FISA and Border Searches of Laptops 421
With the recent attention to the DHS's draconian policy on laptop searches at borders, a blog post by Steven Bellovin from last month is worth wider discussion. Bellovin extrapolates from the DHS border policy on physical electronic devices and asks why authorities wouldn't push to extend it to electronic data transfers. "...it would seem to make little difference if the information is 'imported' into the US via a physical laptop or via a VPN, or for that matter by a Web connection. The right to search a laptop for information, then, is equivalent to the right to tap any and all international connections, without a warrant or probable cause. (More precisely, one always has a constitutional protection against 'unreasonable' search and seizure; the issue is what the definition of 'unreasonable' is.)"
Re:Look on the bright side... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm trying to collect incidents + horror stories.. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a few interesting ones, a few boring ones but I NEED MORE !!!
Re:WWJTWU (Score:3, Interesting)
Offtopic? Seems pretty ontopic to me - he was, after all, the supreme political dissenter during one of the most brutally oppressive periods of history. And used words like "neighbour" and "friend" about brown, white and black folk all equally.
Too hard (Score:4, Interesting)
Whilst I liked visiting the USA, its increasing stance against visitors is becoming too invasive to care anymore.
The first time I was forced to electronically store my fingerprints on your systems for an unknown period of time was the start of the end.
How wrong we were to assume that bio passports were enough to subdue to spooks.
Have a 'nice' day!
Re:WWJTWU (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, come on. The Romans weren't angels, but there have been lots of worse oppression than what you got under the Empire of Tiberius. Even Caligula's terrors were inflicted on the aristocracy in Rome; he didn't wreak all that much havoc on the average citizen in the provinces. You want to know what Pontius Pilate's only entry in actual history is? He took down the Imperial regalia from the Jerusalem temple when the Jewish leadership informed him how offensive it was. The Jerusalem population didn't even have to stage a protest. Granted, things in Judea got a lot nastier a few decades down the road.
Re:1984 Here we come! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The gov agrees. (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod parent up. Only 2 years ago it was impractical to sniff all traffic and identify P2P and insert reset packets. It was unreasonable to record all phone conversations. It was unreasonable to have thousands of cameras around the UK monitoring everything. It was unreasonable to have cameras that recognize license plates and automatically bill you for running red lights.
Re:Old school (Score:5, Interesting)
My laptop has a sticker on it that says "Property of Exxon-Mobil" and a bar code that looks very official. It has never been searched at the border.
Re:You wish... (Score:1, Interesting)
Pretty soon they'll be able to hold me for not having a laptop for them to search. They'll think I'm hiding something. That's like being told I should carry some cash on me so the mugger has something to walk away with, otherwise he'll get pissed and just shoot me. Every border crossing is turning into a mugging.
Wow. First to see that in a post that isn't clearly a troll, and then to see it modded +5? Slashdot's really turning into Digg.
Frankly, your post is one of the most absurd ones I've ever seen on Slashdot.
This is news? Read "The Puzzle Palace" (Score:3, Interesting)
The NSA has had "the right to tap any and all international connections, without a warrant or probable cause" for decades.
Re:You wish... (Score:5, Interesting)
Experience, sonny. I've watched them tear apart my car more than once. I've been flagged for not having a credit card and checked luggage. I've bought my tickets less than 24 hours before departure, with, god forbid, cash! Evidently I fit a "profile". While all their smuggler and "terrorist" buddies wizz on through for answering all their questions "correctly". They are goons. I don't care if you think it's troll. It's the truth. And it ain't pretty.
Perhaps a little resistance is in order? (Score:4, Interesting)
How many low-rent laptops could be crammed with utterly useless information and sent back and forth, back and forth across the US border? Like any basically stupid, attack-trained creature these border-control idiots occasionally have to learn the lesson that when you piss off the boss too often, there are going to be consequences.
Thousands of man-hours wasted on trivia and the inevitable reaming they'll will eventually get from their elected masters, hopefully the loss of some upper-level jobs...now there's some consequences.
Being held accountable is the only thing these fascist half-wits really worry about.
Re:Look on the bright side... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say sooner. What a lot of people have suggested to me is that the Bush administration wanted spending up to make it look like the economy was healthy, just until he got out of office. That is why they looked the other way whilst people were tossing out cheap credit. I think the Republicans want to lose this election so the bomb drops on a Democrat's watch.
Basically, he deliberately maxed out Obama's credit card for him and remortgaged the house, with the plan to later on call him fiscally irresponsible.
Re:Too hard (Score:3, Interesting)
> How wrong we were to assume that bio passports were enough to subdue to spooks.
Nothing will ever subdue the spooks. Each time we bend on something, they'll ask for more. You need to put a line in the sand and say "no further".
I actually stopped visiting America in the last few years. Being French, I clearly felt "persona non grata" after the Iraq war started.
As my experiences at America's borders have always been rather poor, I then just stopped going there after the increase of the security theater.
I may return to America for a business trip someday, but right now, it is our America partners that do the trips.
Re:Bush took away our "treasure" (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want fiscally responsible policies, vote Democrat.
Right... that'll help. Social Security, Welfare, Medicare and Medicaid exceed the entire military AND discretional budget (not just the Iraq war) and all are horribly broken.
Get your ignorant head out of your knee-jerk, liberally biased ass, do some actual fact finding/checking and come to the realization that ALL big government is wasteful, inefficient, deceitful and corrupt.
By the way... the interest on our national debt alone matches half of the figure you spew for the Iraq war. This expenditure is 100% waste every year that buys us *nothing* and it's all the result of f*ucked up presidential/congressional/senate decisions for the past eighty years. During which time no party other than democrat or republican has been in power.
if you really want fiscally responsible policies... vote them all out of office and start taking care of yourself for a change.
Re:Look on the bright side... (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, so how do you explain the fact that the Democrats, who run both houses of congress and who are completely in control of budgeting and spending and the raising of money, have no interest in reigning in spending? The president DOESN'T MAKE THE BUDGET. He only signs it after both houses of congress do what they want to it. So, you've got Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid completely able to set the legislative agenda, and able to block/promote up/down votes on anything they choose (see Pelosi's refusla to allow voting on the issue of offshore drilling, for example - she, personally, is stopping the congress for even voting on the subject). The country cannot raise, allocate, or spend a dollar that congress doesn't control. Is the complaint that Pelosi is so spineless that she won't ever contradict the President's wishes? She does that all the time - reflexively, on almost every topic. She doesn't want to spend less money - it's as simple as that.
Re:Look on the bright side... (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, so how do you explain the fact that the Democrats, who run both houses of congress and who are completely in control of budgeting and spending and the raising of money, have no interest in reigning in spending?
Well, in their defense, if the house passes a spending bill the Pres doesn't like, he just vetoes it and then cries out that the dems don't want to support the troops.
It's a shitty situation, and the dems are partly responsible, but they have an extremely slim majority (and can lost in the Senate to a filibuster), and a remarkably belligerent president to deal with, so it's hardly fair to blame it all on them.
Re:Bush took away our "treasure" (Score:3, Interesting)
that ALL big government is wasteful, inefficient, deceitful and corrupt.
In the US. Oddly, the rest of the world seems to manage just fine. Just compare various health statistics versus total expenditures... the US is dismally low, in terms of health performance, yet spends the most per capita, while countries around the world who spend less on a universal, government run system consistently outperform the US across a broad range of categories. I know, this flies in the face of your libertarian fantasy world, but, I'm afraid to say, reality and libertarianism are rarely on concert with one another...
Re:You wish... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be surprised if the government here in GB plays along for long. Privacy, surveillance and the database state are becoming big issues here right now, both legally and politically, while support for the US throwing its weight around is a pretty universal vote-loser, all of which are bad news for a government so weak it can barely stand up. I expect a significant change in approach in time for the next general election in a couple of years, if not sooner if they give their current leader the boot and find yet another one after the summer recess.
In any case, the government doesn't have much choice about European data protection rules, which our businesses are bound to follow regardless of the government saying nice things to the US. There are already concerns in the business press about issues such as more distributed data storage and processing facilities, which can't be set up in locations that don't adhere to the same data protection standards as European law requires without jumping through hoops with customers and/or incurring negative PR. The US is one such location.
And even without legal obligations, the costs and risks associated with travel to the US are reaching the point that a lot of businesses will no longer make the trip. There have already been reports of business people being refused entry for the most stupid of reasons because of so-called anti-terrorist measures, and as I said before, it probably won't take more than a few high profile leaks after business laptops went missing while containing confidential data to start a serious backlash. Make it impossible to transfer data securely via the Internet as well, and the US just became one of the most business-hostile countries in the Western world, and no amount of sucking up by European governments is going to make European businesses run risks they don't need to in the current economic climate. Many of those that don't have well-established, substantial operations in the US will probably just give up on it until sanity returns.