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Bill To Add Accountability To Border Laptop Search
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) has introduced a bill that would add accountability to the DHS searches conducted upon the laptops of those crossing the border. Specifically, it would require the issue of receipts to those who had their property confiscated so that it could later be returned, would limit how long the DHS can keep laptops, would require them to keep the laptop's information secure, and would create a way to complain about abuse. Finally, the DHS would be required to keep track of how many searches were done and report the details to Congress. Rep. Sanchez also has also issued a statement about the proposed bill."
Her suggestion only applies to US citizens, though. What about the rest of us?
Move sig!
Can one of the border plods spot a nice laptop and basically just take it? (refering to no receipt for confiscated goods) Claiming that your brand new Alienware laptop is missing would not be hard if there is no proof of confiscation.. can this realy be so?
What a sensible and normal human response to this situation--Rep Sanchez is acting like a human being, ensuring that our rights are protected. This must mean that Sanchez is toast and will be voted out of office shortly. It always happens. Somebody in power sees the light and attempts to do the right thing. For their sins they are booted out of Washington. Just you watch... Her successor will favor total immunity for Customs.
I must be reading that wrong because it sounds like Congress doing something that makes sense. It's unfortunate that it takes legislation to get DHS to pull their collective head out of their butt. This should never have been a problem that needed solving.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Trust me - I don't want to visit the US. But working for a multi-national company, I may have to for business. The war on tourism (that has accompanied the war on terrorism) makes it a very unpleasant and scary experience.
correct, I already stopped going to the USA for business & pleasure both.
I used to travel there three or four times every year, since Bush has come to power and the US went nuts it declined until a few years ago I stopped going completely after one border harassment incident too many.
The US border guards are on par with some of the worst that I've seen on the east-west German and Polish borders when the Iron Curtain was still firmly in place.
Funny how things come full circle...
MP3 Search Engine
As a non-USian, I might be clueless, but wouldn't it be easier for congress to simply stop said department (an extension of the US government) snooping people's data? It's not as if child pron (as an example) will make a plane fall out of the sky or crash into a building. And if they have good reason to believe one carries such data, aren't the normal, legal routes (warrants etc.) sufficient?
Seems this politico does not want the state to give up it's unlawfully usurped power over the population - just make it seem more palatable without needing any real action - DHS is a branch of government after all, and who else will the complaints go to than the government?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Now all they need to do is curb fingerprinting of holiday-makers, pre-boarding name checking against inaccurate and ineffective no-fly blacklists, and the general criminal treatment of anybody without a US passport, currently with little more rights than cattle outside the border, who wants to spend THEIR money on YOUR culture.
I use the term "culture" loosely. (If that gets me a troll mod, so be it.)
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Ever since people have been treated like criminals upon entering the country I decided I would never go to the US, not even if my job demanded it.
My job does demand it ... and I am increasingly thinking it's time to start looking for new employment.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
And you can even transport data over the internet without being checked. Funny.
Cough... Room 641A... cough...
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Disclaimers: I an not a US citizen but I'm married to a US citizen living in Europe.
I'm not trying to troll here, this genuinely puzzles me.
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
Is there any data about what percentage of passengers actually have their laptops searched? Even anecdotal data from recent months? Are they making an issue out of things like downloaded mp3s, movies, and software?
Well, this is only anecdotal evidence, but I've had:
- my shoes confiscated (steel toes)
- my laptop and removable drive booted and searched
- my camera searched (and unfortunately it had a very large flash card in it so that took a while)
- my fingerprint taken as if I'm some common criminal (as opposed to a classy criminal)
- my mugshot taken
- missed my connecting flight
All this in Miami on a fucking stopover for an Amsterdam to Panama City flight, in other words I was not even planning to visit the states on that particular trip
So, that's it for me, no more US of A, I'll see you guys on the flip side of the revolution, if it happens in my lifetime I'll be happy but I'm not holding my breath for it.
If that's the face you want to present to the outside world then I wish you good luck.
For the record, I've been a pretty outspoken critic of the Iraq war, both in private emails as well as in public writings, possibly that reason enough to 'flag' me. Makes you wonder about the kind of society America is becoming.
MP3 Search Engine
I remember when the US was such a nice place too, before it was divided into the colors red and blue. I live in Alaska. Last year I traveled to Texas to visit family. Airport security there has gone full blown ape-shit gestapo. While going through a scanner, one of their security bitches jumped out in front of me menacingly as some sort of profiling response technique. I thought she was going to taze me or something. I felt soiled somehow. They profile everyone as a criminal now.
Here I am, a middle aged, caucasian male, somewhat pudgy, salt & pepper hair, born in the USA type, with my papers in order, being profiled as a terrorist.
Bush and the whole of the Republican party have gone off the deep end, full blown Hitler, Nazi party, 1984 Orwellian soceity, power hungry, insanity bullshit. For them it's all about control of the populace. Dictatorship without using the "D" word.
The sad part of it all is that most of the population are ignorant dim witted hicks in cowboy hats. They buy into the rhetoric and spew dealt by bush and cheney, just like Hitler was able to do. These nut cases have gained such a foot hold that we may never be able to get rid of them and return to a sane form of government.
Fortunately this year we have hope. A possible fork in the road. Which replacement leader will we pick? An intelligent black man with vision and common sense, or a plasticized facade of a woman model from Wasilla, fake and phony in every way. Oh yeah, and then there is that really old guy.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
and if it's encrypted more than once, it's nearly impossible to decrypt.
Oh, you mean with ROT26? ;)
Or perhaps RSA? Let's see...
Let n = pq, with e_1 * d_1 = e_2 * d_2 = 1 (mod phi(n)). Now let's encrypt m twice; we get (m^e_1)^e_2 = m^(e_1 * e_2); the decryption key is d = d_1 * d_2. This amounts to choosing d_1*d_2 randomly in a weird way, instead of just choosing d directly.
Even worse, if you only apply one pair of keys, you get (m^e)^e = m^(e^2); you're restricting your keyspace to the quadratic residues modulo phi(n), which lowers your security.
Depending on how you propose to encrypt everything twice, it may increase security, but I think the biggest increase will be from the fact that you are using an obscure, secret algorithm. I think your CPU time would be better spent on using a larger key; besides, who has the time to single out your anon-to-anon traffic and decrypt it (a highly non-trivial task), while there's tons of other encrypted traffic in the pipes?
Aren't we the people that can make this a real hassle?
I mean - I think any search without a warrant is def. unconstitutional and I don't care if it is for my safety. The most I can do when I drive is watch out around me, but that doesn't mean some asshole isn't going to sideswipe me cause they are on the phone. But don't say I can't talk on the phone when I drive because others are incompetent. Same thing with all this terrorism prevention bullshit.
Look at DRM or any security measure enacted on a computer. This is always what I tell people: when groups of people get together they will always find a way to break the box. So why don't we make the box easy to break and then we don't have to search for the super complicated ways with which people are trying to break into the box? They will most likely choose the easiest methods which we will know cause we made the box
But back to my original point. Someone here, who is a U.S. citizen, and works for a large company, put important and time sensitive data on your laptop. Then encrypt the shit out of it.
But make it look somewhat suspicious, but not enough so it actually is suspicious (think suspicious like a sheriff in TN would think a black male in a BMW is weird).
Then travel through customs, have them snag your laptop and watch them hold onto it for a long time trying to break your encryption.
Get large corp to sue. Sometimes our litigation is worth it.
Cause they're humans.
Small-note: I have a friend that works for DHS.
I hadn't talked with her in a long time, so when we met-up again, I found out she was working for DHS in the airport.
Obviously, I asked her all sorts of questions.
Her answers were really insightful:
She says that although there are a ton of things that can send out a "flag", they do not normally do that because for each flag, they have to fill out a 3-page 'report'.
So I asked her why the fuck they were such big assholes... and she basically said it's highschool all over.
If they're bored, then they'll stop whomever for whatever fucking reason.
If they have visits from higher-ups, they will also stop whomever for whatever reason.
If one of them is "Super DHS Agent of the Month Tim", then all of them will act "Super DHS Agent" for that day.
If they're having a slow day... or are particularly happy... they just don't care.
She wasn't happy about it... yet, can you blame her?
WTF... it's a job. And if Tim is netting 10 flags per hour (out-of-ass figure), then she should be doing at least 5.
DHS sucks ass. Period.
While some of my conservative peers may disagree as to the utility of the bill, it proposes wide-reaching accountability which can only help us all out.
As a personal anecdote, I travel a lot between two cities in southern New Mexico. Between them is a border patrol point through which I must regularly cross. While most of the border guards are quite friendly and accommodating, I'll occasionally run into a few who are generally in a really foul mood. I've often been asked the usual questions (where are you coming from, where you are going, etc), but from time to time, they've asked me what I'm carrying in my backpack, why I'm carrying it, and so forth. I'm all for discouraging illegal activities, but spending a few minutes answering questions adds up over the course of a month or two! Of course, I don't expect that they'd confiscate my belongings, but I would want some accountability if they did. Since I do need my laptop for working on various things between classes at university, going without it would certainly have real quantifiable repercussions.
I also imagine that most of their questions are directed toward me because I don't look like someone who fits in well in this part of the country--I look European, not Spanish, and most caucasians in this region tend to have darker features, are ranchers (easily identifiable as such), military, or are Germans assigned here with the German air force. As such, I've always figured it was a matter of time until they wind up grabbing a hold of my laptop via random search. Since I write short stories from time to time and have an assortment of partial manuscripts (on an encrypted partition, but who's to say they wouldn't force me to release the password?), I've always been mildly concerned that seizure of my laptop could result in someone who might be less ethical than most obtaining my copyrighted work and illegally distributing it. Yes, I've heard the argument that if I don't want to lose something, don't carry it on my laptop, but that's largely impractical and precisely what encrypting a partition is intended to discourage: petty theft. Thieves who had the means available to break such encryption are probably uninterested in lowly manuscripts and more interested in corporate data or information pertaining to national security. But law enforcement, on the other hand, could potentially force me to divulge such passwords! Perhaps someone who is more familiar with law pertaining to such search and seizures could offer some advice in this particular case.
Considering lost time, productivity, and somewhat valuable materials, it's a bit upsetting that average citizens in this nation have to worry about such ridiculous things. If someone working under law enforcement were to steal data of mine for his or her own benefit, you bet I'd want accountability! I'm sure that sort of accountability does already exist through established channels, but how are you to know that an unscrupulous individual didn't steal something from your computer for his own personal gains (software, mp3s, personal data)? The only downside I see to this bill is that it doesn't highlight an effective method of accountability and detection of theft, such as requiring multiple personnel to be present when examining data to ensure no such theft occurs. That alone could create an additional check and balance within the system.
He who has no
(Posting AC; haven't logged into /. in a long time.)
A law textbook in "Cybercrime" discussed cases relevant here. The courts have held that because border security is so important, all searches are "reasonable" at the border and so the 4th Amendment provides zero protection there. Related court reasoning held that there should be no difference between searching a package carried on a traveler and searching the same package if it's being mailed.
The courts also held that the searches don't necessarily need to be done right at the border; eg. searching an airplane can be done at an airport. What I gather from that logic is that the federal government claims the authority to search not just laptops at the border, but any Internet traffic passing through the border or that might cross the border, possibly at the ISP level. Don't jump on the Bush-bashing bandwagon; this is more a symptom of the much larger problem of the courts abandoning the Constitution.
It varies considerably with port, mood of the border agent, and your perceived ethnic group.
If you're going to Panama city - you go by KLM (flies direct from Amsterdam). You can also go direct with Iberia over Madrid.
As there are more and more people who are unwilling or unable to transfer through the US, more and more direct flights are becoming available.
I *never* transfer in the US when going from Europe to America... stopped doing it when the US turned itself into some pseudo-fascist country.
If it ever changes back to the "land of the free" again, then I'll start going again. Unfortunately, I can only see the situation getting worse...