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ACLU Sues TSA Over Electronic Device Searches (techcrunch.com)
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration over its alleged practices of searching the electronic devices of passengers traveling on domestic flights. "The federal government's policies on searching the phones, laptops, and tablets of domestic air passengers remain shrouded in secrecy," ACLU Foundation of Northern California attorney Vasudha Talla said in a blog post. "TSA is searching the electronic devices of domestic passengers, but without offering any reason for the search," Talla added. "We don't know why the government is singling out some passengers, and we don't know what exactly TSA is searching on the devices. Our phones and laptops contain very personal information, and the federal government should not be digging through our digital data without a warrant." TechCrunch reports: The lawsuit, which is directed toward the TSA field offices in San Francisco and its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, specifically asks the TSA to hand over records related to its policies, procedures and/or protocols pertaining to the search of electronic devices. This lawsuit comes after a number of reports came in pertaining to the searches of electronic devices of passengers traveling domestically. The ACLU also wants to know what equipment the TSA uses to search, examine and extract any data from passengers' devices, as well as what kind of training TSA officers receive around screening and searching the devices. The ACLU says it first filed FOIA requests back in December, but TSA "subsequently improperly withheld the requested records," the ACLU wrote in a blog post today.
Who would risk "electronic devices" in any setting thats got security and that US courts have talked about what can be searched over generations?
Stop taking private and business related sensitive "electronic devices" to areas where a search can be expected and a search is legal.
US courts have been asked every generation to offer protections, the right to a lawyer, to courts, to not have a bag searched, to not be questioned, to not have electronic devices questioned.
Every generation expects "airports" to be court corrected over searches.
Every generation the US courts return with the concept that bags and devices can be looked at and questioned as part of travel.
Photographs can be looked at. Bags can be looked into.
When a search is expected:
Travel with a computer that has only a few new business and productivity apps on new storage. Nothing to show, nothing to recover, nothing to find.
The computer like device works when asked to show it can be powered on. The productivity apps run, a new document can be created. No other digital files exist on that computer.
A text file with the contact numbers and details for within the company that match up to a web site.
VPN and use other secure methods later to get files and data in another part of the USA, another nation.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I have to travel with my laptop but if I had anything to hide it sure as hell wouldn't be there. Anyone caught at the border with something illegal is an idiot an is destined to be caught.
Why the hell woudn't they encrypt it, stash it on a server, and downloaded when they get home? Alternatively send it to a home server before you even get on the plane? Then, of course, deep-delete everything.
TSA has ONE job. Keep people from bringing dangerous items on planes. The data on electronic devices doesn't qualify as such. This actually makes flying less safe because it distracts TSA from keeping truly dangerous items off of planes.
The TSA's own rules say that you can keep your belongings in sight while they are being inspected. The ACLU said of one woman passenger searched in the security line: "The agents did not ask her to unlock the phones, but took them for at least 10 minutes out of her view, she said, adding that she quickly became distraught." She should have loudly and repeatedly demanded to regain sight of her property. I've done this and gotten them to comply.
The articles referenced by the ACLU are in regards to ehanced X-Ray scanning as well as the usual "swab for explosives residue", I see no articles anywhere online talking about TSA wanting to review files stored on a laptop hard drive.
AC just stop taking phones and laptops loaded up with sensitive business and personal information to areas where a search is expected and legal..
A search of the digital contents of an phone or laptop storage is neither expected, nor legal, when traveling purely domestically from one US airport to another.
I take day trips from a US airport to another US airport (e.g. ORD->LGA) for work, usually flying in early in the morning, attending meetings (at which I need both laptop and phone and the data within), then flying back the same day. I believe my employer would support me if I refused to unlock my encrypted device for it to be searched, and as the device belongs to my employer, they'd be the ones filing a suit if TSA or CBP confiscated the device in order to perform a search.
As my flights for work are always purely domestic travel, such a search is not expected, and probably not legal.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Better solution: Bring a phone or laptop with hidden recording enabled and keylogger through a TSA checkpoint. See exactly what the fucking pigs are doing -- if it's recorded and keylogged, it's no longer secret. Post it on Youtube and Cryptome.
Dear ACLU, here is the information you requested. [REDACTED][redacted][REDACTED][redacted][REDACTED][redacted][REDACTED][redacted][REDACTED][redacted][REDACTED][redacted][REDACTED][redacted][REDACTED][redacted][REDACTED][redacted] and the horse you rode in on. Love, TSA.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
People!
Could we please stop calling police and other LEOs "Pigs"?
To the best of my knowledge no member of the species Sus (includes boar, warthog, etc.) has ever done anything to deserve that kind of insult.
Call the TSA and LEO's what they are: "Brownshirts"
Shredding the 4th Amendment just to feel a little safer? Go fuck yourself and drink Draino. Unless of course you were just trolling. In that case, drink Draino and go fuck yourself. :p
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Law enforcement needs to go through the courts to punish (at least in theory). The TSA can just put you on a No Fly List. No appeal possible.
Do not mess with them.
(It always amazes me that the USA has the strongest constitution yet the ugliest laws. What would the USA be like without any constitution, better or far worse?)
...because of TSA nonsense. If they're going to feel me up, if the airlines are going to beat me up, and if they want to look at my phone and computer, they're going to have to chase me down at 80 mph on I-10 to do it. I like to drive anyway, and they can take their big brother state and shove it. All they're doing, from the bag searches to these electronic searches, are illegal under the 4th Amendment according to Judge Napolitano on Fox News. He was very specific. Illegal. But they just do it anyway.
Stick my bags in the trunk, phone on my belt and computer on the seat beside me, and they're going to have to work to see any of 'em.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" is pretty god-damned mother-fucking clear-as-crystal. So pardon the shit out of my mother-fucking french for expecting the god-damned government to get a mother-fucking warrant first.
Here's the problem with your little rant. They know the weakness in your argument and in that particular amendment is in defining the word "unreasonable". If they convince a court that the search is a reasonable one then that whole pesky amendment problem goes away. They don't have to get a warrant if they can convince the courts that what they are doing is reasonable. The entire amendment hinges on what we define the word "unreasonable" to mean and that is the bit under attack.