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EFF To Fight Border Agent Laptop Searches
snydeq writes "The EFF and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives have filed an amicus brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals requesting that the full court rehear and reverse a three-judge ruling (PDF) that empowers border agents routinely to search files on laptops and mobile devices. The case in question involves US citizen Michael Arnold, who, returning from the Philippines in July 2005, had his laptop confiscated at LAX by custom officials after they opened files in folders marked 'Kodak Pictures' and 'Kodak Memories' and found photos of two naked women. Later, when Arnold was detained, officials uncovered photo files on Arnold's laptop that they believed to be child pornography. In addition to raising Fourth Amendment issues, the amicus brief (PDF) reiterates the previous District Court ruling on Arnold's case regarding the difference between computers and gas tanks, suitcases, and other closed containers, 'because laptops routinely contain vast amounts of the most personal information about people's lives — not to mention privileged legal communications, reporters' notes from confidential sources, trade secrets, and other privileged information.'"
I don't see the search itself as being as much of a problem as his laptop being seized because of two (presumably legal, as the article says women, and the alleged children came later) porn images.
While I agree with the privacy infringements, I really wish it wasn't someone suspected on child porn complaining about it. It certainly won't garner much support from the general public, informed or not.
Strong encryption is obviously the answer to keeping data safe from prying eyes. What I don't think is legal is the government keeping an image of the disk just for having passewd through customs with encrypted data.
In the past, the time before computers, you never traveled with all your personel papers, love letters, note books, and your corporate trade secrets in your luguage because the border gaurds would be searching your stuff and possible reading it. So why is storing it on a computer so different. If you do not want it looked at don't put it there.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
OTOH, a file on the HDD can't contain a real bomb, only a virtual bomb. Virtual bombs don't blow up airplanes.
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The EFF and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives have quite the fight on their hands.
Really all the government has to do is use the branding of we are looking for child pornography terriosts that have weapons of mass destruction and guess what, poof there goes any right to privacy. Right now, they pretty much have a free ticket to do just about what ever they please.
Every time I hear stories similar to this I think back to an episode of the Simpsons, where Helen Lovejoy keeps saying, "Won't somebody think of the childern?" It was satire that they would do just about anything, if it was for the childern.
Historians will look back on two things this decade, how hurricane katrina changed how oil companies charge people for gas (they can also do just about anything they want) and how 9/11 affected personal freedoms and privacy.
I wonder how long it will be before we hear about how the customs agents have a shared collection of porn from all the hard drives they search.
Customs doesn't search for bombs. They search for anything that is illegal to bring into the country (drugs, weapons, large amounts of cash without proper paperwork, certain kinds of foodstuffs, etc).
Don't bring it with you. Or don't have any important information on it.
Should I let it be searched by customs, or should I call the legal department of my (very large) company to handle the situation ?
To answer this question, first consider this simple question: Who will the customs officer detain/subject to full cavity search/deport/mark for disappearance - the person carrying the object in question or some companys legal department ?
Clearly these people are stupid enough to think that my mouthwash and nail clippers are lethal weapons.
I doubt they have the faintest idea what to do when confronted with a command line.
"How do you start windows?"
You ask your legal department for advice, before you travel.
The time is coming that using a 'throw away' laptop will be needed for all foreign trips. Everyone will need a server in some 'safe' country to upload everything to, documents and pictures will be needed to be uploaded to Google Docs and Picasa respectively. Any pictures, or letters that were on the laptop will need to be deep erased.
then , just add the cost of having the mini laptop seized to every trip.
Seems simple to me.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
I've said it before; trade secrets will be the most important aspect of this (whether or not they should be is of minor importance); especially for foreign business travelers, since American intelligence agencies have shown themselves time and again incapable to contain themselves when it comes to passing around business secrets to local competitors.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Anyone know the last time this tactic was used? Oh yeah, Nazi Germany.
(first Godwin!)
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Nothing. And that's perfectly ok - customs doesn't care about the security of flights, because they search your stuff after the flight is over. They're looking for things that are illegal to bring into the country (narcotics, weapons, large amounts of cash without proper paperwork, certain kinds of foodstuffs, etc).
This is about border agents, so it has nothing to do with bombs. It is about illegal or undeclared goods being smuggled into the country.
So the argument will go that as long as certain forms of information are illegal to bring into the country, in order to do their job (stopping smugglers) the customs agents need to be able to search for illegal information. I'm not saying I agree with that argument, but in order to convince anyone other than the choir you need to understand the real issues and not some straw man argument about bombs.
Any counter argument will have to indirectly argue that customs agents don't have to keep illegal data out of the country. For copyright, such an argument is easy to make (e.g. "customs agents have no way to tell if a work on a laptop is involved in criminal infringement they may have permission from the copyright holder or it may be fair use"). For child porn, the argument is harder. The court will likely end up weighing the cost of invading people's privacy against the benefit of stopping child porn at the border. Given that the technique has already proven effective (they caught the guy), guess which one the courts will side with.
Again I'm not saying I agree with the government's position, but you have to know your enemy and the battle ground in order to win.
Bruce Schneier's recommendation for this situation is that your company have a secure VPN in place so that once you're across the border you can connect to the office and download any sensitive material you need. Before you return, VPN in again and upload your work back to the office so that the laptop is clean as a whistle when it goes through customs.
For Arabs, and Muslims, it's a very big problem, since strangers are allowed to look at private pictures of family members.
This is both a cultural and a religious difference, which this law doesn't address nor respect.
It's against our customs and culture to post our women's pictures online for the public to see, let alone having the customs look at them and take a copy of them as well!!
And what is considered childpr0n, maybe as well be nude pictures of man's 16 year old wife. That's the legal age to get married in some of the countries in the Middle East.
Apart from pictures, business men carry sensitive information, that shouldn't be copied, and if encrypted, they're forced to provide the key/password to decrypt them.
When there's a leak of information, is the US customs going to be responsible for such cases?
Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
Don't cross the border with things you don't want customs agents to find. That goes for...trade secrets...on a laptop. So if you are a businessperson, traveling for business purposes, you shouldn't be able to take information across the border that will clench the deal? Or maybe, once you arrive at your destination, you should hook up to your hotel's ultra-secure public internet connection and download the gigs of data at the cheapest fricking broadband speed the hotel could buy from the local ISP -- which, incidentally, is shared among all 200 guests in the hotel. And God forbid that the hotel's internet connection should be down when you arrive. I'm sure your business rival would be more than happy to give you a second chance to make your sales pitch to the prospective client before they make their sales pitch. </sarc>
Nack. The Bill of Rights gives us freedom from search and seizure without due process of law. If agents of the government have no reason to suspect I have committed a crime -- and by definition, crossing the border in compliance with the laws of the countries involved cannot possibly be interpreted as "committing a crime" -- then by a strict interpretation of the Bill of Rights, they have no probable cause to search my laptop at the border. All of this bunk about how the Constitution doesn't apply at the border is just that -- bunk.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I work for a Russian company and mostly Russian and Ukranian native co-workers. They say that the U.S. becomes more like the Soviet Union every day.
As a person who once made the mistake of trying to drive a Volkswagen Bus from Canada to the US, as a US citizen, no, the Constitution does not apply at the border.
My vehicle, without any just cause, no drug dog etc, was completely taken apart and destroyed by Customs officials, and I had no recourse. This was in 1989. They cut up and removed the seats, dash, headliner, carpet. They drilled a hole in the gas tank and drained it. They removed all 4 wheels and the tires from the wheels. They took all my luggage and dumped it out on the ground. Then, when they didn't find anything, told me I had 30 minutes to remove everything from their parking lot or it would be confiscated and destroyed. 30 minutes to remove a vehicle with no gas and a hole in the gas tank, no seats and no wheels. I basically packed up my suitcases and bags, grabbing as much as I could carry, and left the vehicle behind. Walked across the border, hitched a ride into town, and took the Greyhound home. Never did find out what they did with my Bus.
While they were tearing apart my vehicle, any protest I made was greated with the usual "You are interferring with Customs Officials, if you continue, you will be arrested."