EFF To Fight Border Agent Laptop Searches 324
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.'"
Seizure the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see the search itself as being as much of a problem as his laptop being seized because of two (presumably legal, as the article says women, and the alleged children came later) porn images.
Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
In a perfect world, search wouldn't be a problem. Privacy rights exist because police agents, custom agents, administrative officials are all fallible humans that are allowed to have weird opinions, small IQ, various beliefs and can usually be bribed.
Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:5, Informative)
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:Seizure the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you want, I can elaborate on why separating judgment and enforcement of a judgment are activities that must be carried by different organizations.
Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Please don't try and conflate the issues of Illegal Search and Seizure with border security.
I find this entire situation vile. While it's disgusting that this guy had kiddie porn on his laptop, it is NOT the business of customs to be searching through this guy's personal info on a fishing trip for possibly illegal stuff. That's Totalitarian behavior.
Incidentally, I put many of these types of incidents at the feet of a unionized and unaccountable customs bureaucracy. Why the heck do we respond to the issue of Islamofascist terrorism with a bureaucratic nightmare organization that blanket targets everyone with no due process? It's moronic, ineffective and self-defeating.
However, properly securing our borders against infiltration by both Illegal Aliens and Foreign Agents is an integral part of National Defense. Not to mention that it spares the border environment the horrific amounts of garbage Illegals have been leaving in our delicate sub-desert ecosystems.
I'm all for making easier to legally emigrate to America. Less red tape and paperwork is always good. I think America should rightly welcome all who wish to come here and participate in Freedom and Free Enterprise by working hard (or smart) and earning their way to a comfortable and happy life for them and theirs. However, I am NOT interested in paying for those who would come here ILLEGALLY, flaunt our laws, commit all sorts of crimes, and try and use our social welfare systems as a hammock while they send cash back home. Sorry, America isn't your sugar daddy.
So you see, even a died-in-the-wool Conservative like me can see that these are two separate issues, and it is possible to support them both without being either a pedophile or a racist.
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Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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QUOTE the part of the Constitution where it says the Fourth Amendment ends at the border, or SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Re:Except.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nack. The Bill of Rights gives us freedom from search and seizure without due process of law. If agents of the government have no reason to suspect I have committed a crime -- and by definition, crossing the border in compliance with the laws of the countries involved cannot possibly be interpreted as "committing a crime" -- then by a strict interpretation of the Bill of Rights, they have no probable cause to search my laptop at the border. All of this bunk about how the Constitution doesn't apply at the border is just that -- bunk.
Re:Except.... (Score:5, Interesting)
My vehicle, without any just cause, no drug dog etc, was completely taken apart and destroyed by Customs officials, and I had no recourse. This was in 1989. They cut up and removed the seats, dash, headliner, carpet. They drilled a hole in the gas tank and drained it. They removed all 4 wheels and the tires from the wheels. They took all my luggage and dumped it out on the ground. Then, when they didn't find anything, told me I had 30 minutes to remove everything from their parking lot or it would be confiscated and destroyed. 30 minutes to remove a vehicle with no gas and a hole in the gas tank, no seats and no wheels. I basically packed up my suitcases and bags, grabbing as much as I could carry, and left the vehicle behind. Walked across the border, hitched a ride into town, and took the Greyhound home. Never did find out what they did with my Bus.
While they were tearing apart my vehicle, any protest I made was greated with the usual "You are interferring with Customs Officials, if you continue, you will be arrested."
Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying encryption is a bad practice (hell, my workstation's partititions are *all* encrypted). I'm simply saying that finding a way around the system isn't a suitable replacement for long term efforts to fight it.
Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you give us key to take a look?
No? Too bad. Let us persecute you a bit.
Sorry, but encryption is NOT an option.
Being smartass wont help you either. Disk failure tale is not gonna hold water and missing substantial disk space is highly suspicious.
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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.
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Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
A right is a fundamental, inherent to the existence of a human being. You have the RIGHT to live, not to protect you from someone taking that right away form you, but because here you are.
Privacy PROTECTIONS exists because any and all people in a position of power have opportunity to abuse their authority for personal gain, thus violating your RIGHT to privacy.
You could as well say the Constitution grants you rights. This isn't true at all. There are no Constitutionally granted rights, only Constitutionally protected ones.
I know this sounds like quibbling over semantics, but I think there's an important fundamental distinction here.
Now I'll climb off my soapbox.
Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a reason why we have privacy laws. The border agents here have really overstepped their bounds.
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The confiscation of legally owned assets, based upon the assumption of guilt rather that the legally defined right of innocence is also a criminal
Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seizure the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, the most idiotic part is the fact that anyone sufficiently sophisticated to harbor a lot of illegal information, or information deemed dangerous to national security, would most likely be smart enough to send it over the net to its intended destination via an encrypted link. Oh, wait... does that mean the government will start considering data streams entering our country as liable to unquestioned search? Think about it.
Bad Case (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Case (Score:5, Insightful)
Until then, you can't even discuss the issue without being suspected of being a perv.
Re:Bad Case (Score:5, Insightful)
If kiddo pix were found on one major political figure's desktop, that figure would be sent to jail and everyone would just shrug. Think of all the recent "family values" politicos who are simply erased with a shrug or lambasted for hypocrisy. Some of them may be innocent for all we know, but we're so jaded that hypocrisy is easier to explain than a frame-up.
Your plan would only work if the ones who framed a politician then came clean immediately afterward with PROOF of HOW they framed them, and more convincingly, framing two opposing figures at roughly the same time with different methods. At that point, when proving it was false to begin with, hit hard on the "if you've got nothing to hide" nonsense. Of course, if you plan to do such a campaign, you had better be able to remain firmly unfindable. Or you will be found hanging in your garden shed with a very convincing suicide note.
Re:Bad Case (Score:5, Insightful)
What it will take to get this stopped is an innocent father or mother who is detained because they have a picture of their baby's first bath on the computer.
What's absurd these days is that parents are being investigated as child pornographers for baby bath pictures.
Re:Bad Case (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Bad Case (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a fluke, from what I've understood of this case so far, that they uncovered child porn in the first place. The problem I have is that the "search" of the laptop initially produced something unrelated to a search for kiddie porn. Nudity != perverse pictures of children.
Even though this particular case shows a "positive" from the investigation, we need people to realize that in our system of justice and freedom the ends do not justify the means. We have protections and guaranteed rights (not granted ones) because we are protecting people from the system's possible abuses. We grant them power but never in exchange for our rights and freedoms. That is a common misconception of the "great unwashed" and it's up to us (and the EFF is helping) to educate people.
We need to focus away from the actual child porn found and focus on how they got to that... If we don't, the end result will become the justification, and like The Patriot Act, we'll be stuck with something that endangers us all.
Re:Bad Case (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's a sick sad world we live in and even if this guy was caught with whatever illegal stuff, if it was uncovered illegally he cannot be tried for it. (whatever he had probably wasn't illegal, just the media spinning it whatever way they want to sensationalize the story)
Lock stock and barrel searchs of someones laptop or other electronic device based on that it "could contain" illegal materials, is ab
Re:Bad Case (Score:4, Informative)
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).
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And that's complete and utter bullshit, and always has been!
The Fourth Amendment:
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And that's exactly why they accused him of having child porn instead of something else!
Strong encryption for personal data (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Strong encryption for personal data (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Strong encryption for personal data (Score:4, Insightful)
The traditional notions of privacy are no longer sufficient. We need a legal affirmation of privacy as a right here in America. It has thus far been assumed that one is entitled to privacy in your own home, as is reflected in the constitution, but our lives have extended WAY beyond that. In this age of instant global connections we need to attach privacy to the INDIVIDUAL - not merely that individual's home - and follow the notion through to every end of that individual's life.
Child pornography, though quite despicable, is NOT a border-control issue. I cannot imagine ANY kind of porn that would be such. In fact, I can't picture any kind of information that would fall under a border guard's purview at all. Think about it: If the same data could travel freely from state to state over the wire, what kind of restriction should one apply at the border?
No, there is no good reason for such a search, and it is only being allowed because our citizens have no right to privacy. If there were such a right, the need to respect it would greatly outweigh some bored TSA's curiosity.
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We need a legal affirmation of privacy as a right here in America.
Griswold v. Conneticut provides an explicit statement of the implicit right.
Child pornography, though quite despicable, is NOT a border-control issue.
Now, here I disagree ... sort of. Border patrol agents are law enforcement agents: if they have a court order, or a warrant, to search a particular person's laptop, they are then authorized to do so. However, I quite agree that laptop contents should not be searchable without court authority.
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Griswold v. Conneticut provides an explicit statement of the implicit right.
Yes, sort of, for married couples as it relates to their sex lives. Again, though, the concept is attached to what was already deemed private. I'm getting at the sort of privacy one should reasonably be able to expect even when in public.
The right to keep your genitals covered is one example of this. The right to keep your laptop's content safe from prying eyes is, at least to me, similar. In either case the state may have a need that outweighs this right, either to enforce the law or uphold the common
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I don't understand the argument (Score:2)
Re:I don't understand the argument (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, a file on the HDD can't contain a real bomb, only a virtual bomb. Virtual bombs don't blow up airplanes.
Re:I don't understand the argument (Score:5, Informative)
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).
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Your bags don't get sent through x-ray machines after you've landed.
Customs Agents != TSA (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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But of course there ISN'T any benefit. There are many other ways of transmitting images from one country to another, securely, aside from putting them on a laptop hard disk and carrying it on a plane. Obviously this does nothing to protect the innocent citiz
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Well, let's face it. Rightly or wrongly, border agents have become the "first line of defense" for the security apparatchik -- they cover much more than undeclared good and duties.
Governments have made their function much more about securing the borders and keeping out people we don't want lately. And, consequently, their searches have become much more invasive.
Cheers
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On the computer, however, they are looking at the content of the files to try to find "suspicious" materials. This is a more difficult situation because, in order to differentiate between "acceptable" and "suspicious", they must examine the contents of the files. This is not as sim
Do they really have a right? (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, what I'm more worried about is that the pillock on customs manages to erase data from my computer / SD card.
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It was never a problem before. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It was never a problem before. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I can't realistically take the contents of my desk, my filing cabinet, my credenza, my photo albums, and my "memento box" with me every time I decide to take a quick trip to Montreal.
I can, however, take my laptop.
Similarly, while I don't need to take all those physical things to do an on-site service call for an important Canadian customer, I absolutely do need to take my laptop.
In Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
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So what would I do... (Score:3, Interesting)
As this is on topic here, some advice would be nice
Re:So what would I do... (Score:5, Informative)
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... (Score:4, Informative)
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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... (Score:5, Informative)
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If you're willing to go through all of that, and know that your company won't leave you high and dry, then call 'em. Otherwise, no.
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After you arrive in the US, you connect to your corporate intranet via VPN and download the stuff you need.
This makes it hard to get anything done on the plane though.
If you're really security conscious, you'll encrypt the stuff you download or you'll keep everything on the corp intranet and only have the apps on the laptop.
Oh, and make sure you set all your applications to request your password when they start up (that goes for online resources too). Otherwise the
Let me know how that goes (Score:5, Interesting)
Really all the government has to do is use the branding of we are looking for child pornography terriosts that have weapons of mass destruction and guess what, poof there goes any right to privacy. Right now, they pretty much have a free ticket to do just about what ever they please.
Every time I hear stories similar to this I think back to an episode of the Simpsons, where Helen Lovejoy keeps saying, "Won't somebody think of the childern?" It was satire that they would do just about anything, if it was for the childern.
Historians will look back on two things this decade, how hurricane katrina changed how oil companies charge people for gas (they can also do just about anything they want) and how 9/11 affected personal freedoms and privacy.
Waiting for another Geek Squad incident... (Score:5, Insightful)
Boot to command line (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt they have the faintest idea what to do when confronted with a command line.
"How do you start windows?"
Re:Boot to command line (Score:5, Insightful)
Which of the following two scenarios is more likely:
1. Government official says, "this guy is obviously a smart ass. I'd better just give him back his things and let him go."
2. Government offiical says, "this guy is a smart ass. I'd better confiscate his computer permanently."
I mean, I realize it's funny to say they won't know how to deal with a command prompt, but if you think that their ignorance will lead to them leaving you to pass unmolested, you're being hopelessly naive. You might as well suggest that if you simply put a lock on your briefcase and claim you don't have the keys they're going to wave you right through.
No. No they're not going to do that. You won't like what they're going to do.
Re:Boot to command line (Score:5, Funny)
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Border agents != TSA (Score:2)
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Pervs/terrorists/spys never buy thumb drives (Score:2)
They teach this in PTS school.
That Eeee pc looks better and better (Score:4, Insightful)
then , just add the cost of having the mini laptop seized to every trip.
Seems simple to me.
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The time is coming that using a 'throw away' laptop will be needed for all foreign trips. Everyone will need a server in some 'safe' country to upload everything to, documents and pictures will be needed to be uploaded to Google Docs and Picasa respectively. Any pictures, or letters that were on the laptop will need to be deep erased.
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.
I don't think this method is more than a stopgap.
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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 unt
I told you so (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I told you so (Score:4, Interesting)
And why not (Score:2)
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They're already doing that, too. Oops.
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Oh really ?
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/90325 [yahoo.com]
And they're not checking every single passenger, of course. But for the ones that do get checked, the procedure may take hours.
Career dampner (Score:2, Interesting)
Besides, there have been stories of officials that just want to confiscate the laptops and magically their kids get new laptops for Christmas.
I usually carry around something like $7000 from home to work in equipment. I wouldn't take it near a US border unless the "chair-man" provided
Privacy and Cultural Issues (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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4th ammendment (Score:2, Interesting)
it pretty much covers this so, i guess that liberalisms creative reading and interpretations of the constitution has pretty much trashed the whole thing now.
First the came for the
New busines model (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Buy lots of laptops, and some insurance.
2. Set up some servers offering secure online file storage.
3. Market your new short-term laptop hire company.
There's obviously a market for this. Getting on a plane has to be one of the worst experiences of modern life. In what way have the "terrorists" not already won?
People need to resist (Score:4, Insightful)
How can people not see what is really happening in the US? Most of these people in charge of homeland security and who are constantly pumping fear into the populace - they do not care about the people at all - most of them would WELCOME another attack as their power would increase (obviously I am not talking about the people at the lower or mid levels of such organizations, I am sure most of them have their hearts in the right places)...basically the people are being manipulated to feel like they only way they will be "safe" is if the country turns into a gigantic jail.
Even if you think this sort of crap has any value you have to know (if you have any technical expertise at all) that any terrorst or criminal would use encryption or some other method to conceal their sensitive data.....So really the only people this affects is the general populace.
America is becoming a textbook fascist state, I don't say that as an exaggeration or for shock value - it is a fact - we meet all 14 points of fascism that Dr. Laurence Britt, a political scientist identified after studying the fascist regimes of: Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile). I am sure that these 14 points have been posted here before so I won't repeat it - if you are interested you can google "14 points of fascism" or go to a site like:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm [secularhumanism.org]
Almost a year ago I had a chance conversation with a couple who lived in Germany during the thirties through the forties - the are terrified and cannot believe what is happening here - they came to America in the 50s convinced that what happened in Germany could never happen here, and both of them say they see the exact same incremental processes happening here.
I wish I had recorded what they told me, but it was a spur of the moment sort of thing. I came across the paragraphs below on a website today and it reminded me very much of what they had to say (although coming from them it was so much more powerful and straightfoward):
"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. .
Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . .
You don't want to act, or even talk, alone. . . you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' . .
My Russian friends say U.S. more like Soviets (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Good luck with that one! LOL! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone know the last time this tactic was used? Oh yeah, Nazi Germany.
(first Godwin!)
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They're turning me into a real conspiracy theorist, let me tell you.
Oceania at war with East Asia, no Eurasia, anyone?
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America has become a scary place.
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My favorite is the polite recording that plays every few minutes that says "unattended baggage will be . . . destroyed".
Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing. And that's perfectly ok - customs doesn't care about the security of flights, because they search your stuff after the flight is over. They're looking for things that are illegal to bring into the country (narcotics, weapons, large amounts of cash without proper paperwork, certain kinds of foodstuffs, etc).
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Well, child-porn is obvious... But that can't be the only thing they look for, right?
What else?
Or just dual-boot. (Score:3, Insightful)
"That's right officer, there is only a 100 meg hard drive in this brand-new Thinkpad. Want to play Microsoft Hearts with me, or perhaps sign up for a free trial of Prodigy?"
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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.
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4th does not apply at customs - your papers and personal effects can be searched for anything that illegal to bring into the country, and can be seized for further investigation or if found to be or contain anything illegal
5th does not apply at customs - encrypting data should raise the suspicions of customs officials and cause them to ask fo
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4th: At entry into the country your personal effects can not be seized unless there is legal cause.
5th: It has already been ruled by the supreme court that the 5th amendment applies to password to encrypted data.