EFF To Fight Border Agent Laptop Searches

snydeq writes "The EFF and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives have filed an amicus brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals requesting that the full court rehear and reverse a three-judge ruling (PDF) that empowers border agents routinely to search files on laptops and mobile devices. The case in question involves US citizen Michael Arnold, who, returning from the Philippines in July 2005, had his laptop confiscated at LAX by custom officials after they opened files in folders marked 'Kodak Pictures' and 'Kodak Memories' and found photos of two naked women. Later, when Arnold was detained, officials uncovered photo files on Arnold's laptop that they believed to be child pornography. In addition to raising Fourth Amendment issues, the amicus brief (PDF) reiterates the previous District Court ruling on Arnold's case regarding the difference between computers and gas tanks, suitcases, and other closed containers, 'because laptops routinely contain vast amounts of the most personal information about people's lives — not to mention privileged legal communications, reporters' notes from confidential sources, trade secrets, and other privileged information.'"

Re:I don't understand the argument

[Ihlosi]

The reason they can search your suitcase is that it might have a bomb in it.

Customs doesn't search for bombs. They search for anything that is illegal to bring into the country (drugs, weapons, large amounts of cash without proper paperwork, certain kinds of foodstuffs, etc).

Re:So what would I do...

[Ihlosi]

...with my company laptop which I will bring with me this monday ?

Don't bring it with you. Or don't have any important information on it.

Should I let it be searched by customs, or should I call the legal department of my (very large) company to handle the situation ?

To answer this question, first consider this simple question: Who will the customs officer detain/subject to full cavity search/deport/mark for disappearance - the person carrying the object in question or some companys legal department ?

Re:So what would I do...

[dthomas9]

You ask your legal department for advice, before you travel.

Customs Agents != TSA

[mdmkolbe]

This is about border agents, so it has nothing to do with bombs. It is about illegal or undeclared goods being smuggled into the country.

So the argument will go that as long as certain forms of information are illegal to bring into the country, in order to do their job (stopping smugglers) the customs agents need to be able to search for illegal information. I'm not saying I agree with that argument, but in order to convince anyone other than the choir you need to understand the real issues and not some straw man argument about bombs.

Any counter argument will have to indirectly argue that customs agents don't have to keep illegal data out of the country. For copyright, such an argument is easy to make (e.g. "customs agents have no way to tell if a work on a laptop is involved in criminal infringement they may have permission from the copyright holder or it may be fair use"). For child porn, the argument is harder. The court will likely end up weighing the cost of invading people's privacy against the benefit of stopping child porn at the border. Given that the technique has already proven effective (they caught the guy), guess which one the courts will side with.

Again I'm not saying I agree with the government's position, but you have to know your enemy and the battle ground in order to win.

Re:So what would I do...

[mdmkolbe]

If you are not flying internationally, this doesn't effect you. This is about customs agents, not the TSA.

If you are flying internationally, consult your companies legal department before you leave. At the very least it may raise awareness in the company that this might be a problem and if companies start to dislike the idea maybe they can get it changed.

Schneier says...

[Lurker2288]

Bruce Schneier's recommendation for this situation is that your company have a secure VPN in place so that once you're across the border you can connect to the office and download any sensitive material you need. Before you return, VPN in again and upload your work back to the office so that the laptop is clean as a whistle when it goes through customs.

Re:Seizure the real problem

[goaliemn]

This has nothing to do with the Patriot act.. they've always had this power at the border. Courts, for decades, if not over 100 years, have always ruled you have limited/almost no rights at the border. US citizen or not..

Customs has the right to look for anything that could be against US Law, as well as looking for imports to collect duty and taxes on. They always have. Its just now, people are carrying more with them and on their laptops than before.

Do the limits need to be updated? Maybe somewhat, but I'd still want customs to have the authority/ability to do their job.

Re:Bad Case

[Harin_Teb]

There is not now, nor has there ever been a right to privacy at border crossings... unwarranted searches at border crossings is standard practice, and has been for a while, and has been upheld as being constitutional. Now the seizure resulting from the described image may or may not have been legal, we don't know enough facts to determine if the standard was met.

I for one agree with the governments analogy of computers to papers. If you want to encrypt your handwritten papers that would be fine, likewise if you encrypt your data it is fine, but the government still gets to look at it when you enter the country (Note that does not mean you are bound to give them the decryption key).

Re:Seizure the real problem

[sam0vi]

i will say this for the very last time: TrueCrypt hidden volumes. and you will be done with the problem. period.

Privacy and Cultural Issues

[MBHkewl]

For Arabs, and Muslims, it's a very big problem, since strangers are allowed to look at private pictures of family members.

This is both a cultural and a religious difference, which this law doesn't address nor respect.

It's against our customs and culture to post our women's pictures online for the public to see, let alone having the customs look at them and take a copy of them as well!!

And what is considered childpr0n, maybe as well be nude pictures of man's 16 year old wife. That's the legal age to get married in some of the countries in the Middle East.

Apart from pictures, business men carry sensitive information, that shouldn't be copied, and if encrypted, they're forced to provide the key/password to decrypt them.
When there's a leak of information, is the US customs going to be responsible for such cases?

Re:Seizure the real problem

[palegray.net]

Outstanding points. Unfortunately, our children are routinely taught in grade school that rights are somthing *given* to us by goverment officials. Even the average teenager (at least many I've spoken to) seem to think it's well within the government's power to take away your rights whenever it's "justified." They also seem to run with the general opinion that bad things won't happen to them; things like illegal searches only happen to "real criminals." Scary stuff.

Re:Seizure the real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean "peace", not "piece".

Re:Seizure the real problem

[zapakh]

Being smartass wont help you either. Disk failure tale is not gonna hold water and missing substantial disk space is highly suspicious.

http://www.truecrypt.org/hiddenvolume.php [truecrypt.org]

The existence of a hidden volume does not reduce the free space available to the standard volume.

Just don't try to write anything to the standard volume when you haven't also mounted the hidden volume, or bye-bye data.

Perhaps they could do some checksumming and Reed-Solomon magic on the hidden volume to detect and recover data errors the next time you do mount it; but I haven't read about anything like that.

Re:Do they check cellphones as well?

[Ihlosi]

A good chunk of cell phones now can hold at least 2GB on a memory stick.

Yes, they do check cell phones. What could be more interesting than the people you're in contact with ? They also check cameras, camcorders, Mp3 players, etc.

Re:Bad Case

[Vr6dub]

I saw it years ago and I agree that she didn't "act" like a child. The fact is though, he knew she was fourteen. So yes, she was a child. Call it what you want. Oh, and he pissed on her. So what we have is a grown man peeing on a fourteen year old girl.

Re:That Eeee pc looks better and better

[Dopefish_1]

But to access your information store with any decent level of security you still need to carry a secret across a border. If the secret is a GPG key they can still try to get the passphrase off you, then when you access your data they can intercept the data stream and decrypt it.

So just keep the GPG key on the server with your data, and memorize the passphrase. Then the only "secret" you're carrying across the border is in your head, with no outside indication that it exists. This should keep you safe until they make deep brain scans mandatory to enter the country.