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Laptops scanned by UK customs
Posted by
Hemos
on Fri Aug 14, 1998 10:15 AM
from the stop-the-man dept.
from the stop-the-man dept.
Noel Maddy writes
"BBC News has a report that
a journalist was a target of a random search for
pornography by H.M. Customs on entry into the U.K.
Part of the search included hooking his laptop up
to something to "scan the drive" -- apparently,
it wouldn't work on his Apple computer, though."
This is an unsettling precedent, though. I may be just overly paranoid, but the first image that flashed into my mind as I read this article was trying to leave the U.S and being forced to remove any non-exportable or unapproved cryptography.
Like a lot of people, I keep an awful lot of my personal life on my PalmPilot and my laptop. They've become a surrogate memory for me. This precedent of random invasion worries me.
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