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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."
This story has nothing to do with online rights..
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.
Rob Malda better hope they don't decide to check in his pants or they'll discover his micro-penis.
"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.
As long as this keeps Mexicans out of America, I'm all for it.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
It's just a way for the man to try and control you.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 :-)
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.
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.
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'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!
Now this is a corvette.
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.
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!
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
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..."
âoeWhen goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.â
Claude Frederic Bastiat 1801 - 1850
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
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:
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visit randi.org
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.
...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.