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Homeland Security Changes Laptop Search Policy
IronicToo writes "The US Government has updated its policy on the search and seizure of laptops at border crossing. 'The long-criticized practice of searching travelers' electronic devices will continue, but a supervisor now would need to approve holding a device for more than five days. Any copies of information taken from travelers' machines would be destroyed within days if there were no legal reason to hold the information.'"
The DHS has always held the belief (with the Supreme Court's backing) that people and their belongings at customs checkpoints at the airport (or at a border crossing) aren't within the country (yet), consequently, the constitution doesn't apply to "inspections" within those checkpoints. That gives the DHS and their goons all the leeway they want in "confiscating" or "inspecting" all the stuff they want for as long as they want.
Does this press release change anything? Not really. It just lays some groundwork for more "routine" searches. Anything beyond that they have to give some bullshit reason ("national security") to keep it longer.
What's to stop this bullshit agency from making a mockery of their press releases? I can guarantee you that the goons they have on the "front lines" haven't been told about this "press release".
By that argument, if a gang of thugs flew into the United States, never left the international arrivals area, and committed heinous crimes while there---plotting assassinations, designing nuclear weapons, calling for hits on their enemies, execution-style murders, gang rape, etc.---they would not be in the U.S. and thus could not be prosecuted under U.S. law. For that matter, any sort of crime---mugging, graffiti, public urination, public drunkenness, public nudity, arson, etc.---would be completely legal as long as you don't leave the international arrivals area. Does arson only become a crime when the fire spreads outside the international arrivals area? This also means that terrorists could legally set up training camps in the international arrivals area of a major airport. Why does the DHS want to harbor terrorists within our borders?
Another scary thought: it may not happen today or tomorrow, but statistically speaking, before the heat death of the universe, some psychopath will likely murder a child in the international arrivals area, get off because he wasn't on U.S. soil, then kill again. Then we'll have another law on the books named after some dead child, all because the government feels such a desperate need to violate its own citizens' right to privacy. The very thought of such a thing happening should give every DHS agent chills. It gives a particularly ironic twist to using the words "think of the children" while executing illegal searches for child porn....
Alternatively, if Cuba or North Korea flew a firing squad into some U.S. airport, lined up its soldiers along the walls, and shot everyone who came through, that, too, would win an award for irony, watching as a not-free country helped a "free" country to be more free.
Or the U.S. .government might simply seal off all the borders. clamp their hands over their ears, and shout LALALALALALALALA! Sounds more like our government to me. After all, nothing could be more important than the government's right to catch stupid criminals who aren't smart enough to ship their pirated DVDs concealed in children's toys, upload their homemade videos of sex with underage girls in Thailand to a server in the U.S. instead of carrying the unencrypted files on their desktop, or download their Al Qaeda propaganda through somebody else's open Wi-Fi access point after they get home. I mean, do they seriously catch any significant number of criminals this way? And if they do, aren't they at least as likely to be able to catch such morons in a million other ways without burning our Constitution in the process?
Just my $0.0137 (adjusted for inflation).
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Our employees have no problems going in or out of the U.S. with laptops even though we require all laptops with data on them to be fully encrypted. When an employee is, say, going to France (worst case; it's illegal to enter France with an encrypted device) we copy all their data to the network, take it off the network, wipe it clean, and install a base image. When the user gets to France, they are met by one of our techs who installs full disk encryption, joins the machine to our network, sets up a VPN, and copies their data from our U.S. servers to the laptop in France.
When it's time to return home, the tech in France copies all data to our servers, takes the laptop off the network, wipes it clean, and installs a base image. When the user gets back into the U.S., a local tech fully encypts the machine, puts it on the network, and copies the user data from our servers to the laptop.
Now, this seems like lot of trouble to me. But it prevents our employees from having any problems with customs in either France or the U.S.