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Judge: Warrantless Airport Seizure of Laptop 'Cannot Be Justified'

Posted by Soulskill on from the digital-is-different dept.

SonicSpike writes with news of a ruling in U.S. District Court that the seizure and search of a man's laptop without a warrant while he was in an airport during an international border crossing was not justified. According to Judge Amy Jackson's ruling (PDF), the defendant was already the subject of an investigation when officials used his international flight as a pretext for rifling through his laptop. The government argued that a laptop was simply a "container," and thus subject to warrantless searches to protect the homeland. But the judge said the search "was supported by so little suspicion of ongoing or imminent criminal activity, and was so invasive of Kim's privacy and so disconnected from not only the considerations underlying the breadth of the government's authority to search at the border, but also the border itself, that it was unreasonable."

She also noted that laptop searches may require more stringent legal support, since they are capable of holding much more private information than a box or duffel bag. And while a routine search involves a quick look through a container, this search was quite different: "[T]he agents created an identical image of Kim's entire computer hard drive and gave themselves unlimited time to search the tens of thousands of documents, images, and emails it contained, using an extensive list of search terms, and with the assistance of two forensic software programs that organized, expedited, and facilitated the task."

10 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Eh by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've never seen where lack of justification ever stopped the government.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  2. More hoops before travelling through USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The moral of this story is:
    1) The TSA and assorted related three letter agencies don't give a crap about due process or warrants anyways
    2) If you're travelling through the USA (into, out of, or stoppover in), either don't bring any electronics at all, or only bring freshly wiped stuff with absolutely no personal data on them. Blob up your personal files into a passworded file somewhere on the 'net that you can download when you get where you're going, and don't carry the URL for it on your person.

    1. Re:More hoops before travelling through USA by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Interesting

      no, you miss the point. travel 'empty'. a plain fresh install with no URL history or anything on it. ie, you do a fresh build, you create a backup (that's your new image for any new travel) and you travel with a fresh install of linux (ideally not windows) and you remember, in your head, your passwords and key URLs.

      its very sad that its gotton to this. but this is probably the best way to protect yourself and arrive in one piece, unmolested.

      sadly, very few can even do this much. or are willing to do this before they travel.

      I don't believe encrypting a full disk is going to help you and may cause you to be detained (unfairly, but you are not in control, here, realize that). encryption keeps so-called bad guys out, but the real ones to worry about are 'your own people' (so to speak). they won't take no for an answer.

      better to travel with a blank install and keep all your login and history info in your head.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    2. Re:More hoops before travelling through USA by TWX · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It might not be a bad idea to take the computer to a few coffee shops to use their wifi to surf CNN and the BBC and other news websites first, or to at least do this in the originating airport on their wireless to demonstrate that the computer sees casual use. Make it too blank and there's new grounds for suspicion and again, they'll duplicate the disk and attempt to find any deleted files.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:More hoops before travelling through USA by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Informative

      The moral of this story is: 1) The TSA and assorted related three letter agencies don't give a crap about due process or warrants anyways

      The moral of your comment is you can't be bothered to read the fucking article. TSA has nothing to do with it. It's an investigation of a foreign national suspected of violating export laws regarding aerospace hardware with defense implications (accelerometers that can be used in missile guidance systems) to China. The search was carried out by a United States Special Agent, of the DHS Security Investigations Office, not TSA.

      The ruling is actually an interesting read, the long and short of which is that the Government had tons of probable cause. The owner of the laptop had even been arrested previously and given testimony regarding his activities. This reeks of laziness on the part of the Special Agents conducting the investigation; they had more than enough to get a conventional warrant but choose instead of rely on the border search exception. Something tells me they won't be repeating that mistake in the future.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    4. Re:More hoops before travelling through USA by cdrudge · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Erase your hard drive with a multi-pass secure wiping program before restoring the fresh image on it. Yeah yeah yeah it may not be perfect and theoretically some magical device might be able to pick up variations in temporal magnetic quantum flux in adjacent bits and recover data blah blah blah. But if they go to that level to recover your data, you were fucked anyways.

      If they ask why it's such a fresh install, you just simply state that you access everything via VPN and you only travel with a fresh laptop in case it's lost, stolen, detained, confiscated, etc and you don't lose anything and everything on it while you're traveling.

    5. Re:More hoops before travelling through USA by TheCarp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hoenstly, I feel the same way about it. But if its any consolation, I don't feel I pay taxes so much as they just take them. Hell, their "share" of my money gets allocated before I even get it....I have to ask for a portion of it back every year.

      Yet all they ever want to ask me is which face I like, they never once asked me if stomping on liberty was ok, they never once asked me if I wanted to pay for their oil wars or their torture program. I would gladly pay taxes to put every fucking torturer in prison and keep them their till they die of natural causes, but, nobody wants to give me that opportunity.

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    6. Re:More hoops before travelling through USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you want to arrive unmolested you might try not taking part in an ongoing criminal conspiracy

      Also, you'll need to avoid:
      + having a name remotely similar to someone who is part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy,
      + driving a vehicle the same model and color as someone who is part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy,
      + being mentioned in a communication by someone who is part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy, even via typo,
      + looking vaguely like someone who is part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy in the eyes of the half-blind TSA agent,
      + looking like a brown person
      + having a nice looking new computer that a TSA agent just plain feels like stealing.

      All of those things are reasons that either we've seen articles posted here about illegal seizures being justified by, or that people I know myself got "grabbed off the street" for. (That would be the same model/color vehicle one. The 60 year old woman they grabbed was not allowed to contact anyone until she was released with an "oops, license plate was wrong, and we were looking for a 20 year old guy anyways" 12 hours of interrogation later.)

      As long as you manage all of that, AND have nothing to hide, I suppose you're totally safe as can be! (At least until you're not.)

    7. Re:More hoops before travelling through USA by Falos · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "You'll be harassed for it." is a bad symptom.

      "If we can't use justice, we'll just use bullshit. We don't need to be 'right'." kind of demands to be contested on sheer principle. No, not everyone can afford to do so, but we can be aware.

  3. Been through it by mnmn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was asked to login into my phone emails and facebook on the laptop flying back to Miami from Bahamas in my private plane.

    4 officers took over an hour going over all pictures in my camera, emails going way way back, friends posts on facebook and facebook messages some over a year old.

    I gave them all access immediately, but then asked about this process and they gave me a CBSA leaflet that explained if I denied them access they will confiscate the device, copy the contents and ship it back to me.

    I got to keep my electronics because I gave them immediate access even though it cost me long distance data plans there.

    Being a Canadian citizen, I dont think I have any teeth to complain to anyone but our own politicians here. And all they can do is make life miserable for US citizens entering Canada in retaliation.

    I'm just so glad I havent cracked any stupid jokes regarding violence, drugs or terrorism in the last 1-2 years in any facebook messages or comments.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky