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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.
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.
"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?
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.
And that's the thing. Like the last /. discussion on this, if your hard drive is encrypted can they compel you to provide access as a condition for allowed travel?
What about employees of organizations/in professions that are legally required to protect information?
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.
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
The answer to this is to use deniable encryption. For example throw all your sensitive data on a separate partition that is at the end of the hard drive and encrypt it. Not the data, the partition. Keep the decryption tools on a separate pen drive or just make them look like something innocent. Now it looks just as if part of the hard drive is simply unused. If they don't know the encryption is there, they can't do anything. If a window jumps up at boot that says "Enter the passphrase that will decrypt the harddrive where all the information that customs shouldn't see is" you can be sure you'll be searched and probed in minutes.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"
I imagine that if you encrypt your data and then refuse to give them the password it would be treated something along the lines of refusing to give a breathalyzer sample. In their eyes, the only reason you'd refuse is because you're trying to hide something illegal. The solution is to have nothing on your notebook, keep all your work or pr0n on your machine at home and access it via some remote desktop service or home server.
Heck, Gonzales once issued a statement once saying that people who haven't cleared customs technically are neither in nor out of the US, and therefore have no actual rights (can't dredge up a reference now). He's certainly said that habeus corpus isn't actually a right.
Basically, for a while at least, the legal opinion was that you could be arbitrarily and indefinitely detained without recourse. You're so far removed from the 5th Amendment at that point, it's not funny!!
Unless things change, you have shockingly few rights at the border -- at least until a court clarifies things.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
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.
I think we've all forgotten something. The reason "suspicionless border searches of travelers' luggage" was initially allowed was to find bombs.
Ummm, no. You're thinking of searching airline passengers.
Border searches have been going on for centuries, mainly for tariffs, to keep out contraband and prevent undesirable individuals from entering.
A sovereign nation has the right to control their borders.
Customs Agent: OK, you won't enter the password, I'm just going to confiscate your laptop and let those guys in the lab have a look. You can write a letter to request it back... blah blah blah Hey, Bubba, gimme that pirated Windows XP disk we confiscated from that kid that came through here an hour ago. Just found my kid a birthday present.
Unfortunately, Government also gives PEOPLE power. PEOPLE are, unfortunately, corrupted by power. Especially low-paid customs inspectors. The best-of-worst-case scenario you can expect from them searching a device with encrypted data on it that is capable of decrypting said data is to lose both the device and the data. Especially if the device is new and shiny.
PERL:
All of the power of Voodoo with most of the understandibility!
The U.S. is becoming a police state, apparently.
Stealing the laptop won't help if they don't have the password.
Truecrypt has the ability to make hidden encrypted partitions.
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?
No, movies where people murder people are not illegal to own AFAIK. If so, I and many websites including youtube will be in trouble : One or two examples (if you haven't worked this out, these videos are videos of murders. Don't watch if you don't want to). Possessing video of a crime is definately not necessarily a crime in itself, apart from when it concerns sex.
The situation is this now : It is legal to own actual video of murders. It is illegal for a 17 year old to create a CGI of themselves (or obviously film themselves) and send it to their partner.
People are not defending child pornography here, people are questioning the law. Also, there is such a thing a due process - if you start ignoring it for "really nasty" crimes, eventually you'll start ignoring it for more and more crimes, and your liberties are dwindling at an alarming rate. Just because people question the process doesn't mean they are defending the actions uncovered by the process.
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"
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.