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High-Tech Gadgets Can Pose Problems At Mexican Border
TechnologyResource writes "Going across the border will be a more 'interesting' experience since Customs and Border Protection will now be checking laptops, digital cameras, cell phones and any other electronics on your person or in your vehicle. It's not a new authority, according to Angelica De Cima, Office of Public Affairs Liaison 'They've always had the right to inspect your person, vehicle, baggage, anything on you. Nothing has changed from before,' De Cima said."
"He said anyone coming across could be a terrorist, drug dealer or someone trying to carry or take information out of the country by hiding it in a smaller device."
Why not just FTP it. Or hide a microSD card inside a cake? It should bake okay, the chip inside gets put under higher temps than the inside of cupcake when they place them on a PCB. The plastic on a uSD might melt a little, but I suspect the information will still be there.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Cue the flamewar.
... that US customs agents will some of the first thugs against the wall when the revolution comes.
There is a war going on for your mind.
I wonder what they'll do when they search my 'unusable' Linux laptop.
"Blue corvette with three gringos heading south route X should pass through your village in 20 minutes. They have laptops, top-notch cellphones, some GPS stuff and wallets full of cash. I'd say some $15k in various assets. Remember, 10% is mine."
Searching the 9/11 hijackers wouldn't have stopped them. It's not like they had their plans saved on their computers. Why do we accept this kind of crap whenever anyone says the magic words "9/11"? We don't even need to change the policy at the airport...people are going to beat down hijackers now, on their own.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Ben Franklin.
...which is rather scary. Used to work for US Customs many years ago (before it was ICE), and we were legally permitted to basically search *anything* entering the country (including personal mail, something that is a federal crime in most other instances) other than diplomatic mail and pouches. Nothing was off-limits: If it comes from overseas, ICE has the constitutional right (backed by many years of case law) to search it.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but every international traveler should be aware of this. Whining about your constitutional rights being violated while standing in the "red" line at your port of entry will simply prolong the agony.
I think I've finally found a use for those virus infected disks I kept from years ago.
I support the troops. I pay f'ing taxes.
It is both new and interesting.
For years, you fill in the form on the airplane, and walk thru customs after a perfunctory stamp stamp, here's your paper, no questions asked, no passport, no ID even looked at upon arrival at the Mexican Airport. Once in a while the "Red light" went off depending on how seedy you looked.
But by and large, getting into Mexico entailed less scrutiny than returning to the states, where questions were asked, documents were demanded, and bags were scanned and opened.
Times change. But Mexico has always been lax.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I think from a Constitutional perspective they are correct that they have the right to do such inspections. However, doing them on a large scale is a really bad idea. However, stupidity is not unconstitutional.
Captain Koons: The way your dad looked at it, this iPod was your birthright. He'd be damned if any US Border agents gonna put their greasy hands on his boy's birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this iPod up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the iPod. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the iPod to you.
How long will it be until freedom-loving, consumer-supporting manufacturers start making devices that are resistant to searches like these? With today's technology there's no reason I shouldn't be able to have strong encryption of any nonvolatile storage and a means of locking down the device so that nothing is left in RAM or cache and the key is sequestered or destroyed (presumably pending manual reentry after the checkpoint is cleared). Fine, the law says they can conduct a forensic search, but there's no reason I have to make it easy for them.
Apparently this is one of those times where the feds take advantage of that massive loo-pole in the fourth amendment effectively allowing them to disregard it in the case of "reasonable" searches and seizures...
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Heck checking your laptop is nothing, they can probe up your ass if they really want to!
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
We have always been at war with Eurasia
We've always been at war with Eastasia. Nothing has changed from before.
CBP: "Pasa"
US Citiznen: [drives by]
CBP: "Pasa"
US Citiznen: [drives by]
CBP: "Pasa"
US Citiznen: [drives by]
CBP: "Alto! Que bueno Camera, este Cannon?"
US Citiznen: "Yes, officer. It's a new Cannon 14 Mega Pixel Camera, with 15 to 1500 lens. Still in the box. Never used it, I plan to take some pictures SCUBA Diving at Kennedy's Cove."
CBP: "Si, un momento. I'm sorry but we have to have an indepth search of what you took pictures of. Please pull over there."
US Citizen: "Uh? look, it's still in the box, it's never been opened?!"
CBP: "If you do not pull over there, I will arrest you as a For-ing Nation-nal Spy".
US Citizen: "What! I'm going back home!"
CBP: [pulls gun a puts it to the side of the US Citizen's Head] "Maybe you do not understand me. That camera is now confiscated, and I bet it is just filled with child pronography."
US Citizen: "Look, I'm sorry, all I've got is $20.00, would that help the CBP?"
CBP:[smiling and holding out his hand] "Thank you, and have a nice day in Mexico, Pasa"
US Citizen: [drives by]
CBP: "Pasa"
US Citizen: [drives by]
CBP: "Pasa"
US Citizen: [drives by]
What's the search pattern for *leaving* the US?
Are the boarder countries as paranoid as the US?
Yeah, and let's deport any non-native people and their descendants while we're at it. Those Europeans were infected with swine plague.
That depends on which way you are crossing and if you are a citizen of the nation your are crossing into. If you are an American citizen then the laws about search and seizure do apply so there are some limits. That said I don't think that these would in all likelihood violate those limits.
First - this is fishing. You aren't actually accused of anything... we are going to search you till we find something. What was the famous quote - something like: "give me 6 lines from the hand of an innocent man and I'll find something to convict him".
Second - the fact that they found something. After trampling over the rights of 221 million passengers, they found a paedophile. Is that worth the cost? How many rights are you willing to give up to find that paedophile? Having rights and freedoms means that sometimes bad guys get away. To catch all bad guys requires us to live in a panopticon.
Third - the tone that if you object to this program, you obviously support the paedophile.
Fourth - I'm from outside the US, but I travel there frequently for business. The entry requirements have risen from a form to being fingerprinted and photographed and carrying biometric data at all times. Is there an upper level to this? What would happen if they require DNA swabs to enter? Is that a step too far? Right now in Chicago, they take a nude photo of you using a new scanner to be able to fly. That is so screwed up.
In any case, your rights when attempting to cross a sovereign country's borders are pretty much whatever they say it is. Get over it. This isn't a new or interesting development.
Which is exactly why I'm never transiting through the US again. Plain fucking worth to spend an extra 50 euros to fly from Amsterdam to Toronto instead.
They have extended the thickness of the border by 100 miles as well, so that now 80% of the population can be summarily stopped and searched at anytime.
Isn't it great?
This is always how it is done. Pass laws that are extreme enough so that people say "no one will ever use them"...wait for a while... then use them when there is no chance to roll those laws back.
This is why Thomas Jefferson said "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It's not a loophole, it's called the border search exception. Its an established doctrine that's been established by the Supreme Court. Google it sometime before you spout your mouth, boy.
Now that I've utterly destroyed your nonsensical post with real facts, please, moderators, mod this -1 Clueless.
Actually what I find kind of interesting is that bit by bit, generation by generation, Mexicans are in fact retaking a fair chunk of their country that the US stole from them through some trumped up wars (including a delightful little proxy war in Texas). I figure by 2100 in many areas of Texas, New Mexico and California, English will be taught as a second language.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
xyz
The searches TFA is talking about are made on the US side
No, they do not have the "right" to search. They have the power. Big difference.
I know the country you are going to can search you, but can the US feds search you going out? Are there any limits, other than on diplomatic items?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's not "High-Tech Gadgets Can Pose Problems At Mexican Border", it's "High-Tech Gadgets Can Pose Problems At United States Border".
I am officially gone from
I figure by 2100 in many areas of Texas, New Mexico and California, English will be taught as a second language.
Because our primary language will be Chinese.
This seems like a violation of individual rights with little point behind it. TFA pretty much indicates they may search someone just for the way they look. What exactly are they hoping to find on these devices? The file labeled super_secret_spy_plan.txt? A file can be disguised as anything else. hell, you could take a picture of your 'plan' through a colored lens and save it as a jpeg and call it dinner.jpg and unless someone went through the hundreds of thousands of files on a PC, or a software did, what would they find?
Hell, you could drop a file and just erase it from the directory tables. File is still there, just not overwritten.
This seems to me to be nothing more than a lame attempt to either frighten, or catch really stupid people.
The same can be said for many countries. Ever flown through Ireland, not even as a final destination? It's worse than any American customs stop I've been through.
It's not just the US. It's ANY country that sees "terrorism" as a threat. I've not been to Japan, but I've heard it's a treat there too.
It's just a way for the man to try and control you.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So they're finally conquering their claims on the Apache, Navajo and Hopi lands, I'm sure they must be delighted that another batch of white man comes to claim "what's rightfully theirs" again.
They have the power. Not the right. There is a difference.
SD cards are so small that have to be one of the easiest items to hide in the known universe. There's a brazillion places you could tape one to a car or hide it about your person. Dogs can't sniff them out so unless they're going to start strip-searching *everybody* and dismantling every car then they're not going to find them.
It's just more pointless stupidity from the DHS.
Don't even get me started on micro-SSD or FTP.
No sig today...
Well, most high school hackers can get around this issue. Suppose that you want to bring in information on a laptop. You take your information and run it through a compression and encryption algorithm. You then run an utility which writes this data inside a deleted segment of the hard drive. Unless the border security are exceptionally bright and computer savvy, I doubt that they can find even where to look. Maybe they have a utility program at the border which automates this process. I doubt that unless you are a strong suspect, most security guards have any idea of how to approach this issue. Personally, I like the idea of hiding the SanDisk in a cupcake or an iPod up your ass. BTW, isn't this a great way to get rid of your old computer hardware. Just rename a garbled file as AlQuida battle plans and drop it off at the border. Maybe you might get a free trip to Gitmo.
Not new not interesting, never had a problem going thru customs.
Nothing to see here move along.
I have a 120 GB drive in my netbook that is maybe half-full. How long would it take for YOU to search the entire drive and make sure it's "clean"? Keep in mind I could have info in the meta-data of my MP3s, or in /etc/default/bluetooth or even in a small encrypted text file that I don't have the software or password to open.
And that's ONE person's stuff. There's just no way to enforce this.
As a foreign college student that has to deal with the customs every year coming back in to states from my own country, nothing is more painful than experiencing 'Customs and Border Protection'. It is fairly understandable that U.S. government is sooo strict about the incomers that may possibly possess the harm against States. But there will be some kind of loss from too much inspection such as losing elite business men's interests in visiting U.S. and I might not across the border on this spring break even if I've been wanting to visit MEXICO for so long. Just too much inspections to handle. And no, I don't do or bring or take or hide anything that threatens this country.
Back in the days, people just got inventive, sewing money into clothing, hiding jewelery in dress seems, that kind of thing.
After all.... remember.... if you have nothing to hide, this all won't inconvenience you!
News at 11: DHS is now lobbying for the introduction of "Blockwart" positions.... oh wait, we call them citizen informants here.
You needn't worry about your GPS unit, ever since the Firestone tire debacle. The resulting law said that every tire needed to be able to be identified as being from Lot #X without being dismounted (prior to that lot numbers were printed on the inside of the tire). The manufacturers' solution was RFID chips with unique serial numbers embedded in every tire. Since a DEFCon competition was able to read RFID chips from 67 feet away with only slightly-modified off-the-shelf hardware one can only imagine how far away your tires can be read with custom hardware.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Ever flown through Ireland, not even as a final destination? It's worse than any American customs stop I've been through.
Um, yeah - About three months ago, actually. We got off our plane, followed the signs around this amazingly convoluted set of hallways to the passport-check area, only to find...
No one there.
Waited about five minutes, figuring someone had gone to the bathroom, and didn't see a single uniformed person (got passed by plenty of people walking right on through without even pausing, though).
So, we walked through and onto our connecting flight.
Granted, we went from one "secure" area to another, so I really didn't see the need to go through customs at all, but literally, we merely walked past an unattended desk. Simple as that.
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this one - EU Airports abuse people anytime they want without any remorse or pretense of politeness. Last time I got hassled was in Amsterdam at the Schiphol Airport earlier this year. The smarmy douche bag of an inspector took a particular interest in my netbook, my backpack, and even went through my pockets. I never had to deal with that kind of crap in the US. I am not saying it doesn't happen in the US, but I know it sure as hell happens in Netherlands and UK (the abusive cattle drives of Heathrow are legendary among the frequent fliers).
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
It's not just the US. It's ANY country that sees "terrorism" as a threat. I've not been to Japan, but I've heard it's a treat there too.
Oh, it is a treat (as in such a break from flying in America). No stupid "Anyone give you anything" questions, no retarded need for (easily faked) id. No striping down to your underwear to go through a metal detector. You can bring liquids on the plane. You can get your ticket sent to your cell phone so no need to print anything. You aren't treated like a criminal. You basically show up and walk onto the plane.
Granted, I haven't gone home in a year and a half and haven't left the country in that time frame, so it might have changed some, but flying into Japan isn't bad at all. Like all places the lines are long (unless you are returning visa holder, then you get to use the same line as Japanese people). Japan is very eye-for-an-eye, so since the US makes people finger print, so does Japan. That's the only "evil" thing I can think of. Getting your bags through customs is a joke, you basically show your passport to a guy, he gives it back and says "Have a nice day". Also, Japan doesn't require people wanting to come to their country to notify them month in advance or deny them entry (like the US).
I seriously dread going home because flying in Japan is so nice and easy and pleasant.
They just take the laptop and return it to you six months later after a thourough search through all your personal files.
I still just don't understand how this isn't in clear violation of the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and siezure. Someone tried to explain it last time this topic came up in one form or another, but I cannot possibly believe the founding fathers intended that, no, the government cannot search your private papers/informmation. Unless, you know, it really *wants to*.
How is it that I, as a U.S. citizen, who has commited no crime, and there is no evidence to indicate I might have committed a crime, lose my right to privacy simply because I choose to visit another country? B.S.
Heh, my trip to Dublin:
We arrive at the gat to find two passages; one marked "EU passport holders" and one marked "non-EU passport holders.
We go to the latter with our Australian passports and tap on the window to wake the guy snoozing inside.
He glances at our passports and asks us "..and how long will ye be stayin' in Ireland?"
We told him, "just for the weekend" (we were visiting my sister there while we were living in the UK). He handed us back our passports with "Enjoy your stay" and went back to sleep.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Hopefully the next time I leave the country... I won't be coming back. That's the plan anyway... no US customs.. no problem. Now I just have to figure out where galt's gulch is.
Hmm, this was meant to be a reply to the message below...
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Are you a Mexican or a Mexican't?
Were you already in the EU? That makes a HUGE difference. Try arriving from outside the EU.
Pleasant? That would be terrifying. Not that the US is any safer, but at least we have this nice security theater to calm my nerves.
I have entered Japan 2 times in the last 2 years and i never get searched when i enter the country. They just ask, "Do you have anything dangerous?", reply "No" and they say "go on".
Never been in USA so i cannot compare but from what have read, it seems really painful.
Look, they are just looking for easy targets. I seriously do not expect border patrol to be able to find encrypted partitions hidden in SDHC cards inside a camcorder, or in mini SDHC cards inside cell phones. My phone, for example, has mini SDHC that boots to Linux. I would be very surprised if they actually notice that, or if they even bother to look beyond the Windows Mobile interface.
My laptop has two separate partitions, and they are both encrypted: one with CyberArmor, and the other with LUKS. They're going to need to have me present to type in the password. The Windows partition requires my fingerprint to log me in. How are they going to access it without me being present?
I also carry around SDHC card formatted with JFFS2 with ARM stuff in there (it's for development). How on earth are they going to look inside it without an ARM board?
I'm probably going to enjoy telling them the things they miss, if I had time :-)
In any case, your rights when attempting to cross a sovereign country's borders are pretty much whatever they say it is.
As a citizen of the country in question, I am (ostensibly) part of the "they" who gets to say what those rights are. There is no reasonable justification for these searches other than "because I can". There is no way a reasonable person can argue that these searches make anyone safer, or prevent any crimes or criminal material coming into the country. Since our constitution prohibits unreasonable searches these searches are illegal. The fact that the Supreme Court has allowed such searches only shows how corrupt our justice system really is. This is nothing more than thuggery.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You don't have to cross the border to have such problems. A few weeks ago, my wife and I drove from San Diego to Yuma, and took I-8 most of the way. This was entirely within the US. But for several miles, I-8 is only a mile or so from the Mexican border. Her next bill from AT&T for her iPhone showed several hundred dollars in "roaming" charges during the short time we were in that section of the highway, although she didn't use the iPhone at all during the drive. But it did things like checking her email, using relay towers on the Mexican side of the border.
She's disputing the charges, and maybe AT&T will cancel them. We'll see. But at least the phone companies have developed some clever ways of running up the charges if you even come within electronic reach of the borders.
Funny thing is that my T-Mobile G1 phone didn't show any such charges. Maybe that's why they're not as big as AT they haven't learned to augment their income by using such tricks. OTOH, we've found that their customers seem to like them better, FWIW, while everyone we talk to seems to hate AT&T. (But she loves her iPhone. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Time for my goatcex screen saver, and the tubgirl desktop. If they barf before they finish searching, do i win?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
You are 100% wrong. There are no laws against search and seizure at the border. Look up some case law on the subject before you give someone piss poor advice that they end up trying to live by.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I can just imagine how happy the criminal communities will be for such news. Imagine - every single guard with proper authentication can single out people for a "screening" which include all digital identity, including your pictures, digital records which most certainly contain some references to username/passwords to banks and other web-services, business documents such as contracts, contacts, proposals, and so on and so on. Every criminals dream! All in the disguise that they are there to ensure you don't have any indecent pictures or something. How long to we get the first scandal, or has that already happened?
I'm based in Japan and have to fly in and out every few months for work. Here are my observations:
1. It used to be pretty relaxed. It still is... if I'm traveling with my wife. For the last 18 months, every time I've flown by myself, I've had my bags briefly searched and been given a pat-down by customs after re-entry. (It may be because I wear a kilt.) However, when they do search my bags for whatever reason (hasn't happened in departures for at least 4 years), they apologize and repack everything nicely for me. This is unlike my experience in American airports where my bags are rifled through, and then I'm expected to repack it-- and get yelled at when I can't undo their unpacking job within 15 seconds.
2. Actually, with the fingerprinting, visa-holders get to use their very own line, separate from even the Japanese citizens (since citizens don't get fingerprinted... just us dirty, criminal (and in my case, permanently residing, tax-paying, etc.) foreigners). I'm usually through faster than anyone else, since there are so few of us on any given flight. But even so, passport control is FAST. Almost as fast as the EU: I've experienced fast passport control (i.e. pretty much a walk-through) in Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Paris. The fingerprinting and face photographing sucks and makes me mad. But it is really quick.
3. Outbound security is relatively strict, but also quick. A breeze compared to the U.S., Canada, the U.K., or, ugh, Charles de Gaulle (they confiscate soft cheeses in carry-on now, but you're never informed of this when you check your luggage for the flight that connects you to France). That's right, France, I'm going to blow up your plane with my Camembert!
4. I much prefer flying into and out of Narita than I do flying in or out of any international airport in North American, France, or the U.K.
Actually, the Case Law's iffy at best...mostly because nobody mounted a Fourth Amendment challenge to most of the stuff done. It treads upon Constitutional Protections if you're crossing into the US as a US Citizen (Fourth Amendment rights, actually...and I should know, this little bit of law just helped me recently...)
The funny thing about this is that a really smart bad guy could put his nefarious doomsday plans on some good old fashioned microfilm. They're not gonna search that old toothpaste tube. I'm guessing that 90% of today's customs officials don't even know what microfilm is.
I have entered Japan 2 times in the last 2 years and i never get searched when i enter the country. They just ask, "Do you have anything dangerous?", reply "No" and they say "go on".
Never been in USA so i cannot compare but from what have read, it seems really painful.
Ditto, twice to Japan in the past 12 months from UK and not a problem or a peep. UK border on the other hand are starting to lose the plot as well. Im willing to bet they wont be far behind the USA in their paranoid delusions of terrorist threats. Every time I travel outbound it takes longer to get thru UK customs, Im betting they have a tombola of searches that they pick from at random on a daily basis... "OK people, today we will be checking belly buttons for a new form of explosive posing as cheesy lint.. stay sharp!'
I've been in the USA after 9/11 enough times to see how the government and media use terror to whip up the Americans into a blind frenzy of fear where they are willing to give up all their rights for some smoke n mirrors perception that they are safe, and they lap it up unquestioningly. Take the Brits tho, with their 7/7 (they couldnt afford the extra 2/4!), it was more of just an annoyance / inconvenience to us getting to/from work and hate to say it, but a lot of us just got on with our lives... but that doesnt stop our gov from trying it on with the FUD spreading... *sigh*
Up until now I would have said that altho the customs in US can be long-winded, they've never really put me off visiting my family and friends.... that was before this laptop/cellphone/disk seizing crap started. I have nothing to hide myself, and my youtube browsing history is probably the most interesting thing on my laptop, but FFS if Im only gonna spend a week or 2 in Tennessee WTF!? All I want to do is call my sis to tell her Ive landed safely, check my mail, sync my phone, and let friends know Im in town while Im there!
Seriously, like some have said: Smart criminals slip thru coz they dont waste time carrying this kinda crap around, everything is over SSH and more. Whats to stop them writing it all on paper? Thats gonna be the last place 'suck'urity is gonna look, especially if its in the checked baggage? Going old school... that's the ticket. Worked in Independence Day didn't it? Maybe they should also look into carrier pidgeons now as well?
I can only hope that this nonsense all backfires dramatically. Maybe one day we can just go back to living our lives how they should be lived, and not how the governments think we should live. (Yeah right!)
I'll tell you what, I haven't been to the Mexican border, I have flown out to Honduras a few times though. There, your bags are checked by hand with you watching. No muss, no fuss. If I cross the border and they demand to check my camera, cell phone or notebook (think the idiot minimum wage guy would know what to do on Linux or the Mac OS?), then I will watch you do it, no matter the time it takes you to do it. It might inconvenience you and me, but nobody touches my equipment unless I trust them. I have a problem with someone nosing through my stuff. Especially a minimum wage probably discontented worker looking to make some extra cash. Thanks but no thanks. It might take me 30 days or longer, and I'll make sure I enjoy every day of it. All hail the iron fist of the Feds!
How does getting yelled at and being treated like a criminal help? You still go through security, your liquids are checked (they have machines that determine the chemical makeup). No knives allowed. The only difference between a domestic flight in the US and in Japan is the need of an ID and being treated with respect.
Now this is a corvette.
I've not been to Japan, but I've heard it's a treat there too.
Yes, it is. I get in line, show my passport, get my photo and fingerprints taken (this is new, and was implemented in response to the US system), get my bags, hand my card to customs, tell them I don't have any drugs, and walk into the terminal.
Only once has anyone gone through my bags, and it was after a winter of backpacking around Asia, which showed up on my passport as going in and out of China a few times in a few weeks.
My laptop or other devices have never been checked, and I've never heard of them checking them.
On the contrary, when I go back to my home country of the US, I am made to feel like a threat. Paramilitary immigration and customs officers bark orders at me, and one time tried to separate my Japanese wife from me and question her about why she only had $5 for a 3-week visit (joint bank account in the US with her American husband, morons--ever heard of an ATM?). My stuff is riffled through every time, and they have on several occasions destroyed my belongings with their crude handling (scratched an otherwise perfect guitar that I was selling, and put a bottle of shampoo that they had opened back in the bag WITHOUT SCREWING THE TOP ON). --All without my having any recourse to the law.
I've been in and out of China--a totalitarian regime--and it is far, far more pleasant than the US.
I almost never go back to see friends and family anymore--and, believe it or not, a part of the reason for that is the shitty treatment I get from my countrymen at the border.
What? That helps calm my nerves. Knowing they are grilling a nice guy like me *must* mean they are catching LOTS of terrists! I can even sleep on planes now, knowing that they catch all of the terrorists.
While I find sexual acts on children despicable and inexcusable, I am sick and tired of seeing my civil liberties eroded away by the same excuse over and over again.
It does not even help! One can put any questionable content on a memory stick and mail it across countries. If the content is encrypted one doesn't even have to worry about it being intercepted. If it is intercepted, just send another one.
In fact that is probably what I am going to do with private photographs/movies from now on (my parents and I live in different countries). The border agents then can nose around on my laptop all the want, without invading my private life. The point is that I should not have to do that.
Any terrorist actually caught during a border search is likely too stupid to carry out said terrorist act anyway.
Two things:
1) Who modded this flamebait??? It really is their country, and we (the US) really did steal it, and the hispanic population really is rapidly expanding, which really is just a return to who lived on those areas originally, and by all natural rights. That's not flamebait; that's basic American history and current demographics. Geez!
2):
I figure by 2100 in many areas of Texas, New Mexico and California, English will be taught as a second language.
Um, it already is? I have a friend who is a music teacher at an all-Spanish-speaking school in Colorado. This isn't one of those immersion schools for non-native speakers of Spanish (although we have some of those too); this is a school where 100% of the students are studying English as a second language on top of their regular studies. There are schools like that all over the US.
Wait a minute... Do you mean "foreign" or "second?" "Second" language is used in any context where the population at large uses one language, and that is not the native language of the student. "Foreign" is when no one uses it, but students learn the language to communicate with people from other countries. English will never be a "foreign" language in the US, I think, but it is already a second language for many, many students, and has been for generations (like my grandfather, who, until he started school, only spoke German--parents came from the old country and spoke enough to run their bakery and that's it).
Personally, as a language teacher myself, I don't see what the big deal is. The norm around the world is to learn and use multiple languages, not just one. The US is strange in that so many of its citizens are native speakers of the de facto national language. I would actually like to see English codified as the official language of the US, which does not exclude other languages--particularly Spanish--from being served in areas where it makes sense; it just would determine that all official documents must be available in English, and that only the English versions were binding. Communities need to serve their populace as best they can, and offering services in Spanish in much of the US seems like a no-brainer to me. But I think that it's important that we finally declare English as the official language.
The real difference is going to be when you cross the border driving. There's been waaay too many documented cases of people buying guns (and I mean big guns, like assault rifles) legally in the US with their God-given 2nd ammendment right and smuggling them to the drug cartels here.
Searching "laptops, digital cameras, cell phones and any other electronics on your person or in your vehicle" will stop the gun runners how?.....
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
USCBP agents can demand your password and detain you until you give it, almost certainly.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Because when you stay at home, your civil liberties will never be taken away and you'll never be unlawfully detained. I'm in the UK an... wp09hn9
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Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
The real difference is going to be when you cross the border driving. There's been waaay too many documented cases of people buying guns (and I mean big guns, like assault rifles) legally in the US with their God-given 2nd ammendment right and smuggling them to the drug cartels here.
Searching "laptops, digital cameras, cell phones and any other electronics on your person or in your vehicle" will stop the gun runners how?.....
Apparently compression has made an awful lot of progress lately.
On the back trip they'll obviously be looking for mexican_family.tar.gz
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I am in Europe, but they copycat anything from the US, good or bad. Like after Bill Clinton's adventure any self-respecting boss or boss-let had to have his Monica.
It disturbs me that someone will be opening my folders. I myself just barely manage to bring some resemblance of an order in my numerous files, and my livelihood depends on them. If some unqualified soldier starts browsing and inadvertently brings havoc into the system, it may destroy my position.
I think criminals will use miniaturized memory cards, which have the size less than a small coin. The memory card in a digital camera is 16 GB and it can be just pasted with a scotch in some obscure compartment of a car or suitcase. It will be practically undetectable, and 16 GB is 20 full size movies.
Why search an obvious HD, but not search for a minuscule memory cards (where minuscule is only a physical size, but the memory volume is enormous and growing)? Is it a security theater to get me reassured?
Or will they ban miniature memory cards too, like they did the torrent traffic? Maybe it would be a better idea to try to stop these people getting angry in the first place? Or what to do?
But I am sure that a memory card is practically impossible to find if hidden in a car by a creative individual.
... hasn't been doing this for ages, so what's the big deal?
print out a bunch of photographs on a photo printer that have had the information hidden in the image (as in stenography). The analog nature makes it a little trickier compared to the techniques used for png, gif and jpg. But it is possible.
Get a laser with some precision controls and make your own microdots. then you can just stick them on your $20 bills or whatever.
While not quite a microdot, a 1200 dpi printer I suppose could encode 75-150 bytes per inch(one or two dots per bit) which is not much but could be read back on a 2400 dpi or 3200 dpi scanner. Of course using a lot of redundancy (hamming code or whatever) would improve reliability make it practical.
But the point being, if you didn't catch it from my original post, that the idea that searching electronic devices for information is done to find criminals and protect the borders is a fabrication. It is obvious that anyone serious about information smuggling could subvert their attempts readily. I don't have any solid proof for the real reason behind all this, but I think a simple thought experiment has shown that this is a cover for something worse or the system is operated by incompetents that cannot even listen to advisers on the pointlessness of such an endeavor.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sad, how Mexico now slowly also approaches US conditions. But I thought the "drug war" excuse was gone... So what is it now? Terrorists from the north? Cheney with full tank armor plating around his wheelchair of doom, going wild, shooting rockets, and harassing constitutional documents, in Tijuana?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Dunno if your Patriot Act allows it, though...
It appears to allow whatever they want to do.
Nobody expected the American Inquisition, but here it is...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Maybe they should also look into carrier pigeons now as well?
I work at Telkom, you insensitive clod!
I didn't give any advice. I merely said there were limits and that the constitution would have some legal standing for US citizens entering the US.
To be precise I said there were laws, but never said what those laws were. I am not a lawyer but I do know a bit about how the US legal system should work, but not necessarily how it does work.
If you are worried about the exact laws that would apply to you should you cross a particular border you should ask a lawyer or representative of the government you are crossing over into, and not slashdot.
http://instantrimshot.com/
Notice YRO is "Your rights, online" not "Your online rights". The missing comma has always been implied...
That was my last experience of arriving at Heathrow, direct from Bangkok, two and a half years ago.
There was immigration control, with the expected passport check, but Customs? Nothing. No one.
The face of 'evil' is always the face of total need
Ireland is obviously letting the pedophile terrorists win.
I once flew from Havana to Heathrow and tried to find someone to pay the duty on the rum I was carrying. I ended up importing it illegally.
Modded 3- Informative?
You are factually incorrect. American citizens are subject to search when entering the U.S.
I mean you can't be too careful, I mean the microSD in a typical phone could smuggle well over a million copies of the U.S. Bill of Rights over the border to Mexico. Someone over there might actually read the thing.
"you can't stop the signal, Mal..."
There's been waaay too many documented cases of people buying guns (and I mean big guns, like assault rifles) legally in the US with their God-given 2nd ammendment right and smuggling them to the drug cartels here.
When you say "and I mean big guns like assault rifles", it pretty much shows that you know nothing about firearms and US laws.
The articles you link to all cite the "90% of guns traced to US" lie. 90% of the guns that are submitted for tacing are from the US. Only a small number of guns are submitted for tracing, because there's no point in submitting AKs from China and North Korea with no serial number to the ATF for tracing.
Fully automatic guns (pull the trigger and they rattle off bullets) require a federal license with large yearly fees and an anal probe from the BATFE. They are rarely sold here and are exceptionally expensive. Even the gangs here don't buy them legally here. They smuggle them from overseas - it's way cheaper. I'm behind a censor here, but google "BATFE" and "class III license" to see what it takes to buy a machine gun.
What the ill-informed such as yourself call "big guns - like assault rifles" are military-looking guns that have been altered so that they fire one bullet at a time. To make them or import them here, they must not be alterable to fully automatic fire.
The articles you quote suggest a flood of guns from the US using faulty statistics, then go on to list a bunch of confiscated weapons that you cannot easily buy here. You can't get grenades and rocket launchers here. If they are able to smuggle those in from the third world, why would they pay US prices for rifles that aren't even full-auto?
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/04/02/myth-percent-guns-mexico-fraction-number-claimed/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/apr/16/barack-obama/Obama-claims-90-percent-guns-used-Mexico/
âoeWhen goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.â
Claude Frederic Bastiat 1801 - 1850
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
You don't have to wait, there are large parts of the SW United States that already have massive Mexican-American majorities and where most people speak Spanish at home. Los Angeles is about 50% Hispanic and growing (although not all are Mexican). And even if your prediction of Spanish-speaking majorities occurs across large parts of the country, they will still be Americans speaking Spanish. Or do you not consider Mexican-Americans to be citizens?
I had to read half-way through the entire article before figuring out which border this actually applied to. It's not the Mexican border, but rather the USA border. You know, where people enter the USA.
Duh.
She was offered the option of traveling to her destination without her laptop or submitting to the search.
This constitutes and egregious violation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment and needs to be challenged at the highest levels.
I can only say that the U.S. is becoming more and more what the U.S.S.R. once was. Think of how much actual freedom has eroded and the past two decades and start fighting it.
*** Don't be dull.***
enrob it in some plastic which is not attacked by body fluid, and hide it in body cavity... Like the mouth. As far as I can tell custom do not (yet) control your mouth. And a SD card can be very well hidden on the side of your jaw.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
What the ill-informed such as yourself call "big guns - like assault rifles" are military-looking guns that have been altered so that they fire one bullet at a time. To make them or import them here, they must not be alterable to fully automatic fire.
hahahahahahaha
You're kidding, right? All single-barrel guns only shoot one bullet at a time silly!
In all seriousness though, "not alterable" doesn't mean what you think it means. Go to a few gun shows and you will see that they sell kits to "fix" your old pre-1994-assult-weapons-ban gun... It doesn't mean it is legal for you to modify it, but you know damn well people do it. The ban also expired in 2004 which means that in addition to the pre-1994 guns that fire "exactly the same ammo at exactly the same rate of fire" as military versions, you can also now get others that are fully automatic, but not quite as quick (still fixable with that nice gun show kit though).
I do agree about one thing though, those aren't big guns. This is a big gun.
Get a web developer
I didn't give any advice. I merely said there were limits and that the constitution would have some legal standing for US citizens entering the US.
Again, you're 100% wrong. There are no such protections at the border. Whether there should be or not is a completely different discussion, but as things stand ICE can paw through your belongings with impunity when you try to cross.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Each of your citations have issues:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/10/nation/na-guns10 [latimes.com]
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Paul Helmke.
Two well known sensationalists in the field of lies and misleading information on firearms.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/28/AR2007102801654.html [washingtonpost.com]
Corrupt customs officials help smuggle weapons into Mexico, earning as much as $1 million for large shipments, police here say.
Hmmm...
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/03/26/kennedy.townsend.guns/index.html [cnn.com]
Weapons smuggling: An article in Section A on Aug. 10 about guns being smuggled into Mexico and used by narcotics traffickers said that "high-powered automatic weapons and ammunition are flowing virtually unchecked from border states into Mexico." The guns purchased in the U.S. are semiautomatic or conventional firearms
Yes, that's right. No assault rifles. In case you didn't know, the preferred terminology is "military-style-assault-weapons which are, in fact, no more "deadly" than your run-of-the-mill hunting rifle.
By the way, this is a big gun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-198
The websites you quote speak volumes about the credibility of your arguments
No sig for the moment.
Well, the US side of the border now wants to search "laptops, digital cameras, cell phones and any other electronics on your person or in your vehicle", as described in the article.
What we want on our side of the border is for our authorities to enforce our own gun laws and stop and search people coming from the US into Mexico.
No sig for the moment.
Well, the US side of the border now wants to search "laptops, digital cameras, cell phones and any other electronics on your person or in your vehicle", as described in the article.
What we want on our side of the border is for our authorities to enforce our own gun laws and stop and search people coming from the US into Mexico.
So what you are saying is.... It will not stop the gun runners, you were just being (A. sensationalist; B. off topic; C. dumb). pick one.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
Here come the Chinese! Aah! **boogeyboogeyboogey* We're all going to turn yellow! Oh noes!
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek. I do think Mexican Americans, or more broadly, Latino-Americans, will at some point along those states that were once part of Mexico, come to exceed strictly English-speaking Americans. I doubt at the end of the day that they will want to rejoin Mexico (unless Mexico radically changes over the next century, to my mind the damned place seems primed for another revolution). But at some point the rest of the US is going to have to deal with a population that while bilingual, will be speaking Spanish as a first language. That means all the anglophillic nonsense that the racist/anti-migrant segments of the Republican party have been trumpeting are going to have to go the way of the do-do. The reality is that a big chunk of the US stretching from Florida to the Pacific is going to be as much a part of Latin America as it is of North America.
As to Mexico itself, well it seemed to be crawling out of the mud in the 1990s, but the place is rapidly becoming a basket case again. That's going to mean even more Mexicans trying to get the hell out (and who, exactly, can blame them). But then again, that's been the American story since the Ellis Island days. I see this hatred against illegal immigrants to be pretty much the same as the good ol' Protestant Anglo-Saxon response to all them Irish, Italians and assorted other groups, predominantly Catholic, who flooded into North America in the early part of the 20th century. I think when historians look back on this period, they will simply see it as the latest iteration of a trend that started with a million Irishmen fleeing the Potato Famine in the 1840s.
Everyone has trumpeted Obama as the first black president, and there's no doubt that that is an enormous achievement. But the next big step is going to be a president of Latino heritage. If the Republicans had any goddamned brains at all, they'd tune out the racists, cozey up to the Mexican and Latin American communities and start looking for presidential material there, as opposed to going in the opposite direction and looking for someone that will please the bigots. Want a real competition to Obama in 2012, imagine a Latino candidate.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I am a gun guy. Just dropping in to say the parent post is 100% correct.
Assault rifle =! machine gun
They may look the same but they function very differently.
While I wouldn't rely too heavily on Fox News myself, and I'm not sure about politifact, I've found factcheck.org to be quite objective in, well, checking facts. If you read their report, you'll see that they provide a detailed breakdown of why the 90% number is inaccurate. I think you'd do well to read that one, at least - I'd never heard of these statistics before, and I found it interesting.
In all seriousness though, "not alterable" doesn't mean what you think it means. Go to a few gun shows and you will see that they sell kits to "fix" your old pre-1994-assult-weapons-ban gun.
The ban also expired in 2004
Fully automatic weapons that fire continuously have been virtually banned (again, see the federal criteria for owning one - "class III license") since the gun control act of 1934.
None of this has anything to do with the Clinton gun ban, which banned guns that look like military rifles, along with some accoutrements such as bipods, bayonets, scary looking stocks, etc.
Yes, you can alter them to add the bayonets and bipods back. But the guns sold here must have a reciever that cannot fit a fully-automatic bolt group.
You told me to go to a gun show. I'm a collector and I've been to dozens. How many have you visited? Have you ever asked a dealer what you need to do to purchase a fully-automatic rifle or machine gun?
I'd really encourage anyone with strong opinions on the subject to do so, and get some first hand knowledge. Every now and then someone will agree to come with me, and when they talk to the dealers and ask what the laws are, they are generally quite surprised.
It's worse than that. It's 90% of those that are submitted and successfully traced.
The last time I flew into Heathrow (about two years ago now) you walked through what was obviously the customs section and there was nobody there, just as you say. However, and this is god's honest truth, if you looked carefully you could see a sign which said
"If you have anything to declare please pick up the phone"
And there was a telephone below.
I would love to know how many people actually did that.
We actually lived in the US for a little over a year, many years ago - left the DC area a few months before Richard M. Nixon did - and someday we'd like to visit again, but not as long as the US has, in effect, a state of emergency.
Actually what I find kind of interesting is that bit by bit, generation by generation, Mexicans are in fact retaking a fair chunk of their country that the US stole from them through some trumped up wars (including a delightful little proxy war in Texas).
Only if you look at it in strictly racial/nationalist terms and you buy into the race = national identity myth. Most of the citizens of Hispanic descent who live in those states do not want to import the political culture of Mexico into the US and would, in fact, fight like hell to prevent it from coming to where they live. Most Mexicans who spend more than five years in the US (legally or not) really don't want to go back to Mexico - basically because they've become accustomed to the rule of law and much lower levels of official corruption.
I once had a Mexican nationalist meet me in Tucson with the phase, "I want my country's land back." To which I responded, "You think the Mexican government would manage it better than the US government does?" The topic didn't come up again.
Offtopic, I guess:
Backpacking through Asia sounds pretty awesome, and I'd love to visit Japan. It's too bad neither will probably happen for me. I envy those who have, for what I believe would be enlightening and humbling experiences for me. There are a *lot* of cliffs for me to climb before anything like that could ever happen.
I don't even have much experience in the US and I've lived here my whole life. I have a hard time finding spiritual experiences that apply to me. The only time I felt a spiritual awakening that I didn't believe was false was when I went to Jamaica for a week. It was practically magical in the most spiritual sense of the word, something I feel would also kindle inside me upon visits to Asia and Japan.
But, no car, no license, no job, still live with parents at 32, hardly any work experience, no friends (well, 1 who lives over 100 miles away), no college education, and I'm basically a hikikimori, a social outcast, human failure, an opiate addict (for 15 years) with abnormal sexuality, dealing with addictive behaviors, avoidant behaviors, social anxiety, general anxiety, general depression.
I'm never going to live in Japan.
One of my dreams is to at least get some sort of job that I could bear, and then save up money over a few years just so I could visit Tokyo (and as far into outlying areas, and as many temples and interesting spots as I can) for a week or so. Probably isn't worth the five grand or whatever it would take, but I have to have a dream.
As for being on subject, I haven't traveled on an airplane since before 9/11. Traveled with my brother by car to Vegas (from Houston) instead and it was a blast (mainly on his money, and we actually made a profit from the casinos).
Should I tag this as Post Anonymously? Might be best. Everybody hates an addict.
Has that been taken to the supreme court?
100% is a big number my friend, and in the US "should be" can and often does make up part of the law; in fact it is part of the reason we have such things as right to legal council and trials by jury.
Yes it has, many times. Try doing some research before spouting off about things about which you are painfully unaware.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
...is she could have found some way of hiding the data so it wouldn't get inspected, and its somewhat probable her adversary in court could have accused her of smuggling sensitive data across the border.
1934 didn't ban machine guns, it just taxed them - heavily. If you get an AR15 and a Dias from between 1982 and 1985 you can do the conversion pretty easily, but you must of course register the gun as a machine gun etc etc. lots of paperwork and hassle. It is can be done easily other ways including using a pre-81 dias, but it certainly isn't legal since you can't own both... then again if you are running arms to to mexican drug lords you probably are more concerned with "can it be done" than "is it legal". A decent machine shop could make all the parts necessary from specs that can be purchased for under $10 from gun magazines or online. That part can even be done in mexico once they have the weapons. Yes, I know they machine the lowers of the guns differently to make them single fire, but the problem is it isn't different enough to stop organized crime from doing the conversions, and that is the real problem. I'm not against guns, but I think it is only fair to be honest about them.
Get a web developer
While I don't doubt you on that point (I googled it for enlightenment :), I should think that smuggling arms from the US and having techs retrofit them would be an absurd amount of effort and expense for organizations that are already smuggling hand grenades and RPGs in from other countries. (They ain't buying those at US gun shows.)
Unfortunately, there are no detailed reports on the types of weapons and their sources. One note of interest - I had heard that many of the AR's and M16's were actually supplied to the Mexican police and military by the US government, and then stolen by men defecting to the cartels. It would be fascinating to know if that's true. But without more detailed reports from the BATFE it's just heresay.
The original point still stands, though. There is a pretty wide gulf between "90% of all guns" and "90% of guns submitted and successfully traced".
That's true. It isn't all that easy to trace a gun with a filed serial and no other clues found in a different country.
Get a web developer