Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border
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tl8
Addon Developer
If they want to try and break a 128-bit encryption and a bio-metric scanner to view my 1 Terabyte
collection, they are quiet welcome.(Note: The only that is true about the above statement is the 1 Terabyte, but it is not filled with
)James.Denholm
Addon ponderer
If they want to try and break a 128-bit encryption and a bio-metric scanner to view my 1 Terabyte
(Note: The only that is true about the above statement is the 1 Terabyte, but it is not filled with
Personaly, I just use a maze of Virtual PC's. Think, a PC, running windows, emulating Linux, emulating Mac, emulating Windows, emulating Mac, emulating Linux...
Back to reality. The idea of this is quite chilling...
Artlav
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Quite useless, actually. They won't even boot the thing, just remove the HDD and go on from here, and all the VM's will be plain.
As far as i know, refusing to give the encryption keys constitutes a good reason for suspicion.
Now, about the whole issue itself and a cluster of issues of similar nature, it looks like public eyes closing ritual instead of the actual security increase.
They just do something somewhere, checking somebody looking for someone, bombing hell know who for terrorist acts made from god knows where.
Humans are not designed to live strictly by rules.
All that is of course an opinion from half the world away, probably biased on variety of media and traveler accounts.
What would be an American's opinion?
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Zatnikitelman
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That's why I'll do all my border crossings on the ground (Amtrak, or Car) and just hide the laptop without being obvious about it. I have nothing to hide I just don't like a bunch of overdressed yadding yahoo despot wannabees strip searching my laptop the way they'd like to strip search me!
My opinion as a good American is that they have no
right to go through my data when I cross the border, this policy should be terminated immediately, and if I ever plan to take my laptop past the DHS, I'll write my own encryption software, run a full system backup at home, encrypt all my personal data in some odd and secure way, mail the key to myself separately ahead of time, and if they try to take my computer, demand that they return it immediately as I have rights to both privacy and property.Nothing is sacred anymore.
Andy44
owner: Oil Creek Astronautix
Actually, you'd probably be here a while: http://www.alternet.org/rights/95351?page=1
All I can say is I apologize to any of you guys who come here to visit. It's become a complete embarassment. Maybe someday we will find some sanity.
Linguofreak
Well-known member
I mentioned this to my dad, and he says that US customs has been performing searches without probable cause or warrants for a lot longer than either Homeland Security or the laptop computer has been around. I searched the web a bit further and found that there does exist the doctrine of the "border search exception" to the 4th Amendment, and it does seem to be fairly old. There of course remains the question of whether such an exception is constitutionally justifiable in light of the fact that much of the reason the Fourth Ammendment even exists is that the founding fathers got peeved with British customs agents...
And the question of *moral* justifiability is of course an entirely different matter than legal or constitutional justifiability.
And the question of *moral* justifiability is of course an entirely different matter than legal or constitutional justifiability.
Spacedoughnut
Civil Air Patrol Graduate
All I have on my laptop is student docs, Orbiter,and Civilization 4(which gives me acess to nuclear tech :lol: )
I would refuse the encryption keys, as, at least in the US, refusal to allow a search specifically cannot be used as reason for suspicious activity, so, I would refuse, and point out this from the 4th amendment to the US constitution...
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Capt. Speirs
Donator
Just fly into Mexico and hitch a ride with all the illegals crossing the border daily, lol. If we secured our borders like Israel does, there would be no problems. They can smell a terrorist a mile away, no matter the race, they see it in their eyes. This type of border and airport security training has been offered by Israel to the US and we turned it down.
Linguofreak
Well-known member
The problem there is that you do have to define "unreasonable search and seizure." It's only "unreasonable" searches and seizures that are unconstitutional without probable cause. "Reasonable" searches are fine without warrant or probable cause. And while I agree that given the history of the Fourth Amendment (i.e. which British abuses it was a response to), that border searches should almost use a tighter standard of reasonableness than regular searches, the fact remains that, with the way the Constitution is interpreted nowadays, many types of searches are considered "reasonable" at the border that would not be so elsewhere. If you have been searched or had property seized at the border without probable cause, you'll have to convince a court that the search was "unreasonable."
(Why did they have to put such a weasel-word as "unreasonable" in there? It allows the ammendment to be interpreted in practically any way the reader wants, depending on the definition of "unreasonable" used.)
Andy44
owner: Oil Creek Astronautix
Courts have held that "reasonable" means police have an articulable suspicion that the person being searched is doing something illegal. Articulable means they can state it objectively.
So if a guy is just carrying his laptop through the airport, and not doing anything criminal or suspicious, you've really got no justification to search him or his laptop, any more than you do if he is carrying it down the street.
Now if you received a tip that the man is an industrial spy, you may be justified in searching his computer.
The real reason this is done? Because they can, and you can't stop them. It's an exercise in power, to make sure you know who's boss. It's also to put on a show for the public, to convince them that the HSD is doing all it can to fght terrorism and justify its budget. It's also done because the myth persists that ignoring people's privacy and searching whatever you want will somehow reduce crime or terrorism.
So if a guy is just carrying his laptop through the airport, and not doing anything criminal or suspicious, you've really got no justification to search him or his laptop, any more than you do if he is carrying it down the street.
Now if you received a tip that the man is an industrial spy, you may be justified in searching his computer.
The real reason this is done? Because they can, and you can't stop them. It's an exercise in power, to make sure you know who's boss. It's also to put on a show for the public, to convince them that the HSD is doing all it can to fght terrorism and justify its budget. It's also done because the myth persists that ignoring people's privacy and searching whatever you want will somehow reduce crime or terrorism.
Linguofreak
Well-known member
And, as I said earlier, there is also a legal tradition predating DHS that states that the standard of reasonability is much more lax when dealing with border searches. It's questionable, and DHS likely should not be continuing the tradition, but it certainly isn't some newfangled idea thought up because DHS wants to enslave us all, or wants to justify its existence, or whatever.
willy88
Tinkerer
I smell a hint of ACTA...
Wikipedia article on ACTA said:
It's called 'trial by jury'. Any juror can decide that a search was unreasonable and refuse to convict; the idea that jurors need a bunch of lawyers to tell them what such simple words mean is a recent invention, pushed by... lawyers.
Prohibition, for example, was not abandoned because it was a bad idea, but because getting convictions had become almost impossible; only one person in twelve needed to believe that Prohibition was a bad law to ensure that it wasn't enforced.
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