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Are the TSA's New Electronic Device Screenings Necessary?
First time accepted submitter Amanda Parker writes In July the US warned of a terrorism risk which led countries, such as France and the UK, to step up their security screening for flights to the US. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson directed the TSA to implement enhanced security measures. In his statement on 6 July, Johnson warned that passengers could also be asked to "power up some devices, including cell phones" and stated that "powerless devices will not be permitted on board the aircraft". In light of the US Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) recent tightening of airport security to include stricter screening of electronic devices, is the TSA right to be cautious or have its actions caused unnecessary hassle for passengers?
being asked to power up devices is not new at all. I had to power up my laptop on a flight sometime Fall 1998.
Israel doesn't do the silly bullshit that the TSA does
Unless you are Jewish, and flaunt it, Israel's screenings are much worse. My friend (Vietnamese) and I (Russian/Polish-Norwegian) were detained and repeatedly questioned overnight. During the initial part of the detention, they removed underwear from our baggage one piece at a time, ran a scanner over it while holding it in the air. The Palestinian business man next to me told me to ignore them. He said the Israelis were trying to humiliate us, and ignoring them was the only way to get them to stop. His advice was good.
Our baggage was held for days by Israeli security services after we finally escaped that hell hole of a country. But, stuff was stolen, or in the case of my camera, returned completely destroyed, in pieces-- 3 months later via post. We had nothing when we arrived in Rome, so we slept in the airport for 3 days until our things were finally released to us.
They photocopied my entire journal. Copied all my contacts including a friend's in Egypt who was only recently released from prison over his writing. His contact info combined with my journal entries made me fear for his safety for the next year, since Israel and Egypt's gov't had very close relations at the time.
Our mistake was to try to check our bags in a few hours early, and go get lunch before our flight.
No, Israel is a racist apartheid shit hole. Nothing about it is worth emulating. Certainly not its security apparatus.
Covering asses? I hope you are right but the increased militarization of police forces and training the DHS, ATF, CIA, FBI, and every other government agency that people that are liberty minded are highly suspect as "terrorists" and those same government agencies stockpiling 2Billion rounds of ammo and of course the government continuing to spy on everyone locally makes me think of more nefarious purposes.
The old saying "Hope for the best but plan for the worst." should be forefront in everyone's mind today.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
OMG this a thousand times over.
You have no need to travel with HIPAA PHI on your laptop. There is another way somewhere: the easy solution is to VPN in to your office and download files as you need them across the VPN. Return any changes to your server via VPN. Do NOT leave data on your hard drive. There are free, open-source VPN servers and every operating system (even your phone) can connect to them. There is NO excuse not to use it.
The same goes for credit card info, FERPA-protected data, etc. What happens when you get mugged and the perps walk off with your laptop? Data that your company can get sued over does not rest on machines that you travel with. It lives encrypted on a server at work, where the company IT looks after it. It transits through encrypted connections to your laptop, and it stays there only so long as is necessary to perform the tasks you're authorized to perform on it. It transits back across encrypted connections to the home office server where it lives. No one with reasonable means (i.e. everyone but determined, state-sponsored actors) be able to eavesdrop on your lawsuit-worthy data in transit or steal it at rest. Doing anything less puts your company at risk.
This isn't because of James Bond or NSA or China or the boogeyman who probably doesn't care that much about your silly health data, but because of the street-level thug who is real and is hanging outside your Chicago hotel at night and will end up fencing your laptop to someone who knows someone who will buy data. You will be blamed for the breach, and the fact of your mugging will garner you no sympathy or protection: you risked company data by traveling with it because you could not be bothered to follow common sense protocols, and your risk ended badly for everyone involved.
If your company's IT staff is having you travel around with PHI on your laptop, they should be replaced.
http://deviating.net/firearms/... Airlines really really REALLY do not want to lose a bag with a "gun" in it. and just for a Chapter and Verse copy of this see http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-in... so if you are traveling with valuables (nice costumes of some sort??) slip a pistol into the bag (and properly declare same).