Wow! Guess I'll leave my MBP home when I visit my kids in the US
 

I didn't know that border agents can, without cause, confiscate any electronics you have with you, but sure don't want to experience it. With two kids and five grandkids in the US, I go there often, usually with an MBP and an iPod nano. No more, I guess. There's not a damned thing on it they couldn't look at, but they are free to hold it at will. To me that means if a border crossing is busy, they'll hold it for later review.

I suspect that this is unlikely to happen to most of us. I'd prefer to think I look stylish, beautiful, intelligent, and striking, but in actuality I look "normal" and at airport and border crossings that's a good thing.

I assume the equipment retained for study is being carried by people who seem more interesting to the guards, or have an excessive amount of equipment.

to be fair, i doubt many girls will be stopped.... :rolleyes:

lol - I'm sure it's ok to look stylish, beautiful, intelligent, and striking, so long as you don't look stylish, beautiful, intelligent, striking, and evil. though I understand (extrapolating from some previous relationships) that that's a hard balance to make...

I'd really like to know more about this process, actually. it's one thing to be forced to throw out a $1.99 tube of toothpaste, but I can't imagine they'd take a $1,500.00 computer without some method of getting it back to you. that seems a lot like unlawful seizure.

The "more" you asked for, tw. Note also that there is a link at the bottom of the article. Your government has a license to go fishing on your computer.

From the "more" page:

Best not take any vinyl records with you either...!

Also, does that mean they can confiscate your shiny new biometric passport??

Seriously, though, if anyone wants to transfer secret information across the US border, there are much safer ways to go about it (e.g. sftp the encrypted data through an anonymous proxy). The argument that it will stop terrorism is flawed - as with the majority of "security measures" put in place at airports, it's more a case of making it look like something is being done, so as to instill some kind of confidence in the general public.

Saying that, I travelled to the US in late June, and they checked my laptop for chemical residue from explosives, but there was no suggestion that it could have been seized.

And after I'd gone to all the trouble of encrypting everything as well... :rolleyes:


As cwtnospam suggests in this thread, keep lots of encrypted disk images on your laptop, filled with nothing more than pictures of kittens. If the NSA are called in to investigate your laptop, they'll spend a lot of effort for nothing. Not sure if this constitutes 'wasting police time' though..?

It's their choice to waste it, not yours. ;) If I want to encrypt pictures of kittens, I have every right to do so.

It occurs to me that IT departments might also want to encrypt pictures of kittens and install them on the drives of business traveller laptops. Imagine the added security of being able to hide sensitive data amongst many different encrypted images. The task of determining which image to try to crack might be enough by itself to deter would be data thieves. The business traveller would only need to know the name & password of the image(s) with their data on them. The fact that this would really mess with the Gestapo Homeland Security would be a bonus.

Make two carbon copy duplicates of your internal hard drive. Leave one behind in your native country. Mail a second one via international post to your destination in the US. Leave the original in the computer, obviously.

In the statistically unlikely event that you personally end up being the next victim of our country's latest insanity, rent an identical model MacBook and use the drive you mailed to yourself.

Before heading back, copy any new files to the drive you mailed to yourself, and then mail it back home.

I look pretty normal, and I've been searched by the TSA twice. I only carry a laptop bag when I pass through security. So there goes that logic.

I have been searched by Home Land Security several times, and my last trip I had 2 laptops with me while in Chicago for the CCA course I took. They didn't confiscate anything of mine, but they did stop me and search me, and I like to think I look pretty average and normal.

Well nowadays they don't care about the suspicious looking guy. They know that if he was up to something then he would try to look normal. So they must check those who look too normal because they are the really suspicious ones.

:D We know that you know that we know that the really suspicious guy will now try to look suspicious... :D

Mikey, I've seen a number of your posts here, and I'm suspicious of your understanding of 'normal' (just kidding... :D )

actually, that picture idea is pretty unstoppable. all you'd need to do to to transfer undecipherable information is cipher the files, split the data and hide it in three or four (or ten) pictures, put those pictures in a folder with a few hundred other pictures (some of which have fake data hidden in them, and no one who doesn't already know what pictures you're using would have a ghost of a chance at figuring it out. of course, then you could just make a picture collection on Yahoo or Facebook - no need to carry the info on your laptop at all...

fact of the matter is, though, our government is doing this because they want to do this, not because they need to, and (like so many other things they've done in recent memory), they'll use whatever excuse they need to use to continue doing it. I don't know when our government turned into a pain-in-the-a$$ adolescent, but that does seem to be the state of affairs.

I'm thinking all that would be needed is a script to randomly alter the creation, access, and modification dates. ;)

My Uncle got pulled aside in an airport not too long ago because they detected "explosive" material from his laptop. They took him to a little room and were going to dismantle it. He said, fine you can take it apart but you have to put it back together because I need it for work. They ended up doing nothing.

He hand loads his own ammunition in his basement, so we guess that some how he had gun powder on his fingers and then transferred it to the laptop one night and that is what they were picking up on.

hmm.. i wonder why i get "randomly selected" for searching whenever i go to the airport.....each time they make it sound like ive won the lottery or something

Next time you get picked you should jump up and down, pump your arms and scream with joy like on a game show!

Or maybe not.

perhaps its coz you look shady... :rolleyes:

also.... might be worth leaving your laptop at home... dont want passport control finding your 'naked lady manuals' ;)

o.o naked lady manuals.. i cant be bothered reading...naked lady videos ftw! :D
(theres a joke in there apparently :rolleyes:)

That might get me sent to cuba

Actually I think its because my skin has certain properties, that the guards pick up on...
(yeah i went there *snapz* fingers)

If you want them to search further... into your colon. ;) well, maybe not ;) more like :o then :confused: then :eek: then :mad:

though for felix im sure it would be like this

:confused: :eek: :) :p :D ;) :cool:


(jooookkeee!!)

I've been "randomly" searched twice, and one day at every security checkpoint.

I typically wear blue jeans or khakis, a button up shirt, and a black overcoat. I got pulled while boarding being the only man in a line of about 20 women.

Once I got searched and had my bags checked because I had 2 hard drives in hot swap trays in my carry on bag along with my laptop (lots of metal made them want to check I'm guessing)

The full day one was due to the computerized random tagging of me for the day, every boarding pass I got that day was printed with something in the corner to wand/search me at checkpoints.

That's why I'll hop on my pirate ship whenever I want to travel overseas.

They just have a computer system that decides Terrorist or Not Terrorist. Really bad way of alienating the public.

why not hop on mine and photek's boat? :p

wow, alternative energy: geek-powered sailing. :D

errm last time i checked he was making me paddle no sails.....and if we were geeks why would there be hot models on the ship?

I have been too; and when I asked one of the security folks why I merited this close attention, she asked if I'd changed my reservation that day. I had -- I'd moved from a mid-afternoon flight to an 8PM flight when it was clear I wasn't going to finish my business in the morning and couldn't make the first one.

Changing flight plans on the day of departure will get you a specially marked boarding pass every time, and you'll be taken aside after passing through the metal detector for a bomb check, and scanned (and carryon dug into) at every checkpoint thereafter. If you have to change flights along the way, this will be repeated at every airport. I've never understood the logic of this, but then there really is very little rationale to any of it.

hot models? dude, those are life-preservers (at least, I can't think what else you'd do with inflatable women on a boat...)

eh, I was on list at one point (couldn't fly anywhere for about a year without getting special attention, though they never took me back to the 'special' room). then somehow I got off it; who knows why. it's our modern system of government - they purposely obscure things so that you can't tell whether they're actually being evil or just being stupid.

You give govt way too much credit.... they are not evil, just stupid (too big, too cumbersome, too under qualified).

As an ACLU attorney once explained to me, "Government has the inherent right to do stupid things, as long as they are equally stupid toward all." Govt tries hard to do this.

i believe mr photek has some explaining to do :rolleyes: to us, and to mrs photek

I concur our government is so big that they in return have become very inept at certain things. Airport security does not make it safer, just an illusion. If someone were so inclined to do anything at an airport these days, they would just bypass the security bottle necks and get in the Airport an alternative way.

Why even bother going through security if you are up to no good?

Same applies to corporate security, only more so. Does anyone think that an under paid rent-a-cop with no gun is going to stop somebody bent on killing?

Making anything foolproof requires a lot of imagination; not fools.

The purpose of this law is to bypass problems when they have a suspect. A terrorist, for example, can demand all sorts of rights and this is to close up that ability. The border checks are so busy, only the most suspicious are taken aside for further questioning. If a terrorist knows that you now have the legal authority to check your electronic devices, that is a deterrent for using them to be part of a coordinated attack. In 911, average people were using electronic devices as a form of defense. It could also work the other way.

I'm not excusing this law as being right or good. However, I can understand the reasoning behind it.

tlarkin - For the first time last night, I saw a GOOD media report on US security (border, airport, and import cargo) on Dateline. The problem is not poor and inept security. The problem is an inept media that likes to make it appear so. Having been through the best security procedures (getting on an El Al flight) and the worst (LAX), I will agree they are very knee-jerk (still removing shoes and taking our water) and need to bring everything down to thumb prints and rapid background checks. But I would not call them inept. They really do stop a lot of crap coming in to the country. We just never see the "good calls" that happen day after day after day. Just the one dumb slipup every 6 months or so.

So you're saying, Schneb, that the purpose of this law is to bypass due process?

No, it is to prevent abuse of it.

I can't. There is no way to stop information from entering or leaving the country, and it has nothing to do with the safety of a flight, so there is no justification.

I agree with CWT. I can't see how this is an important avenue of information into the USA and it treads too close to freedom of speech and/or censorship if that's its intent. Further, I think you're on shaky ground "preventing the abuse of due process". It's very inconvenient for police to have to get a search warrant to enter your home -- are you abusing due process when you insist on it?

Edited adder: I use Eudora for email (still), and must leave it running at home to avoid overfilling my account limit if I'm away for long. I use VNC to check it. How does examining my computer at the border prevent me from leaving something on another machine and grabbing it after I pass inspection?

Like I said, I did not necessarily "agree", just said I understand why they did it. For example, hiding drugs in your car at the border. How much search and seizure should you allow when a trained drug-sniffing dog sits down next to your tires? Unfortunately, we do not have "information sniffing dogs".

But, schneb, the point I was trying to make is that the information I want need not be on the computer itself -- I can still download it later. Further, come to that, I don't need my computer to get that info; I can rent one. What are they going to find? An informed miscreant will have the obvious bases covered. I would think that, in this day and age, no one in their right mind would cross the border with a shared folder of contraband music files, bootleg versions of software, or a folder full of kiddie porn.

Didn't say it was a smart law either. And yes, anything you could have on your computer can be downloaded later. What they are probably looking for is "communications", such as instructions or coordination. All the contraband that you have listed is easily available online, so that it obviously NOT what they looking for or interested in.

Security at these various locations are mostly looking for hard contraband that is to be resold in the United States. Information, on the otherhand, can be be sent via Internet with impunity. The purpose of the law is to allow search and review regarding the charges pending on said individual. The same as "patting down" for evidence or weapons. Once you are suspect, your baggage is searched. The laptop and other electronic devices are also considered baggage. Just electronic in nature.

Believe me, they do not have time to search everyone's electronic devices--that would be ridiculous. It's that one person out of thousands that requires the search. And this is only after a thorough questioning and finding holes in said testimony. There is a process. If they pass the verbal screening, they are free to go once everything checks out. If they fail, then they examine more closely to build a proper case.

And why is it that I can't whip into any hot-spot coffee shop and get those from a remote server, or set up a chat room, or use coded messages in an available forum or chat room, or set up a Wired server (which I use in the administration of part another site) and exchange files that way?

This is the closest anyone can get to a reasonable excuse for conducting these searches, but it still doesn't cut it.

Instructions and coordination would be memorized ahead of time, and even if it weren't, it would likely be encoded in such a way as to appear innocuous, or worse: it would only make sense after the attack. If Mohamed Atta wrote Ahmed al-Ghamdi a note to meet Majed Moqed at the office on 9/11 at 8:00 am, and don't forget to bring his tools, how would that alert an inspector?

I'm not arguing that there are not "ways around" or memorization ahead of time. What I am saying is that a luggage case is open for thorough search and seizure if something occurs to give the inspectors pause. Luggage and carry-ons are considered "containers" and open to such review. This law is basically labeling a laptop as "a container" as well and thereby also qualified as being under the same requirements.

I know, I know, there are many ways around this. For example, I can move all my User Account folder content onto an iPod or my camera's memory card and none would be the wiser. The point is to identify the laptop as a container, and thereby open to scrutiny.

Open to scrutiny (at least from my perspective) is reasonable -- that's the way borders everywhere (except between European countries) work. What got me was that they could hold it at will. I've travelled across the US/Cdn border thousands of times, sometimes with sensitive documents (typically proprietary info for which I had signed an NDA), and yes, on occasion, customs agents have opened the brief case and riffled through -- they didn't read them -- they just looked to assure themselves they were documents. I suppose it is in their purview to keep them, but then I'd have to inform my client and go back home (I actually did that once -- On a trip to Denver, I was stopped one evening by US Customs in Toronto and back-roomed for long enough to miss the last flight (mistaken identity, apparently -- after a few questions, they let me go, but had kept me waiting for nearly an hour). Having irrevocably missed the next morning's early meeting (too far from the Denver Airport to get to by the earliest flight), I just caught the last flight back to Halifax. The client wasn't pleased, but then neither was I.

Yes, but I'm (we're?) saying that there is a huge distinction between viewing/treating it as a physical container and a digital container. As a physical container, search away. As a digital container, there is no justification for a warrant-less search.

I read this first as "For example, hiding drugs in your cat at the border".

http://www.acidlogic.com/graphics/fat_freddys_cat.jpg

"Oh no, I just spent my last $40 on catnip!"

Is it possible to use a laptop to detonate a device in baggage or use this possibility to hi-jack a plane?

Is it possible to use a laptop to communicate in flight?

Are there other ways in which a laptop aboard a plane could be used to aid a terrorist plot?

I have trouble understanding why they would want to look for information which could easily be brought in or out in any number of ways. Surely, there is more to this than checking for copyright infringement or kiddie porn.

If the intent was to destroy the plane, they could easily shoot it down on takeoff with a shoulder launched weapons... or even an AK-47.... or just destroy it on the ground before take off.

Try to think like a terrorist.... what else is there?

I don't think so -- bluetooth wouldn't get through the metal floor, nor, I would think, would a WiFi signal.

Not unless the carrier provides a hot spot.

I suppose the lithium-ion battery could be subverted to start a hell of a fire, but can't imagine you'd detect that by examining the files.

In my view, it's just another piece of "maybe we'll want to, and anti-terror trumps rights".

Schneb, I think you're missing a central point of being a democracy: we each have only the rights that everyone has. Take away something from one person because you're suspicious of them, and you end up taking it away from all of us.

One of your own said it all.

An interesting read along the same lines as my last post:

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog...008-07-10.html

That does not make any sense. If you take away the freedom of someone for destroying my property, it takes nothing away from me. On the contrary, it adds to my security knowing these people are behind bars.

And BTW, the true definition of the word "liberty" is not to ability to do what you want--that is "license", but rather the power to do what you aught.

The harm is in the culprits ability to exploit the freedom for the sake of terror. They do it all the time. They have no regard for freedom except for access to perpetrate their evil deeds. A laptop can be a briefcase for further evidence against one who has been taken aside for suspicion.

NovaScotia, unfortunately was the victim of mistaken identity, and I think security should have bent over backward to help him get a new flight. Improving on technology and database access, you lower the possibility of such errors.

The great problem with America today is that they have lost the true definition of freedom and liberty. My children have freedom and liberty to be themselves. However, they know by my strong hand of discipline, that they do not have carte blanche to do what ever they darn well please.

This is, and always has been, the weakness (Achilles heel) of a free and just society -- the bad guys have the same rights and freedoms as the good until they are proven to break a law and lose the right to freedom of person in a court of law. The rule of law, applied equally to all, is the key difference between democratic societies and all others. That this system gives the bad guys some advantages over law abiders is taken as an intended consequence that avoids injustice. Any attempt to avoid that "exploitation" inevitably dilutes the rights and freedoms of everyone else.

you are confusing "freedom" with "rights". it's one thing to take away someone's freedom because they broke the law; it's quite another thing to take away someone's rights because you're afraid they will break the law. freedom is individual: you can take it away from anyone when they behave badly; rights are collective: everyone has them, or no one has them.

and "liberty" is not about action, it's about choice. you can make correct choices or incorrect choices, but if you can't make choices at all then you have no liberty.

When you lose your freedom based on your choice to break the current law, you lose rights. You do not have the right vote, walk out when you wish, etc. You are GRANTED rights, such as a right to an appeal.

Freedom is generated by the collective society. It took thousands of lives of troops to secure our freedom, and many politicians to balance it within law, and a responsible public to take advantage and not abuse it. Freedom was guaranteed within our Bill of Rights created by the Founding Fathers. Rights are individual as one protects them with lawful behavior. As NovaScotian pointed out quite well...

It's an incredibly difficult balance--especially after a spectacular attack such as Pearl Harbor, The Cole, The Twin Tower Parking Explosion, and 9/11.

Where government crosses a line, however, is when power is abused to deny rights based on political agendas. We see this all the time. I do not see this law as being one of those moves, but rather providing access to cyber-information in a developing scenario. We can knee-jerk and call it invasive, but I do not see it that way at all. Especially knowing how well I can bypass any probings on their part. And such work arounds are just getting easier to create. If I am so afraid of what they will find, I can just upload it to a hidden folder on my iPod.

in fact, no. rights are inherent, not granted (remember "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."). if you go to prison for a crime, your rights are still protected - that's why prisoners have trials and appeals; why they aren't tortured or killed at the whim of guards; why they are allowed access to mail and visitors. there are only a few states that remove voting rights from felony criminals, and that's a fairly hot issue at the moment (because the states that do it have inordinately high incarceration rates for minorities, which looks very much like a ploy to disenfranchise entire non-white sections of the populace). This was the entire Guantanamo thing - prisoners were intentionally held off US soil, because if they had been put in US jails, US law would have insisted that they be granted the same rights as any normal prisoner.

even your own phrasing shows this - "Freedom was guaranteed within our Bill of Rights" - then why wasn't it called the 'Bill of Freedoms'?

You cannot have freedom if you have no rights - having no rights is a state of abject slavery, where you are subject to whatever it is people in power want to do to you. even with rights, you might not have freedom (that's because you need to respect rights universally; either you curb any urges you have to violate the rights of others, or society will curb those urges for you). if you confuse the rights and freedoms, you'll almost always end up having neither

The much larger threat is what happens when a government (or its leader) considers itself above the law. Say you have a President that's willing to politicize the Justice Department. That would make searches like these even more threatening. You might find yourself the object of these searches because you don't belong to the right party.
Your iPod being an electronic device, it might be seized and/or copied.

Everything in government is political.

True, and like what was said before, it can all be stored at a remote server as well and copied later as well. The point being, it is easy to bypass this law.

Reminds me of a story my brother just told me about my dad. He was at the Los Angeles airport and realized his military pistol was in his bag. He bought a plastic bag, buried the gun in a large planter, returned from his trip in about a week, and dug it back up. That was my dad all over. :P

That being true, this law is untenable.
A law that needs to be bypassed by normally law abiding citizens is an unjust law.

It's really worse than that CWT -- it breeds a contempt for that particular law that's infectious. Making laws that are easy to circumvent or easy to get away with if broken invites a scofflaw attitude -- normally law-abiding folks ignore it. If you don't get a ticket for parking in a handicap parking spot or worse yet in a mall's fire lane, not only will you continue to do it, but others, seeing that it's without penalty will do it too.

I sat in a legal parking spot in New Hampshire store lot one time waiting for my wife complete her shopping while I finished a novel. During what would have been 40 minutes or so, 13 cars parked in the clearly marked handicapped zone directly in front of me, and not one of them had a handicapped sticker or gave any discernible evidence of being handicapped themselves. Neither did any of them get a ticket. Clearly in Newington, New Hampshire, it's open season on parking in them.

Making a law like the one we're discussing simply makes a lot of folks aware of how to circumvent it and to avoid the hassle, most folks do.

True, and a President willing to politicize the Justice Department is a direct threat to our Democracy. Terrorists become trivial matters at that point.

either you have a 'res publica' government that tries to serve its citizens, or you have an authoritarian government that tries to control its citizens. you can't tell by the words it uses (for instance, govs often talk about 'protecting' their citizens, which could mean that they are actually trying to protect citz, or might mean they are trying control citz under the guise of serving them...). you have to look at what they do. here we have a law that allows the government at its whim to intrude deeply into the personal lives of any citizen (because we all know how much personal information is on our computers) without any measurable or significant benefit of protection. does that strike you as an actually or as an under the guise of?

@ tw & cwt; We run the risk of having this discussion go off the rails (or get banned) if it evolves from a "this is a crummy law" to government-in-office bashing.

I've been careful not to name names. ;) The law is a serious threat to National Security no matter who is in office.

I don't frankly care who's in office; I'd give the same critique. however, only the government-in-office gets to make policy. it's a bit disingenuous to talk about hit and run accidents in a town where only one person owns a car... ;)

This is the second time you have brought this up, cwt. You are violating community guidelines in bringing in politics. So rather than argue the point, I am signing off this thread.

Laws aren't written in a vacuum. The cumulative affects of this law combined with other laws and actions go far beyond unnecessary searches. I brought up the same concern the second time because I felt that pointing out other significant problems would narrow the focus on one political group.
That isn't just incorrect, it's a cop-out.

I flew from Tokyo (Narita) to San Francisco in February. At the time I had a shaved head and a rather unruly beard...and to this day I have more pigment in my skin than most. I brought a laptop, iPod, and probly still stank of green bud. I left and arrived via SFO with no problems...no delays...not a hitch.

TSA, although sporting a new moniker and clothes, is the same hodgepodge of retirees and students who took the "airport job" because of the pay/perks/ease-of-job...very rarely has someone applied to the TSA to fight the war against terror. If someone was serious about that they'd enlist in the army.

IMO the laptop seizure program was more likely spawned by the lobbyists of the RIAA and/or MPAA. No, I don't wear a tin foil hat. The government knows that dangerous data is available online...and they have programs to address that (CARNIVORE? shhhhh).

This law was passed under the guise of child porn, bomb recipes, and other things that make your hair stand on end. My guess is that it's either MP/RIAA inspired...or worse yet, a modern version of COINTELPRO.

1. Seize the laptops of your enemies
2. ????????
3. profit