, a display, and memcard readers to download data to its internal drive - meant for digital photographers.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
Naturally, you shouldn't just be concerned about U.S. customs agents when crossing borders: other nations' agents may do the same, and unless you have dual citizenship, you don't even have the claim of a citizen when entering a foreign country.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
I have no mod points, I have nothing witty to say, if I had a mod point I'd give you an insightful.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
"... government gets to meet its agenda."
What happens if your laptop is encrypted? Can they tell you how it is supposed to work if the boot code is temporarily disabled? Can they expect you to supply a password? What happens if you carry the laptop hard drive in your pocket?
The free, open source TrueCrypt works with Windows and Linux and now encrypts the boot partition, on the fly, while the the computer is being used.
As part of my job, I have a government issued laptop with government issued encryption, and very verbose instructions on keeping the information on the laptop confidential.
I am not allowed to share the data on the laptop with anyone. Now, as it happens, I travel frequently, but I don't travel outside the U.S., but there are others with the same laptops that do.
I kindof wonder how it would boil down, if they wanted to search my laptop, I certainly couldn't give them access to it.
That's certainly an interresting dilemna, I wouldn't want to be the one to call into work and tell them that some customs officer is demanding access to classified material, or worse yet... confiscated it!
And what makes the court think that a border security guard is the least bit qualified to search a laptop?
I always get a bad feeling when passing through airport security because of my Linux laptop which does not dual boot into Windows and has an encrypted home partition. Even if I supply them with my decryption password, I doubt they even know how to spell KDE or how to find hidden folders let alone encrypted file volumes.....
And since I am not running Windows I must have something to hide, step over there for a few days until we investigate further or give us your laptop and prepare to never see it again.....
And once the bad kiddy porn enjoying pieces of human crap learn about the problems of border searches, they will start encrypting the disgusting collection of ones and zeros. Show me one border security guard who could figure out that the system file xyz is not really a system file but a encrypted volume.....
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
Heck, you can even leave the default GRUB list, just name the environments something obscure or for it to use a Klingon font (much more challenging, but waaay cooler). The be friendly and cordial, help them log in and take a look around.
And with the shrinking size of hard drives, it's really not that much of a stretch to swap drives. Leave the "spare" in a tool kit so even if they find it when you come across the boarder you can say it died while you were over seas and you need to send it in on the warranty.
Most of the TSA agents are just highschool grads looking to work their 8 hour shift and head home. Path of least resistance followed throughout, and when ever someone screws with that easy routine, they get to have a little power trip. So be polite and appear up front, and they will rarely give you a problem.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Just like drugs, counterfeit goods, and unlicensed freon.
It is the border agents job to prevent this stuff from coming into the country. Busting a guy at point-of-entry for child porn isn't stepping outside their bounds whatsoever. It's precisely why we have border security in the first place.
And who in their right mind ever thought you had a right to privacy when border crossing?
Anything you hand-carry is subject to search. They will sift through your underwear, open and inspect your deoderant container, they even pulled the inserts out of my shoes.
Here's a scary thought: THEY CAN READ YOUR DIARY TOO! even if you write "TOP SECRET! NO BOYS ALLOWED" on the cover.
There's plenty of things to get upset about. This isn't one of them.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'm about 6'5" and hairy too. But you know what, they never look twice at me. Maybe it's because I'm white as driven snow, or maybe it's because I freakin' shave before I walk into security. Knowing you will be judged for your appearances (appareances you can change, like beard, clothes, ear rings) gives you the chance to change these ahead of time. Do you go into a job interview with ripped jeans? No. then why present yourself in a poor image when going through a security check?
Read it, and saw nothing remotely like what you claim.
Not the search of our laptops, but the number of people who think TSA-Airport Security == Customs Inspection
The two are, for the most part, completely distinct interviews/searches. One has the primary goal of protecting aviation, the other has the primary goal(s) of protecting the US as a whole, US citizens as individuals, and enforcing US laws pertaining to the importation of goods and the travel of people. On top of this they are conducted by separate LE entities, at least for the time being.
In the first case having things like nail clippers are bad, in the second having a potato is bad.
I'm all for allowing the government great freedom to conduct searches at border crossings in an effort to verify that those coming in are not in the act of committing a crime, however I feel it is pointless as it appears that just about anyone can cross the border at will so long as they don't do it at a crossing. Until we stop people from just walking in, the only ones we will catch at the airports and other official crossings will be the idiots and those to out of shape to walk for a couple of days in the desert.
At my previous workplace we shipped an Sun E3500 from our Canadian subsidiary with the standard approved documentation but our, US, Custom Service Agents decided to open the system to look for "Cuban cigars and other contraband" since they don't have any technical experience they just ripped the doors, boards from their lock positions and essentially destroyed the Sun E3500. When I got it I saw system when it got here and the crate that the Sun E3500 was okay but the system was trashed with the system boards left askew and front door broken. We contacted our legal and finance department what to do about this Sun E3500 and it was about 3 years later before we got some reparations for the in which the E3500 was out of production and being retired.
I with such pain I learn to unlock everything and tape the equipment to they can remove the tape and so they, the US Custom Service can inspect it.
I notice you conveniently leave out that the San Juan Islands border Canada (thus being an international border) and are accessible from open, international water. But that destroys any attempt to claim this is "domestic" which is why you left it out.
So the Border Patrol is patrolling the border. I think that's their thing...
Frankly, I think you're viewing the past with rose-colored glasses. I mean, slavery wasn't exactly a great stride in terms of freedom. Nor was the fact that women couldn't vote. And those controversial sodomy laws weren't just introduced with the Patriot Act, right? What about internment camps for Japanese CITIZENS in WWII? They just oozed Bill of Rights, didn't they? Or putting people with different skin colors in different schools.
These great freedoms for which you pine have both come and gone, ebbed and flowed throughout the history of this country. It's disingenuous to act like everything "used to be" fine and now it's all falling apart.
There have been abuses and victories in terms of freedom, but never has the strength of this country been put into question simply because some tool whines about canceling his trip to the States. It drives me absolutely NUTS that governments in the US (of all levels, e.g. eminent domain at municipality level) breach real Constitutional rights, but it bugs me because they're breaching Constitutional rights, not because it might encourage some putz to personally boycott travel here. I don't care if some guy in another country doesn't like my country, whether it be a migrant worker from Central America or a self-important full-time student from Central Europe.
But it doesn't matter. When I say the above, then I'm xenophobic and selfish or maybe even jingoistic. But if I go the other way, I'm soft and foolish.
stepping off soap box now...
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
From April 2, 2008:
World views US 'more positively'
And just why are you taking personal patient data around with you on a laptop in the first place? You're probably violating HIPAA just having the data unencrypted on the laptop drive, which isn't stored in a secure environment.
We are the 198 proof..
There is actually a pretty easy way around this. (Albeit, there are some variables that effect practicality). If I were to travel across borders and knew I had material I did not want seen (private photos? personal docs), I would simply sftp them some place safe and delete them from my hard drive. Once on the other side, I sftp my files back down. The border guards can search until the cows come home for all I care. Screw all that encrypted file system crap. :)
PLUS, if my laptop gets broken or stolen, I don't lose all my important docs.
Can all fish swim?
Say... a corporate marketing strategy, research notes, &c. Does this mean that border agents now, effectively, have special, unlimited security clearances, which span the worlds of government and corporate classified documents?
CGI child porn is still illegal.. and hey-- no children involved!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
When it came time for my return flight, I was interrogated by a U.S. Customs Officer prior to boarding the aircraft at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Canada. When did the U.S. annex Toronto, Canada?
Without the 2nd Amendment, the others are just suggestions.
And just why are you taking personal patient data around with you on a laptop in the first place?
Because it is required in order to perform my job duties. If I was assured of a way to get access to the data I need while abroad, then I wouldn't even need to take my laptop, just make sure they had a workstation for me wherever I happened to be going.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
...what matters is what they decide to put on it.
Don't assume just because "something" was found on a hard drive, the owner was the one that put it there. You have absolutely no way of proving that any data on your hard drive was planted. Once anybody has free, unfettered access to your storage device, they can do whatever they please with it and you have absolutely no way to PROVE that the data had been deleted, revised, planted, etc.
This is why it is absolutely imperative that your right to be secure on your effects be absolutely and undeniably PROTECTED at ALL costs! YOU are the one who must prove you are innocent in our country. Innocent until proven guilty is the feel good catch phrase of our legal system. It is a fallacy that does not exist in the real world.
The only protection you have from corruption is to keep the corrupted out of your personal effects. It is an inalienable right that must be fought for tooth and nail to keep protected.
They must have taken the poll on April 1.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Would you find somebody defending child pornography.
BTW movies where where they muder people are illegal last time I checked.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I wonder if they consider pirated software "harmful." Or pirated movies or music? What about software that helps one pirate software, music or movies?
If they consider info on how to build a bomb harmful, I wonder what they'll think about the sources for that book you're writing about computer security that explains how various types of attacks are performed and how viruses are written? That'd be especially dangerous (and potentially very harmful) if coupled with the tools needed to actually create bad things like viruses and hack attacks... Oh wait, I have a compiler here, too, don't I?
Get a mac. And no, I'm not talking about filevault here.
There is a small bug/feature with boot camp that will fail to recognize your linux installation as a windows boot camp install. So to boot linux, you have to hold the Alt button when booting the system, and then click on "Windows".
I noticed this on my mac mini, but I think all Leopard machines will work the same way. Now, add encryption to the linux partition, and what I initially thought of as an annoying bug is suddenly a nice customs evasion feature.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
One must assume that they also search all physical luggage for possible child porn as well. After all, the offender could print it and/or buy magazines, right? Can any sort of selective enforcement type arguments be applied to this?
I work for a major U.S. company with hundreds of lawyers. I bet they won't dare to search the company-owned machine.
Who said it was unencrypted? If HIPAA data is encrypted on his laptop he would not be in violation. Showing it to an unauthorized 3rd party (border security) would be a violation, which is the basis of his scenario.
The 4th Amendment does not apply at the border.
This has been the case for a long time. It would certainly be strange for a court to suddenly rule otherwise just because the seized item was a laptop instead of a briefcase.
If we want to change this, we have to do it through the political branches. There's no chance any sane court is going to overrule this.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
I wonder if they'll just arrest one immediately if the laptop is not bootable. What if I'm hand carrying a laptop to someone and I used the DOD disk wipe utility to erase my old hard disk before I gave it away. Is that now illegal? What if I have a hard disk that was damaged while I traveled, am I not allowed to return to my country with it still broken? Maybe the government will repair it for me just so they can search it -- but that better be for free!
It would be interesting to see someone test this with a laptop that has no bootable drive (or no internal drive at all). The laptop could still be useful by booting from a USB drive, or some other external device (or even the missing hard disk) available at the destination. Aren't USB drives reasonably easy to conceal? Or would that automatically get one a reservation in Gitmo?
upon gigabytes of information. It's like having a library in a box. They can't view every file, let alone guess any of your passwords correctly or know where to look for "hidden" files or encryption methods. They can't even distinguish a MacBook Air from a cutting board.
Airport security is a joke. They use x-rays to see what's in your bag, then a metal detector, and the occasional pat down. It is easy to shield something from radiation, plenty of destructive weapons can be made to pass metal detectors, and there have been demonstrations of how to conceal weapons in ways that cannot be felt. Oh take my shampoo! Flip the cap and ya, obviously you can make a bomb with this stuff that smells like head and shoulders.
Like always, millions of people will be inconvenienced by security measures that only catch clueless idiots.
Was this man a terrorist? No. He was a clueless idiot with child porn on his desktop. At least he could have hidden it somewhere safe. Even his wife would have found it, which would have been better for all of us because now he left us with this court ruling.
*if* the people got angry with this (they wont), do you think it would make any difference?
With the way things are going.. I expect America to be a total police state in 30 years.
No outcry.. no complaints.. just idiots giving our hard fought for freedom of privacy away with stupid remarks like. "Well ya gots nothin ta worry `bout if yoo gots nothin ta hide.."
I think we are doomed.. but I'll continue to fight the loosing fight regardless. Let's e-mail our kings and bureaucrats and bla bla blaa..
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
God forbid I have a file on my laptop from the one time I toyed with cryptography, or a corrupted binary blob, or whatever... if they get to thinking it's encrypted... what are they going to do? Because there aren't going to be any keys. I can't afford a lawyer, nor do I have an real confidence that I will be afforded one. And there is no 100% sure way to prove that an apparently encrypted file is _not_ encrypted. And one lonesome encrypted file on an otherwise mundane hard drive would look pretty suspicious.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
A president is an elected official. I suppose the US will be setting our next president in November. It may or may not be sad.
However, this doesn't set a precedent either. Our country has always held searches conducted at the border to a lesser standard of suspicion.
On 31 July 1789, the 1st Congress enacted the first customs statute. Section 24 of the statute granted customs officials full power and authority to enter and search any ship or vessel that they suspect contain concealed goods subject to taxes. This was in contrast to the "warrent upon cause to suspect" required to search a house, store, or building. It is significant that the congress that made this distinction between searches at the border and searches elsewhere is the same congress that later drafted the Fourth Amendment.
Relevant Supreme Court cases:
UNITED UNITED STATES V. MONTOYA DE HERNANDEZ, 473 U. S. 531 (1985): "Consistently, therefore, with Congress' power to protect the Nation by stopping and examining persons entering this country, the Fourth Amendment's balance of reasonableness is qualitatively different at the international border than in the interior. Routine searches of the persons and effects of entrants are not subject to any requirement of reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or warrant, [Footnote 1] and first-class mail may be opened without a warrant on less than probable cause, Ramsey, supra. Automotive travelers may be stopped at fixed checkpoints near the border without individualized suspicion, even if the stop is based largely on ethnicity, United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 562-563 (1976), and boats on inland waters with ready access to the sea may be hailed and boarded with no suspicion whatever. United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, supra."
UNITED STATES V. RAMSEY, 431 U. S. 606 (1977): "That searches made at the border, pursuant to the longstanding right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border should, by now, require no extended demonstration."
See also: the Border Search Exception
While I am against child pornography, I am aghast at this invasion of privacy. My comment would be to encrypt your data and always use a login and password. If they ask you to use your passwords to enter your data or account, say no. After all, you have a right not to incriminate yourself and thus it's on their burden to enter the account and files.
Since the GP mentioned the Tin Drum. Years ago, police in Oklahoma City decided the Tin Drum was CP, too. They went to video stores, found out who had the thing, and went knocking on doors. What's funny is that one of the people who had rented it that night was the OK ACLU President. Ultimately, the cops got their asses handed to them.
Too lazy to google for references at the moment...
What the hell? Illegal aliens are flowing freely through the US/Mexico border, and here we are, making it extremely difficult for citizens to pass through unmolested (no pun intended). A US citizen comes to the border, presents himself to the border agents, and if there's a whiff of anything off-base, well, there goes his rights. Meanwhile, a group of illegals sneak across into the country, undetected, unchecked. I guess it doesn't pay to do things the right way anymore...
Los Angeles tried to ruin Max Hardcore because he released an explicit film with an obviously over-18 actress who said she was 14 in the video. Ultimately, the city lost in court. But the fact remains that some CP is completely, obviously fake and you can *still* be prosecuted, have your life ruined for making or possessing it.
Not picking on you, but your post finally compelled me to chime in - these searches are *NOT* being done by TSA agents. They are done by very highly trained ICE agents (Immigration, Customs, Emigration) from the Department of Homeland Security. I got the twenty questions routine from them when I last returned from an overseas vacation to Borneo. They are polite and professional but very no-nonsense and they establish and maintain absolute control over every microsecond of the interaction with you. They would not take "on vacation" as an answer for why I was in Borneo and I was required to go into some detail about where I visited and what I specifically was doing. It annoyed me but being the diligent ./ reader I am I wasn't surprised by it and answered their questions quickly and concisely.
I have no doubt they are or have access to wizard computer nerds if they decided your computer was of interest.
Oh, and I was in Borneo photographing plants.
Well, in my country movies with people killing each other are prefectly legal. A free-TV station has Saw 2 in their May lineup. Saw 2 ist quite disturbing and anyone performing the acts shown within would end up in preventive detention for life. For some reason, though, RTL doesn't get shut down for showing it.
Why is Saw 2 legal? Because the acts shown within aren't really performed. They're just cuts, camera angles and special effects. Nobody really dies. A very important distinction.
The interesting question is now: What about animated/rendered child porn? It's child porn, but no actual children are involved in the acts shown. If we say it's illegal because the acts are illegal then 90% of what Hollywood produces immediately becomes illegal as well, because it also show (and often glorifies) illegal acts. We can't say that mere concepts are illegal in one case and completely irrelevant in another.
And even if we can define a particular concept as so abhorrent that it may not be depicted we don't magically eliminate the concept. There's the same effect seen during the prohibition or the War on Drugs: Making something illegal doesn't make it go away, it merely pushes it underground, where there are no laws and checks. It also means that any money paid for the stuff automatically goes to criminals. Both results aren't desirable, especially not with respect to child porn.
Also, there's the question of whether banning all kinds of child porn isn't actually harmful.
Paedophilia is a sexual preference. You don't usually get to choose those, you just end up with one or more of them. Telling someone to stop having that preference doesn't work at all. So we absolutely can not expect anything positive from criminalizing and demonizing those who have it. We have to deal with it in a constructive manner if we want to help the children (and the paedophiles as well; they too deserve help).
I think that legalizing certain kinds of child porn (namely drawn/animated/rendered stuff where the producer can vouch that no children came to harm during the production) as something for the paedophiles to blow off steam over would be a step in the right direction: An environment where paedophilia is seen more as a controllable urge rather than a demonic possession that automatically turns one into a subhuman.
"Safe" porn, self-help groups, maybe government-sponsored programs that train paedophiles to better control themselves - all those things might help them to better live with what they are, without raping someone out of sexual frustration and then killing them out of fear. Paedophiles aren't automatically homicidal rape monsters, but our current society is the perfect environment to turn them into that.
Or we could just wait until the next child is raped and killed and have a great witch burning for the media to salivate over.
It's really amazing how few people are actually able to treat topics like paedophilia as adults. Most revert to a primal state of instincitvely trying to kill that which looks threatening, even if the threat could be largely mitigated.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
DON'T talk about Deniable Encryption.
Second rule of Deniable Encryption:
DON'T visit the Wikipedia on deniable encryption!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters
"The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of the state,"
Our territorial waters (which are US sovereign territory) border Canadian territorial waters (which are sovereign Canadian territory). If you were going to attempt pedantry, you should have tried to be correct.
Um, no, not really, which international border is New York city very close to? None? Oh. So, not the same or even really close at all...
Should I expect you to be able to discuss this without ridiculous, fallacious comparisons?
If I was traveling with say, proprietary and confidential business documents, I'd surely safeguard them with a good encryption product.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Is the president a democrat or a republican. How exactly does one *set* a president anyways?
br Perhaps you were referring to a PRECEDENT? I realize this is *just the internet*, but COME ON.
Customs could say, we're going to write a huge meaningless file to your decrypted volume that would wipe out any hidden volumes. Are you sure you don't have any other volumes?
This would be standard operating procedure. And yes, you could do this in a manner that didn't rely on the O.S.
Spy versus spy hackery would follow.
Will not happen since this won't be common enough. But if everyone did use Truecrypt, this would be the scenario. I could see this happening if steganographic volumes were a default feature of Windows or MacOS.
Bring a boot cd with a basic os that makes a secure connection to a server outside the us to download an image of your fully operating os and the data you need.
Let them search your formatted harddisk....
C:\>dir
command.com
C:\>_
Privacy is terrorism.
Some California appeals court is not necessarily the end of the matter. This could be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Bush and his people cried long and loud that they were appointing judges that will make a plain reading of the Constitution, that weren't so-called 'activist judges'. From the bill of rights:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
As a US citizen, I don't see how airport security has any right whatsoever to even *turn on* my computer, let alone go through it's contents, based on the 4th ammendment. Certainly the contents of a computer fall under the category of 'papers, and effects'. I'm definitely going to have to read the CA ruling, because I'm certain this would have been the very first line of defense for any attorney trying a case like this.
All of those things were wrong, but they were recognized as wrong and eliminated one by one.
It's not like there are no wrongs left either. What most people miss though is a sense that more wrongs will be righted rather than new wrongs being created and old wrongs reinstated. It's easier to accept a society with shortcomings (that is, any existant society) when you at least feel like things are getting better rather than being in a state of decay.
So who do you sue for mental anguish when after searching your laptop something like 4-6 customs officers come across nothing illegal, but have now seen every inch of your body along with all your exes, and possibly current girlfriend/wifes?
If you ask me I think that's a bullshit invasion of privacy.
Honestly how many terrorists, and pedo's do you think they will catch as opposed to how many normal sexually active consenting adults they will both embarrass, and possibly scar mentally?
I'd be willing to bet my left testicle that the ratio on that one will be 1/1000 the 1 being bad guys caught the 1000 being normal people's rights violated.
Oh, come on -- there have been internal checkpoints between US states for decades. You try driving across America with an orange in your car and see how far you get...
I know you're kidding, but I'm interested in hearing your serious response to the poll.
I'm predicting you'll dismiss it, as it appears to contradict your world view.
But the TITLE OF THE FUCKING ARTICLE IS
This is why I hate Slashdot. It is full to the brim with assholes like you who would rather enagage in stupid, pointless hyperbole and turn a reasonable discussion into a farce than actually discuss the subject as it is.
YOU WILL NOT EVER BE IN ANY SITUATION IN THE US WHERE YOU DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS. The kind of arrogance necessary to openly lie about this subject is stunning. People such as yourself disgust me.
There is a worrisome reality about what few rights you do have that gets neglected because of cunts like you. Rather than discuss this rationally, you parrot the TV you probably park yourself in front of and spout soundbites, to hell with their veracity.
Yes, because of morons like you, there is so much misinformation disseminated that any attempt at discussing serious subjects like this are bogged down in ignorance. You ruin discourse by lying, even if you personally think it doesn't matter.
The next time you lament the fact that subjects aren't being dealt with to your satisfaction, look in the fucking mirror. You caused the dearth of intelligent discourse with your failure to adhere to principals of accuracy and honesty.
What about instead of encrypting stuff (that I do already) you go for the embarrassment technique and hibernate your computer with all the porn pages and videos that you can find, even naked girls on your desktop, a whole bunch of programs open and eating memory, also the sound really high so you can hear all the porn... then when the costumes officer opens it finds a great spectacle... And since the computer is way too slow, it would take them ages to close all the crap and search it... It would be fun, I'm even tempted to do that when I go back to the US...
Do you really think that Dubai / UAE has more protection for your data? What about China? How's England?
/. is US-biased and the US has a big important world presence. But, the US has a lot MORE protections in a lot of areas than other countries. There's no First Amendment in Europe and the state can ban you from wearing religious icons in schools.
The US gets a lot more negative press on these issues because
Pause for a moment to think about missing people portrayed on the milk cartons. Ponder the possibility that kids and young adults are victims of actual rape and murder scenes in some of the back-woods porn and slasher films that look TOO DAMNED REAL to be makeup and special effects. I don't KNOW if it's true, but years ago i heard that smut/snuff/smaff whatever the heck they're called involved REAL MURDER or RAPE VICTIMS. This could be why the FBI or Customs get involved -- and SHOULD.
BUT, when they run a search, whether cursory or deep, it would be nice if they do it RANDOMLY, not just based on what country you visited or last visited. If deep/invasive, they they might:
-- hook up a STANDALONE (well, even chips might defeat this possible "niceness" offer) disk copier to the laptop in the case of someone traveling with 150 gigs of data on two disks in a laptop (I could fit that scenario, as my l/t has two discs...)
-- image the disc/s in question (as a prevention against disc sabotage routines)
-- run steg checks
-- if no porn, no suspicious-persons contact, etc., then let the inspection target wipe the target copier and be on their way
Ifff someone is dumb enough to carry into or out of the country any porn or unlawful cryptographic material or illegally-obtained trade secrets and so on, they will likely get jail or prison time. That's their problem.
The problem ***i*** have is that we don't have a clear answer on whether or not the Customs or Border Patrol or other agents will simply snatch the laptop and never return it or just "lose" it. At some point, they are going to be overwhelmed by the size of the discs. If it's a disc full of text, they can breeze thru it, and unfortunately, they'll have total dossiers on us based on archiving our love letters, purchases, manuscript ideas, e-books and more. That is WAY too damned invasive.
The Federal courts (decision) should be overthrown for they should be required to:
-- randomly select laptops
-- sign documents stating that in lieu of being able to walk out WITH your laptop - even if criminal-implying evidence is found, you'll sign a release or permission-to-copy form so that while you have potential charges pending, if you're released you can still do OTHER work-related things in your life... until you face arraignment or court date
-- alternatively offer to let the agents delete the criminally-qualifying images and issue an immediate probationary action letter of some sort
We surf, and we sometimes accidentally land in porn sites or blogs that might have illicit data or images we personally don't remove from the cache.
I'd prefer to see the government:
-- work with ISPs/proxies/filters (especially at libraries, where I tend to surf from) to filter porn on a per-subscriber/patron opt-in basis
-- log diligent users who stay away from porn, and exempt them from invasive searches, but not necessarily exempt them from cursory image pattern searches.
-- ignore adult porn, but damned sure nail anyone dealing in kiddie porn or animal abuse
After all, it is the height of hypocrisy for the administration or any office or agency to claim it is trying to exercise its right to control what comes into the country. We have ENOUGH violence here, WITHIN the country.
I have absolutely NO CONCERNS about Al Qaida attacking me specifically and the US in general ----- SO LONGS AS NEITHER *i* nor the US needles or bombs them. Otherwise, you hit someone, expect to be HIT back, you starve or malign someone, expect that. I've not personally attacked them, and so, my right to not have any agency SPEAK FOR ME should not be trampled on. ****i**** should not have to fear that the passport i carry will be my condemnation on the basis that because i pay taxes to said government.
I have no doubt in my ex-military mind that in the US, the odds of persons of color being killed in large numbers by supremacists are vastly greater than any direct or indirect actions by overseas terrorist
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Originally the /. post read:
"Might want to think hard about what's on your laptop if you're going to be passing through a US international airport."
Allow me to edit it for the rest of the world:
"Might want to think hard about (...) passing through a US international airport."
Yeah, that looks better.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Has anyone ever met a TSA with Linux experience? :)
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
If I ever want to move sekret data over the US border, that absolute last thing I'd think to use was a laptop.
There is this invention called The Internet which lets you move gigs and gigs of data into and out of the USA with excellent public key encryption. You can even store the data encrypted in the US and access it from from your secret pirate island with complete safely no problem.
If only moving drugs around was so easy.
Other then slowing down the border that much more, I can't imagine catching anybody with a clue.
the best way to piss off the border guard would be to buy a brand spankin new Acer or Toshiba Laptop right out of the box with a Celeron processor, 512mb of RAM, and Windows Vista Home Premium. they'll get so damn tired of waiting it will surely cease their search.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
The Academy Award-winning German film "The Tin Drum" was banned in 1980. src
:x
1. passport 2. toothpaste 3. toothbrush 4. goatse desktop background 5. clean underwear
This fight has been lost since 9-12. Complaining to congressmen, going to court, or any other legal means of fighting this are futile. Because the vast majority of technologically ignorant, middle aged and elderly, terrified xenophobes are convinced that dubious promises of security and safety are worth any concessions. This is the cold war generation. If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide. They've been brought up and taught to fear external threats, and the nineties were just a brief repose between the cold war and the new war. And their mindless herd mentality and passive approval are more than enough to support the leaders of this once great nation while they demolish what last vestiges of our rights remain.
And like I said, the battle is lost. Governments do not relinquish power. Ever. They start with some, in the case of America, not much, and they accumulate authority. And eventually they collapse or are overthrown. But they do not surrender territory. Maybe a small tactical retreat, but it never lasts long.
At the side of the road a bundle of twine, and on it I found a note. It read, "You'll be running until the end of tim
Can I claim that this large file on my hard drive is actually a random bunch of bytes, not an encrypted file system on a file?
^[:wq!
The cops have been seizing and keeping whatever they want using the rico and forfeiture laws. It might not be legal but they will just lie about it and the little guy has no recourse. I've been there. I won't be crossing the border anytime soon but I wonder if I'm on the wrong side of it.
Q: why did michael jackson apply for a job as an airport screener?
A: because he heard that boys laptops could now be inspected!
TrueCrypt will encrypt your entire hard drive if you want it to do so, and a recent case decided that the government cannot force you divulge your password, as that's self-incrimination.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I'll just store all my sensitive data on a goverment server, they'll never find them there.
Security in Iraq is better, so people like us more. The President's surge was effective, but not sustainable. Really just a stalling tactic.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So, as long as them searching your laptop would cause exceptional damage to the property, they may not be able to search it? If I do not have to divulge my PGP password AND I have some sort of utility on my computer that erases my hard drive on 5 failed login attempts, I would reasonably think that would be considered exceptional damage. (Think Iron Key -- though I do not know of an OS/boot based utility that may do that) Excerpt from Wikipedia Border Search Exception: "Instead, the court ruled that searches of electronic materials are legally equivalent to searches of property. As such, Customs' authority to search electronic materials at the border are limited in only two ways: (1) the search may not cause exceptional damage to the property; and (2) the search may not be conducted in "a particularly offensive manner."[20]"
1 - to find drugs/guns, things that arent harmful to flights but are harmful to our nation
2 - to show people their place -- to make a statement that we can and will do what we want and you must bow your head, grin, and bear it
3 - to make travel so excessively humiliating and expensive to minorities and disliked groups (e.g. ACLU) that they stop traveling, and suffer economically/socially for their background or political beliefs
as US citizens we are innocent until proven guilty with all the protections that provides except when we cross the border from another country. Supposedly the government trusts us here, exactly what's changed about us being trusted citizens if we leave and come back.
1.Copy anything you have that is important from your laptop onto an internet accessible backup location (e.g. corporate VPN to the company file server if its a work laptop)
2.Copy anything vaguely sensitive that you need on the plane (i.e. whatever you need to get your work done) onto a USB thumb drive.
3.Erase all the sensitive stuff from the laptop
4.Get on the airplane and fly to your destination (and do whatever work you want to do)
5.As soon as you get off the airplane (and before you pass through customs) go and find somewhere that provides wireless access (coffee shop, airline lounge, airport-wide WiFi) and upload any new data from the thumb drive to the secure location (if its a corporate VPN, the VPN software should ensure that anything sent over the WiFi cannot be sniffed)
6.Once all the data is backed up, destroy or dispose of the USB thumb drive somehow so that it cant be usably read.
7.Having done this, go through customs. They can check the laptop all they want but nothing incriminating will be on it. Worst case scenario is that they get an image of a nice safe windows install with a copy of Office and Norton on it or that they seize the laptop itself.
8.Once you pass customs, you can get another USB thumb drive, download the data from the secure server and resume work.
Another option is to omit steps 5,6 and 8 and instead carry a storage device that the customs guy wont know is a storage device. Maybe someone should invent a bluetooth ear piece for mobile phones that is also a storage device. Or a travel alarm clock. Or a digital watch. Or something else that would have a legitimate need to have circuitry and chips inside it but which would not be something that the customs guys would be likely to seize.
Of course, the storage device doesn't need to be a USB thumb drive if the laptop supports Bluetooth or some other such protocol.
as all of us know on /. there are these little things called microSD... tiny little bastards that can be hidden in damn near anything. they cost about $50AUS and last i saw had 2gb capacity (~3 months ago). but the govt is not really after stopping pedos, that's just the pretense. just want more control. power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely
If I ever start travelling by plane (fat chance), I will definitely keep my medical records on my laptop, on the "clean" visible half of my truecrypt'd drive. They want the password, which won't unlock the "real" half of the drive anyways, I record them (clandestinely, if required) being told that they are violating HIPAA.
Say that it was OK when you left home but when you tried it on the flight it wouldn't boot. You're going to take it to a local IT shop to get it fixed.
Hey no problem, I keep my kiddy pron on my iPhone! Search that, you plicks!
They can just confiscate it if they cant read the files.
Might even bust/detain you for trying to hide something, which is quite possible in this day and age.
Same goes for a USB key. You don't cough up the passphrase, it goes in the shredder.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Clean Install.
...
Take SD card.
Copy sensitive data to SD card.
Put SD card in plastic keyring.
Wrap keyring in Tinfoil.
Put picture over tinfoil.
Profit!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
They seem to forget this law....
Article the sixth [Amendment IV] The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
From an old PC/Computing column - add the following batch file to your startup (Windows only):
:-)
@echo off
cls
echo READY
echo ARMING....
echo ARMED
echo DETONATION IN 0:30
pause
Actually he said NOT to do this, as it'd be crazy illegal to do so. Doesn't mean you can't think about doing it though
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Long time ago, when you wanted to travel in the eastern part of Europe, you had to endure similar procedures, and I don't remember anyone being too glad about that.
Suppose, the people in the States never had those kind of experiences, and want to get them more and more.
Well, history always repeats it's self.. which reminds me, when is WW3 coming again? Just so I can schedule my vacation before it.
My laptop has around 15 Virtual Machines installed on it, several of them being fully encrypted, but not all. Is customs going to detain me until they can boot and search each VM? The host OS has next to nothing installed, so searches wouldn't come up with *anything*. Doing a full drive image for post processing would also be too time consuming, unless they seize and then ship my laptop to me.
What happens if the battery's dead, and the charger is in the checked in luggage? Will they stand ready with the correct charger so the laptop can be powered up, or will they demand that you pull out the hard drive if that's possible, or that they confiscate the laptop, if it's not easy to pull out the harddrive? In 99% of the cases, people will have their laptop fully charged, before traveling with a plane, however if you forget to charge the laptop before your flight or long waiting times means you've run out of battery, it might look "suspicious" to the security personel, that you enter the plane with a dead laptop, and then it's time to start getting paranoid about having your laptop fully charged, before you enter the airplane. However a fully charged laptop is potensially in a greater risk of bursting into flames, if the battery's faulty, so the fight against terror is getting pretty silly at this point. Am very curious of what would really happen, if the security personel demands to check out a laptop, which happens to be dead because of an empty battery with no spare charger present.
i've been the victim of eager agents on two occasions. its a very helpless and angry feeling to watch my civil rights stomped at a border crossing or customs check point. I'm not interested in giving up liberty for temporary security. i'm bringing an old laptop or busted hard drive on every trip from now on. It will be full of hidden folders, worthless suspiciously named documents, and weak encryption. Plus, I'm going to let my dad surf the internet with the laptop for three months so every annoying debilitating piece of ad/spy/mal ware gets onto the hard drive. Civil decent is the necessary response to tyranny such as this.
Grandparent is an asshat who doesn't understand the Constitution, as obviously the Supreme Court didn't when they made that bad decision a couple of decades ago. And yes risk IS the cost of living in a free society. I'd rather a few vices were smuggled over the border rather than living in a police state, thanks.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
That was a nice non answer, which really had nothing to do with my request.
Now respond to the poll please.