Slashdot Mirror
Tor Developer Detained At US Border, Pressed On Wikileaks
suraj.sun writes with this news from CNET: "A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site — Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor — was detained by US agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference. He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project. Appelbaum, a US citizen, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland Thursday morning, was taken into a room, frisked and his bag was searched. Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is, but he declined to comment without a lawyer present, according to the sources. He was not permitted to make a phone call, they said." Appelbaum told me that he just spoke at length with The New York Times, and quipped that his Defcon talk about Tor was "just fine, until the FBI showed up"; this post will likely be updated with more details.
Update: 08/02 03:59 GMT by T : Here's the NYT's coverage.
The general idea as far as I know is that if you suspect someone has performed a crime, but you do not yet have evidence, then you can detain them for a short while as you gather your evidence preventing him from for instance running as you start to search his backpack.
Police seem to like exploiting their right to detain for frivolous reasons though.
They thought he might be related to a crime (releasing classified documents. Whether you think that should be a crime or not is a different subject). In nearly any country, if the police think you are involved in some crime, they have the power to detain you and ask questions. There is no problem with this: it's what we want our police to be doing, solving crimes. And they do catch real criminals (murderers, etc) at the border. Really, being questioned or detained at a border doesn't make a country fascist.
The biggest news here is that the government is serious about finding who leaked those documents. For some reason that really annoyed someone high up.
The biggest problem with what happened is something that wasn't even mentioned in the summary: they kept three of his cell phones for no apparent reason. The article only presents one side of the story, but assuming it is accurate, this is unjust. They shouldn't keep objects without a reason.
Qxe4
The rules are different at the border. Until you pass the border, they can detain you without arresting you, and they can do so on a mere hunch. You aren't "in the United States" yet, and you do not have your constitutional rights until you are.
Tor was originally developed and funded by the U.S. Navy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)
Gone!
No names were revealed, they were blanked out. Unlike what some "journalist" might have said. Link: http://twitter.com/wikileaks/statuses/20070146579
How often do you travel? I've been pulled aside lots of times and really interrogated. Lots of personal questions: what do I do for a living, why am I traveling to or returning from country x, what do my relatives do for a living, where do they live, and much more. The extensive follow up questions would be even more personal and intrusive. On occasion the questions lasted for more than an hour. I also get chosen for a "random" search nearly every time. Maybe I just look suspicious. I am ghostly white and none of my family comes from the middle east or Southwest Asia. So it is not racial profiling. I can only imagine what it must be like for a foreigner. We don't exactly put our best foot forward at our borders. Much of the world already regards us as vicious, brutish thugs. Or at least our government. It always seems to happen on departure. Maybe because they know they have you over a barrel. They can easily interrogate you long enough to make you miss your flight. On one occasion they only released me just in time. I made the flight, but with only minutes to spare. In fact, it was only when I showed them my ticket and told them that I was about to miss my flight that they finally released me.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Actually you can be detained and searched up to 100 Miles from the Border.... It's the Constitution free zone... Roughly 2/3rd of the US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Funny, I don't see an "except for the border" clause in the Bill of Rights.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
He would have been disappeared in a jail somewhere in Poland or Romania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States
No sig for the moment.
Just no. There is no link anywhere to non-sanitized version. Leaked docs that are posted on wikileaks are sanitized. Taleban is doing what it was doing since 1970s - scaring the shit out of informants though any means necessary, which includes lying. I'm sorry, but you're clueless.
Terrorist attacks happened in Spain, March 11, 2004. That's EU. No "patriot" acts so far. Spain also has a long story of terrorist attacks in Basque province.