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Whitehat Hacker Moxie Marlinspike's Laptop, Cellphones Seized
Orome1 writes "The well-known whitehat hacker and security researcher who goes by the handle Moxie Marlinspike has recently experienced firsthand the electronic device search that travelers are sometimes submitted to by border agents when entering the country. He was returning from the Dominican Republic by plane, and when he landed at JFK airport, he was greeted by two US Customs officials and taken to a detention room where they kept him for almost five hours, took his laptop and two cell phones and asked for the passwords needed to access the encrypted material on them."
They are all under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security whose core mission is to annoy, harass, and humiliate law-abiding citizens while letting the crooks slip through the cracks.
In short, federal policing powers given to the creme de la crap.
I'm still not sure how this doesn't violate the Fourth Amendment. Customs has the right to view your belongings for *safety* reasons, and to ensure that the items you are carrying are not contraband. Does code constitute contraband now? Can you be arrested for having code on your machine? I'm not talking about copyrighted, installed programs.... if something is encrypted, isn't that the same as having a secret in your mind? You know they dumped his drive, but the main question is whether they're allowed to. Isn't that stealing from the passenger then?
Generally, I agree with the mission of customs, inspect stuff coming into the country. But it does not take 5 hours to do so for some guys laptops and a person should not be required to hand over passwords to their own computers.
I would never trust my hardware again once I had handed it over to some customs (or other government agent) goons, and it left my sight. I would rather just remove the hard drive and hand it alone over to them, at least then I wouldn't have to trash the whole thing.
There's really no way to be 100% sure you successfully "re-flashed" the BIOS, or cleaned all hardware as some posters have said they would do. Not to mention: There could be additional hardware installed, 5 hours is a long time...
You could tear your machine apart and inspect it all you want, but it's well known once the enemy has unfettered physical access to a device, all bets are off.
It's about questioning authority. It's about unreasonableness. It's about personal liberty & heavy-handed government. It's about "give an inch and they'll take a yard." (There's more but I hope that's sufficient.)
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
I can't think of a single thing that could be carried on any laptop that warrants the harrassment of millions a year.
Even if a 9/11 scale event happened every single year, it would take more than four years to match a single year of alcohol-related deaths in the U.S.
Data has nothing to do with customs. They are overstepping their jurisdiction just to bully people.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Regardless of how long it takes, there is no reason to search laptops at the border. Anyone truly interested in slyly transmitting data across the US border would never be foolish enough to accompany said data on the trip. It is _trivial_ to transmit data undetected into the US (nice to meet you, internet. how long have you been there?); what justification is there for searching laptops in the first place?
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Other than their recently uncovered fetish for porn the intention of customs is good.
The idea of customs looking for data in the 21st century is laughable, have they not heard of the internet? That's where I import my data from.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Without people looking for vulnerabilities in SSL and publishing the results there would be other people looking for vulnerabilities in SSL and not publishing, just using them to steal.
Security crackers that publish their results are essential to making sure we are really secure, not that we just think we are.
So, Customs tried to erase all of your data on that drive? (If the drive was in a file system that they didn't recognize, like EXT3 or such, then writing files would destroy data)
Actually, why would customs mount the drive in a way that it could be modified at all? It seems like if they can modify it, anything they found would be tainted.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Furthermore, he was being searched by customs after returning from a know drug smuggling point.
Yes, because certain criminals use the Dominican Republic to trade drugs, it's completely reasonable to assume that this person was involved in such activities. After all, nobody would go there to experience the culture, the cuisine, or the wide, sandy, sun-drenched beaches.
However, let's not forget that this guy is an American. There's more drug trading and murder going on in the US than in the Dominican. Obviously that makes him a gun-toting, murdering, drug lord, like all other Americans. I've seen Breaking Bad. The world would no doubt be a safer place if we didn't let Americans get out of the US.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!