Slashdot Mirror
Federal Judge Limits DHS Laptop Border Searches
Declan McCullogh is reporting at CNET that a federal district court judge has rebuked the Department of Homeland Security, "which had claimed it can seize a traveler's laptop and search it six months later without warrant." As described in the article, DHS policies have been stacked against travelers entering the US, including citizens returning from abroad: "There's no requirement that they be returned to their owners after even six months or a year has passed, though supervisory approval is required if they're held for more than 15 days. The complete contents of a hard drive or memory card can be perused at length for evidence of lawbreaking of any kind, even if it's underpaying taxes or not paying parking tickets." This ruling does not address immediate searches at the border, but says that DHS cannot hold computers for indefinite searching, as in the case to hand, concerning a US citizen returning from a trip to Korea, whose laptop was seized and held for months before a search was even conducted on it.
I foresee TrueCrypt's website will be getting a lot of new visitors soon.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
I'm glad to see that the law is finally curtailing some of these absurd laws. For the last bunch of years a bunch of draconian policies have been deemed legal "because we say so". It's about fucking time the courts started bitch-slapping these down.
America has become absurd, and many people simply won't go there while it's like this.
I think every country should start doing exactly the same things to all US citizens. Let's see how long it takes before Americans start to complain about being fingerprinted, cavity searched, and arbitrarily detained.
I like most Americans, but your fucking government is out of control.
But for many people the problem is NOT that they have something incriminating on their laptops, but the fact they are taken for soooooooooooo long and not returned. TrueCrypt folders or whatever would most likely cause the powers-that-be to keep the laptop even longer.
Careful What You Wish For....
Rights are meant to protect you from a corrupt government. It is your duty as an American to resist a corrupt government just as the red coats were removed from this country by force after being told to leave so much for 'violence is never the answer.' Laws that make criminals easier to catch make revolutionaries against corrupt government easier to catch and the only one interested in that are the entrenched corrupt government. Liberties are meant to defend you from your government and should NEVER be surrendered. Violent revolution adds a physical cost to corrupt governance.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
Yeah see, that's where you are wrong. I don't mind inspecting, even reasonable searches, but seizing anything? At least there needs to be a reason like it's contraband or illegal. Seizing equipment because they can is the same thing as stealing private property, and as far as i know that's covered by the 5th amendment of the constitution. You want to take my property? Fine, just provide me with enough cash so that my property, time spent on it and sensitive information on it is completely compensated for.
Thank goodness Obama has done so much to fix all that.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
It scares me how scared people are that they think this is rational behavior. The "reasonable suspicion" that the border agent had at the scene was:
Then they searched his laptop 3 times and found a single image of what appeared to be an adolescent girl naked on a beach, so they arrested him for possessing and transporting child pornography, and since it's federal, he's going to PMITA prison.
Rights are meant to protect you from a corrupt government. It is your duty as an American to resist a corrupt government just as the red coats were removed from this country by force after being told to leave so much for 'violence is never the answer.' Laws that make criminals easier to catch make revolutionaries against corrupt government easier to catch and the only one interested in that are the entrenched corrupt government. Liberties are meant to defend you from your government and should NEVER be surrendered. Violent revolution adds a physical cost to corrupt governance.
According to the Constitution there are rights we cannot be forced to give up because they were not given to us by men.
But they were sure taken by force by weak minded men
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
No CDs?? I would like to see the rule on that, that would mean you can't bring music CDs, and you might as well not have CDR disks anyway, if you can't use them while you are out. This doesn't sound legit.
what part of DHS does?
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I am not going to defend the Bush administration. But it is worth noting that Obama has been President for 1 1/2 years already and he's done pretty much nothing to roll that back. Bush hating made sense back in 2007 while we was still enacting crap like this, but its only fair to also be critical of the guy who came into office promising "change" and has instead protected the status quo (in terms of fascist analogies towards government).
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I'd say searching anyone's laptop as an unreasonable search and seizure, unless someone beat someone's head with the laptop and the laptop in question becomes a murder weapon.
We need judges who uphold the constitution and which deliver practical rulings to make us safer. All this does is further "legitimize" what should be an illegal practice by the DHS.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
>>>It still scares me to see how badly the Bush administration has damaged democracy and the American constitution
Yes George Duh Bush is a git, but Obama signed the Patriot Act Renewal bill, so now he's just as much of a git. Obama should have kept his promise and let the Patriot Act expire. Obama's other broken promises:
1 - Stop snatching people off streets. Provide a Right to fair trial. - (REALITY: We no longer have Miranda rights even for U.S. citizens.) (Can be held indefinitely w/o trial)
2 - Right to Privacy - (They now spy on us via warrantless wiretaps and track our cellphones) (Patriot Act renewed by Obama.)
3 - No interrogation. Close Guantanamo. - (Revoked - now they interrogate American citizens too.)
4 - End the war. - (Now it's been extended two more years.)
So now we've had three shitty presidents in a row.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
They weren't taken by force.
They were gleefully surrendered by frightened cowards.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
There is NO WAY that Obama was worse than Hillary (who fully approved the invasion of Iraq without looking over the evidence) or John Edwards (willing to be nominated while he was having a reckless affair, which shows how much he values honesty *and* the efforts of all working for him).
Simply not possible.
What I think is going on here, is that Obama is being called awful simply because he's not a savior. There are a lot of big messes going on right now, people. Any one of them would be the most notable thing to happen in a presidency - and we're getting all of them at once. He inherits two wars, a historic recession, and now possibly the worst ecological disaster in US history.
McCain would clearly have been worse, just by continuing more of Bush's policies than Obama. I wish Obama were continuing none, but at least now the economy has been pulled back from the cliff.
And above all else, Obama shows himself as better than McCain simply by not foisting on us an obscenity like Palin.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
>>>A country has ALWAYS had the right to fully inspect or seize ANYTHING coming in across its border!
Where in the Constitution was the United States government given that power of unlimited property theft (or limitless imprisonment)??? MY reading of the constitution says the exact opposite (Bill of Rights, sections 5 and 9 and 10).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
As a 2nd Amendment supporter, about the only thing I can say positive about Obama is that he signed the bill into law allowing people to carry firearms in National Parks. Of course, he didn't really want to sign that, but it was attached to some other crap he wanted, so he signed it anyway. So, in a way, Obama has been better for gun-rights supporters than Bush, who never signed any such bill, and also wanted to renew the idiotic "Assault Weapons Ban" (but Congress refused to renew it at the time so he never got to sign it).
As for shitty Presidents in a row, I think it's been a lot more than 3, unless you want to try to segregate them based on their shittiness. Honestly, I can't think of the last GOOD President this country has had. It certainly hasn't been within my lifetime. Eisenhower, perhaps? FDR? Jefferson? Washington? All the ones since the 60s have sucked:
JFK: Bay of Pigs
LBJ: Vietnam war, welfare
Nixon: extending Vietnam war, Watergate
Ford: dunno
Carter: ineffective in mideast crisis
Reagan: massive deficit spending on military, Iran-Contra affair
Bush I: Gulf War I, "read my lips: no new taxes"
Clinton: not horrible, but didn't do anything good either, stupidly got caught getting blowjob from ugly intern with loose lips; signed bill overturning Glass-Steagal Act leading to Mortgage Meltdown
Bush II: Afgh & Iraq wars, Patriot Act, Cheney, Halliburton, Blackwater, ineffective in Katrina, the list goes on and on
Obama: extending Afgh & Iraq wars, ineffective with BP oil spill, promised "change" but everything's still the same as under Bush even though he has a Democrat-controlled Congress to work with
Yes, but that still doesn't make it right or truly legitimate. However, I think we can all agree that the intent of it wasn't to search everything but rather give border officers the authority to search for things like weapons not search computer files.
We need government to be limited and this allows for baseless, pointless searches, both destroying freedom and destroying sane fiscal policies. This must be repealed either at the legislative or by the courts as unconstitutional.
And for those delusional masses who think that this prevents "terrorism", ask yourself, what computer file can be gotten in a foreign country that is illegal that can't be gotten via the internet?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
When you are at the border you are no longer "in" the US. You are "between" countries. You have no rights.
Its like a little mini-gitmo for everyone coming to america!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness---That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it,
Rights are not given to the people by the government, rights are natural, given by God (or nature). Governments are given rights by the people. People, however have natural rights given to them simply by being human. The right to oppose government and the right to not be subjected to unreasonable searches is a natural right, not a right given by government because the government has no authority to give or take away rights.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Ironically, your tagline fits your post "-1 Wrong". The solution you're suggestion is fixing the symptom, NOT the problem. The problem is unreasonable search and seizure. That is the problem we should be tackling.
And you can't even blame "fear of terrorists". We gave away the 4th Amendment for the War on Drugs, and we'll never get it back. The cops can just take your stuff for fun now, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's not even a "border" thing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You do pay your own bills, through taxes. Everyone shares the cost.
Consider the alternative that you're suggesting. You suggest that people who get sick should have to pay for their care, as if it's a good/service that they're consuming. But the sick are in a situation where declining to visit the doctor can put a human life at risk!
The thing that must be avoided at all cost is a financial disincentive to receive medical attention. That's the human rights part- a person in need of care should never have to balance their life against the needs of their family, and recovering people in a hospital should never have the additional burden of worrying about bills. The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply make medical care free, and to bill everyone. Sick people (who have enough to worry about anyway) aren't penalized for things out of their control, which I would think that Free Marketers would understand is pretty sensible from an economic perspective.
Its the same stuff as people calling democrats communist, its just a place-holder for things they dont like, without giving too much though to reality.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
"...quoted high-deductible, catastrophic insurance..."
So...in other words..insurance that's basically useless for:
A) Anyone who has a chronic health problem.
B) Anyone who occasionally visits a doctor for routine health care and check ups
OR
c) for a family or couple.
You left out a very important OR
d) Anyone who wants to pay out of pocket for regular medical expenses.
I'd rather have catastrophic medical coverage and use a health saving account to pay ordinary medical costs. If I were married, even if I had children, I'd still prefer my option. The only thing that would change that is an expensive chronic issue. In which case I'd be willing to pay more for more coverage. Unlike others I believe in personal responsibility.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?