New Bill To Rein In DHS Laptop Seizures 311
twigles writes with news of a new proposed bill that seeks to curtail DHS's power to search and seize laptops at the border without suspicion of wrongdoing. Here is Sen. Feingold's press release on the bill. The new bill has more privacy-protecting safeguards than the previous one, which we discussed last month. "The Travelers Privacy Protection Act, a bill written by US Senators Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., would allow border agents to search electronic devices only if they had reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing. In addition, the legislation would limit the length of time that a device could be out of its owner's possession to 24 hours, after which the search becomes a seizure, requiring probable cause."
No, no good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Probable cause required after 24 hours? No. Probable cause must be required before search.
Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a bit like saying the police can break down my door and search my apartment for 24 hours before I can complain.
I think I speak for all of us when I say: FUCK NO.
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is funny.
Didn't FISA get revised just this year (combined with giving immunity to the telephone companies involved with illegal wiretapping), so that the NSA can wait up to two weeks AFTER beginning to wiretap a phone line, to apply for the warrant to do the wiretapping? Even though there are rubber-stamp FISA judges available on speed-dial 24/7/365. All you need to do is make a long-distance phone call to a person and/or a phone number that somebody thinks is associated with terrorism (no evidence required for this belief!).
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that is true. But they also altered the law for calls entirely within the US. That long distance call you made, that somebody decided, entirely without any actual evidence, that was to a phone number similar to somebody that is suspected of being linked to a terrorist (which pretty much covers EVERYBODY), that they started wiretapping your phone for, without a warrant. They can share ALL the calls you make (including entirely within the US) with local and state police and the FBI. Without a warrant.
And once they finally have to apply for the warrant, if the rubber stamp FISA court somehow decides not to authorize it, the NSA can appeal, and keep wiretapping your line for another 30 days, still without a warrant, until another FISA court has to hear the appeal and may finally deny the warrant, and they have to take the wiretap off.
But then the President just hands out a letter (do we even know if the gov't is keeping records of their secret wiretapping?) or just indicates in some way to keep wiretapping you anyway, in the name of national security. Like he has already been doing for years.
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize this.
I also think it's a blatant violation of the Bill of Rights.
I realize said Bill of Rights is often trashed by our government. Is there something else I don't know about the rationale for treating me as anything other than a citizen at the border?
To draw a completely inappropriate analogy, it's like Spore's DRM. Sure, five activations is better than three. I still say any game telling me how many times I can install it on my own computer should not be allowed, and I'm quite offended at the attempt to throw me a bone.
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Your using all this kneejerk idiocy, makes me wonder if it is on purpose. I suspect that it is.
B.S.. I may not have anything I need to hide but I may just prefer that my private things be private and not have some uniformed person able to arbitrarily search them. Others may be traveling with things to hide, legitimate things such as industrial secrets.
I Do Not Understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it is just me, but I do not see how Congress is supposed to be passing bills or laws that give people back their Constitutionally guaranteed Rights . The Fourth Amendment protections are above the law, and the DHS is violating the Constitution -- the origin of all law in the US -- by practising these seizures. Why is a law necessary to prevent the DHS from violating the Father of All Law, the fundamental document without which the US could not claim to be a "Free Country"?
Re:I Do Not Understand (Score:4, Insightful)
It's because your Bill of Rights has been re-tasked. [charmin.com]
It's a sale! (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats the problem here (Score:4, Insightful)
they are not passing a bill to give us our rights back. They are using "code" words in a pretty phrase to convince they are.
This is very typical of Congress. Label something "bill of X rights" "for the children" etc and the media and ignorant lap it up.
No, what they really have done is to create a law to protect DHS and give DHS the right to seize your equipment for 24 hours.
The simply codified what they have been doing to protect another Federal Agency. Par for the course with this Congress
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Friend of mine had customs/whoever want to search his laptop. They said they saw something suspicious (child porn) though I have no idea how given that it wasn't switched on. The guy was travelling with his wife and wouldn't have had anything of the sort on his machine. The only reason he avoided having it searched was that the battery had died, though they asked him to prove it.
Made me think: if you try the dead battery ruse, if you're holding the laptop, perhaps use the hand supporting the laptop to dislo
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If they have probably cause, they can do a hell of a lot more than search your laptop anyway. Very, very few cases would exist where they have probable cause before crossing the border.
Think in computer terms. You can't block spam, spam, and only spam. Sometimes you have to block non-spam to catch most of the spam, or you block nothing but the most obvious spam, and still have a trashed inbox.
Yes, there is an order of magnitude of difference between a penis pill e-mail and a terrorist, but the general pr
Re:No, no good enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
Think in computer terms. You can't block spam, spam, and only spam. Sometimes you have to block non-spam to catch most of the spam, or you block nothing but the most obvious spam, and still have a trashed inbox.
The two are nothing alike.
When you're filtering spam, you aren't dealing with a person's personal belongings worth at the very least a few dollars plus the contents of the hard drive, which is priceless.
You aren't dealing with something that makes or breaks someones livelihood, you're dealing with something with an email. The two are absolutely nothing alike,and while I'll accept a high false positive rate and a high success rate with spam filtering, I'm not going to accept a high false positive rate with a system that deprives me of physical property and my livelihood for at least 24 hours without any reason.
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It's a loose analogy. And one missed e-mail due to a spam filter can make or break someone's livelihood as well. In fact, I bet it's happened far more than Customs siezures of laptops.
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I'd rather let a million spam emails slip through than block one legitimate one.
Same deal with suspicious characters at the border.
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I'd rather let a million spam emails slip through than block one legitimate one.
Same deal with suspicious characters at the border.
Ahem... I think I have.
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The email I use for slashdot is far from a critical email address. For my important one(s) I run my own mail server with spam digests (it emails me a list of everything in the quarantine at the end of the week).
Other than that, I agree with your reply :)
Odd way to terrorize people... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, there is an order of magnitude of difference between a penis pill e-mail and a terrorist, but the general principle is the same.
So you're saying that terrorists want to enlarge my penis by an order of magnitude greater than the pills? Well I guess a massive penis could be rather threatening, but how would the terrorists make use of my terrifyingly huge penis? Write a message on it? Or maybe they're just trying to get the point across that they have to ability to produce Wangs of Mass Destruction?
Re:Odd way to terrorize people... (Score:5, Funny)
Well I guess a massive penis could be rather threatening, but how would the terrorists make use of my terrifyingly huge penis?
Well, he said it would be a pain in the ass.
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I believe you meant, Weapons of Ass Destruction.
More than a pita (Score:3, Interesting)
Also if the "reasonable suspicion is truly reasonable" wouldn't that be the probable cause that the op was stating should be required?
Re:More than a pita (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you're hiking in the wilderness (in which case you probably didn't need it too badly), you will have a hotel address your laptop can be shipped to rather easily.
IANAL, but probable cause is much more than just reasonable suspicion. Soemthing along the lines of having other evidence against the person than what you gathered simply by noticing something at customs.
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Sorry, but right along with a lot of others. Its still too much and I will not come to the US with this policy in place. There are plenty of other places to go and the good conferences are world wide, and are in fact cutting the US out of the loop.
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Perhaps.
I'm in the US, so my various random travels aren't affected much by this bill, but:
Suppose someone is travelling to the US to do the equivalent of a typical budget USian European vacation: Arrive, go somewhere, sleep on the train to somewhere else, see what's there, stay at a random hostel if the things are particularly interesting there, or sleep on a train to somewhere else, visit that place, rinse, repeat . . .
There isn't any address that might be valid for more than about 10 hours, and most of
Re:More than a pita (Score:4, Funny)
If you come to the US, and sleep on the train, on the street, on the bus, or near any place that's interesting. Do not expect to have your laptop when you get back home, DHS or no DHS. Same goes for your iPod, your wallet, your credit cards, your money, your virginity, and your organs.
Well, I was only kidding about the virginity part, that part would only apply to females.
Re:More than a pita (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with travelling to the US is that they don't even let you past the gates without a valid address. I discovered this on my first visit there several years ago. I was staying in a hotel in Connecticut, but didn't know the address (my colleagues would pick me up from the airport and take me there), but I flew in to Los Angeles and was to transfer to a domestic flight to get to CT. I was tied up at the checkpoint for about 4 hours while they tried (and tried and tried and tried) to call the CT office to make sure I was "legit" and to get the address of the hotel. It didn't occur to them that due to the timezone difference, everyone had already gone home for the day and the cleaning staff generally don't answer people's office phones. All this time, they just left me waiting around, not allowed through.
Eventually, they came to me and asked for an number back in my home country (Australia at the time) and after waiting another hour for someone to get in to the office there (don't forget the joy of timezones), they finally got through to someone, got the cell number of a guy in CT, woke him up (it was pretty late by that point), got the address and then let me through. NEVER again will I travel to the US without having an address written down somewhere!
Actually, thinking about it, never again will I travel to the US unless COMPLETELY necessary. If I need to have a meeting with my colleagues from the US again, they can bloody well fly over here to Germany (where I now live/work).
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Just give them your forwarding address:
John Doe #93254
Bunk 3
Cell 4562
Guantanamo Bay
Cuba
Re:More than a pita (Score:4, Interesting)
Oops, I just caught that last part (for the US).
If a US Post Office doesn't have "General Delivery". Do try and call "Mailbox, Etc." That's a private company that rents out mailboxes in many American cities, and I would almost be sure they do this kind of thing (thought, obviously don't take my word for it, you should call them first).
As a last resort, you should use a nice hotel for this kind of thing, most nice hotels will hold mail, messages, faxes, and valuables for a long time before you arrive -- as long as you have a reservation for at least one night with them. In fact, I know someone who's an importer/exporter who does that for his business. Everywhere he goes, he stays one night at the Hilton or at some other expensive hotel, this way he can furnish his clients with their address and number. And he also sends out any letters and faxes in batches as soon as he arrives there, this way he'll use their notepad stationary and their fax stationary, and he'll have the staff at the hotel send his stuff from the hotel's mail room and fax machine. And of course, the rest of the time that he's abroad, he'll usually stay at the cheapest places he can afford for the rest of the time.
Expedited shipping? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, right....
More like "we're done installing rootkits, you can come and pick it up whenever you want".
Re:Expedited shipping? (Score:4, Interesting)
If it gets seized / inspected, it's left in its bag for the entire trip, taken home and wiped clean, then sold on eBay. I can buy another laptop without too much hassle.
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i think you're confusing probably cause with something else.
you don't just put random incoming e-mails into the spam folder. you try to detect patterns that would indicate that a particular e-mail is spam, then you put the suspected spam message in the spam folder.
likewise, you don't just do search and seizures on random people. you have to find probable cause to warrant impinging on that person's rights and privacy. probable cause isn't a court conviction. it doesn't require a police officer to prove beyon
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Just wanted to say I think that there are a couple of problems with what you have said. First, spam filtering is the equivalent of 'racial profiling' and that is simply not allowed... right? What you suggest is tantamount to giving the green light to racial profiling.
Don't believe me? Try it for yourself. You are arguing from a naive logic point of view. You seem to believe that those on the working end of this process have no reason to be mean or would never abuse their authority based on their own tepid p
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The spam thing was a loose analogy. Basically the point is, filters are not perfect. You get some undesirable activity in any case (oh, if have a perfect spam filter like you are talking about, since all others apparently fail, I am sure Postini, Symantec, McAffe and others would pay top dollar for it).
People get profiled all the time at customs (Have you been through it before, or do you just debate foreign affairs from your mother's basement?). Sure, occasionally it's race, but mostly it is country of
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Re:No, no good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
How's your sister / wife, Dwayne? Feel free to come past the 19th Century any time. You do realise Apartheid is over, and you can no longer buy slaves? Your Constitution protects PEOPLE, not citizens. THIS IS THE CRUX OF THE MATTER.
I have never seen a more ignorant response on
If you're trolling, I applaud you. You are extremely good at being a dick.
You are completely free... (Score:2)
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Yeah, we could search every single apartment, house, etc. for illegal stuff. I mean, it would make sense to scan all incoming email, right? It's obviously the same thing.
Emails are not terrorists and handling them in the same way is insanely stupid. You simply cannot apply mail handling principles to dealing with terrorism. Sacrificing freedom for security is incredibly stupid. You can go to some other country if you don't want the rights guaranteed by our constitution, but don't try to remove those ri
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Re:No, no good enough. (Score:5, Informative)
most people aren't all bad
Research [wikipedia.org] indicates otherwise:
Dr. Thomas Blass of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County performed a meta-analysis on the results of repeated performances of the [Milgram] experiment. He found that the percentage of participants who are prepared to inflict fatal voltages remains remarkably constant, 61â"66 percent, regardless of time or place
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I think you use two distinc meaning of "bad", the GP one stands for "evil", yours simply for "flawed".
Most people won't spontaneously hurt other people. What Milgram shows is that a majority of people will knowningly accept to be the instrument of an evil power with very little coercion from that power and try to rationalyze their coward behavior to themself.
To me that's the reason we need check and balance: if you have to wait for a majority to openly question orders as questionable, it will probably be fa
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Incorrect. Milgram's experiment demonstrated that people, when confronted with a decision to which they have no experience, will defer to authority. Read Milgram's conclusions, specifically his agentic state theory. As long as they become a small part within a large machine, they can do things that go against their own values. Re-read Milgram's experiments again, you will see that the vast majority of those who submitted to the administrator's authority (which was the basis of the experiment- Milgram was in
Re:No, no good enough. (Score:5, Informative)
Probable cause required after 24 hours? No. Probable cause must be required before search.
Your views on this political question* are admirable (and I would even agree but the devil's in the details of implementation) but they are also at variance with most of the electorate. For myself, I have (grudgingly) accepted that such political preferences are legitimate even when they conflict with my personal preferences. I have no qualms saying that people are making a big mistake giving up freedom for liberty but, from a point of view of epistemic humility, I also have to concede that they have every right to make the decision.
The best thing we can do is attempt to convince people and that starts first and foremost with acknowledging the legitimacy of their position (while, of course, reserving the right to respectfully disagree).
* Since for 250 years, the Constitution has permitted warrantless, suspicionless searches of anything crossing an international border, it is considered a settled legal question. /.ers can complain that the true meaning of the fourth amendment is something different (I'm sure many will) but the law remains.
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Not if you are crossing the border, unfortunately. The discussed bill is an improvement over the current situation, though...
As far as the border-patrol are concerned, it seems, everyone is to be searched. They are doing you a favor, when they let you through unmolested.
And it has always been this way, although their practices related to laptops have brought some attention. And it can't be easily changed, regretfully, even if Feingold is aiming for some
Re:No, no good enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because boarder searches include some probable cause built in. But a border search is supposed to be specific to the differences of international laws. If you're coming from a day trip in Canada it's not appropriate to look for stolen iPods from the USA... but this is what they're doing with laptops. The point is that to secure the boarder of the country items must be searched, but it must be reasonable. You are not IN the USA yet. But there needs to be limits, if customs can't find a good reason to tell
Accountability (Score:5, Interesting)
If they take a laptop to search it for 24 hours they should first detail their "reasonable suspicion" on a form to which the person's whose laptop is being taken receives a copy to chat with their lawyer about.
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Hm.. i'd be more concerned about their definition of "probable cause" and them finding (or planting) it on the 23rd hour.
For example... is the existence of a secure encrypted volume they can't read probable cause? (Noone innocent would have any need to encrypt anything, right?? What have they got to hide????)
Probable cause? "whatever..." (Score:4, Interesting)
In 2005 I allowed my drivers' license to expire on my birthday at the beginning of the month, thinking that I had until the end of the month.
Traveling 3 days after the "official expiration", I flew to California, and what a pain in the ass that was! I was selected for the extra special search-every-bag at every security checkpoint both out and back.
I'm guessing that "probable cause" is whatever niggly-ass detail they want it to be.
Worse yet, my work involves lots of proprietary code, and I support my wife's psychology business accounting work. All that stuff is or should be on an encrypted partition and I can just see that...
Goon: What's on this encrypted partition?
Me: Patient mental health records for my wife's psychology business.
Goon: Decrypt it.
Me: Certainly, as soon as I have a legally binding signed agreement that all observers agree to the HIPAA privacy agreements that are required for medical records.
Goon: Step out of the line and come with me, sir.
< Uh-oh, this is probably not going to work out very well... >
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If my doctor was carrying my personal details around when travelling with his laptop, i'd have him fired. Those kind of records should be at the place of work, and stored off-site for archiving / backup. Carrying them on a trip is borderline negligence.
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If they take a laptop to search it for 24 hours they should first detail their "reasonable suspicion" on a form to which the person's whose laptop is being taken receives a copy to chat with their lawyer about.
What exactly are you going to sue them for? Seizure for inspection at the border is legal (how else would the USDA inspect imported food?) and so you can S1983 them for violation of a Constitutional right.
I don't particularly object to your suggestion, I just don't see that it would be of any use.
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If they take a laptop to search it for 24 hours they should first detail their "reasonable suspicion" on a form to which the person's whose laptop is being taken receives a copy to chat with their lawyer about.
Right, search and seizure are mostly done to aliens (although they sometimes do to their natives too), what rights to lawyer do they have? Who cares about aliens anyway?
International conventions and all that (Score:2)
The problem is that we're all aliens _somewhere_. The USA isn't that self-contained that only the rest of the world comes to the USA.
I think the USA would have a problem very fast, if its businessmen travelling to Europe would get their laptops confiscated for two weeks, to make sure there is no secret terrorism stuff among that mess of powerpoint slides. (Well, some do cause brain damage. Does that count as terrorism?) Especially when that laptop comes loaded with a copy of some corporation's customer data
still won't convince me to visit the usa (Score:2, Interesting)
Note: The bill applies to US citizens only (Score:5, Informative)
If you're a foreigner, you're screwed.
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US Citizens and legal residents, according to the bill itself. So not all "foreigners" are screwed.
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government sponsored theft of your property. fuck that.
Taxes?
Re:still won't convince me to visit the usa (Score:5, Insightful)
government sponsored theft of your property. fuck that.
Taxes?
No Highway for you!
Re:still won't convince me to visit the usa (Score:4, Informative)
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wake me in March (Score:2)
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I don't have government twits telling me what healthcare I can and can't have.
The government has screwed over the economy and used fear to enforce security and yet now we're supposed to trust them with our medical services?
No thank you.
Or to paraphrase...
Those who are willing to give up medical freedom for medical security deserve neither.
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I don't have government twits telling me what healthcare I can and can't have.
The government has screwed over the economy and used fear to enforce security and yet now we're supposed to trust them with our medical services?
No thank you.
Or to paraphrase...
Those who are willing to give up medical freedom for medical security deserve neither.
Who said universal health care had to involve government administration?
Just pass strict new regulations:
A - you must charge a flat rate to all comers, subject to audits against gouging, and regulated the way utilities are regulated.
B - you must accept any applicant to your medical insurance program, no testing, your economic function is to spread risk not avoid it.
C - Anyone willing to subject themselves to a full financial audit by the IRS and SEC to prove they are unable to pay the national flat rate can
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Except it SHOULD cover pre-existing conditions.
I should not be forced to pay double any time I switch coverage for a condition beyond my control.
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Instead you have greedy blood sucking HMO's telling you what health care you can't have and charging you more for the priviledge.
I'm living in Australia now, and guess what, my "failed" government system, slow as it is is better than what I used to get from my mothers HMO in the US. I actually get to pick my doctor, and so long as I'm willing to wait for non essential stuff they'll give it to me.
Of course we've got priva
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As opposed to profit-motivated corporations deciding what healthcare you can and can't have?
Re:Not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm such a leech.
I mean.. i ate right, have never been overweight, got plenty of exercise, and was diagnosed with crohns at age 17.
Now im out of college, unable to get insurance of any kind, and suffering from excruciating pain, chronic diarrhea, and lethargy approaching narcolepsy, all because I can't get 2 perscriptions which would make it all go away
This is because of authoritarians like you who believe in "guilty until proven innocent"
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Ok. So, you lost the genetic lottery. That really sucks for you, I'll admit. You have my sympathy.
Still, please explain why just because you got unlucky in life, I (or anyone else) should be forced to pay to take care of you? I know that sounds cold, but the nature of reality is that life is not fair and you only deserve what you can earn by the sweat of your brow.
Authoritarians did not invent Crohns disease. If you cannot get the drugs in this country, move to one where you can. If you cannot afford the dr
Re:Not necessarily (Score:4, Insightful)
Ultimately only you are responsible for your own health and happiness. If you're not willing to do whatever it takes to secure those things for yourself, do not blame others. It's your choice not to act.
And that, in a nutshell, is why a lot of people can't stop scratching their heads about the way things are done in the good ol' US of A.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's immoral or wrong in any way, just that a good chunk of the rest of the western world feels there's such a thing as the common good which supercedes the individual.
And to put this in economical terms, what's the cost/benefit of providing the GGP with socially funded medicine, which most likely means he'll be able to function as a tax-paying, consuming, creditcard-using citizen instead of having to sit at home being a drain on society through other channels? In many cases a short-term investment in people that have fallen "through the system", so to speak, can make a huge difference both to their own welfare as well as their ability to contribute to society as opposed to having to depend on it.
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Your solution of "Sucks for you." doesn't balance the fact that insurance companies are fucking people over. So the GP should have the right to hold you at gun point and take everything on you? Perhaps that is whatever
Re:Not necessarily (Score:5, Informative)
I'm Canadian and I definitely wouldn't classify our health care system as a "failed idea." It's not perfect, but I bet most Canadians would agree that it's far better than the system you have.
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Where are the Republicans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why on Earth isn't this bill co-sponsored by a Republican? Have they stopped even paying lip-service to freedom?
Ten years ago the Republican party had two things going for it, fiscal conservatism and a strong stance on freedom. What happened? (It would be easy to say, "George Bush", but I refuse to believe that he could have done it single handedly.)
-Peter
Re:Where are the Republicans? (Score:4, Informative)
That party got renamed to the "Libertarian" party?
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Didn't you hear? The Communists are now Democrats, the Democrats are now Republicans, and the Republicans are now Libertarians, and the Libertarians are shit out of luck.
I believe you have that backwards..
The communists are dead, the democrats are now republicans, the republicans are now the manifestations of orwell's worst nightmare, and the real "conservatives" are shit out of luck.
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Too busy paying for lip-service in the Men's room.
In our current political climate (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd also like to know what measures the bill takes to prevent the border guards from saying "well, we lost it, sucks to be you". Does it have guarantees spelled out? If my laptop gets "lost" while they have it, will they buy me a new one? Will someone lose their job or go to jail over it?
Because if the answer is "no", then at this point I just plain don't believe it will matter.
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At which point, a year after your laptop was taken, you're awarded the value that your now-obsolete laptop would fetch on eBay. (Or, probably, $1000.) Your data is gone, you had to buy a new laptop a year ago to continue your work, and the dude who swiped your laptop is using it to jerk off to transvestite goat porn.
If criminals had those kinds of penalties, you'd see crime rates many, many times higher than we currently have. "If you commit a crime, and you're caught, then you have a year to hold on to wha
Perhaps a good start (Score:2)
But this "government limiting its own power" never seems to go where one would wish it to. They all want to look good on national security (particularly on the run up to the election), and a shallow look sees that as associated with a strong central government.
But real security can't rest on trampling the essential liberties of the people (citizens or not). There is not much understanding of that in Washington, or they mostly prefer willful disregard.
And something that this discussion needs: probably cau [wikipedia.org]
A good shot (Score:2)
Obviously, just because he passed a bill before doesn't mean this one is a sure bet; however, it does give it a better chance.
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Feingold got BiCRA passed but one of the main planks didn't make it past the Supreme Court. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Election_Commission_v._Wisconsin_Right_to_Life,_Inc. [wikipedia.org] that created a huge loophole through the "TV ads" part of the law. Essentially, unless the ad cannot be interpreted in any other way as supporting/opposing a candidate, the FEC cannot constitutionally prevent individuals from airing it.
I give Feingold a lot of credit for making it pass, but ultimately, it ends up in the dust
To take or not to take? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is particularly relevant to me as I'm travelling to the US next month. I'll be there for a couple of months so taking my laptop is kind of a necessity but really don't know what the hassle's going to be like at the border and whether it's worth it. I'm not particularly worried about them spying on my files since there isn't anything sensitive there and if there was, I could upload it onto a secure server and then download it once in the States but even that is a somewhat depressing course of action to take when entering the "land of the free".
It's almost as if they don't want visitors, tourists, skilled workers?
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It's a numbers game. How many laptops are seized each month? Few. How many laptops are on all international flights? LOTS.
In the last year I have flown over 20 times. Once I was asked to turn the laptop on. All other times, they just wanted me to take it out of my carry-on bag.
Mail it (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. You will have a tracking number and a guarantee it will arrive. If I have to fly somewhere within the USA my clothes and belongings are going by Fedex. They don't seem to care if my tube of toothpaste is 3.04 ounces.
Not so fast. (Score:3, Interesting)
I bought a laptop from a guy in singapore on ebay.
The thing stayed in a customs warehouse for 20 days because someone tacked some arbitrarily arrived at "extra" duty in addition to the official ones.
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Yeah, and any half assed techie instinctively grasps the former. That we don't seem particularly bothered by the latter is, to me, a much bigger downer. It's one thing to have a technically ignorant policy -
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I've seen some numbers thrown around showing the amount of tourism money lost in the last several years amounts to some tens of billions of dollars. Which isn't that much on the scale of our whole economy
It's more than half of NASA's budget (http://foofus.com/amuse/public/Fedspending-2008-linechart.jpg).
This is of course independent of... (Score:2)
A similar bill to protect you from the HDS [flixster.com], which should not be trusted with your laptop for more than 1 second.
Question here (Score:2)
I'm a US citizen visiting Canada in the Vancouver area. I had all of my crap in my car when I crossed the border to B.C., and I'll have to cross the border again to get back home relatively soon. I've gone across the border twice since to get some essentials down in Washington, and I've been picked out and had my car searched going both ways. I can only assume that I'll get searched when I'm coming back for good and have a car full of crap.
Among my possessions is about 2.5 Tb of storage containing several l
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What good would encrypting it do? If they see that it's encrypted, they'll demand the key. If you don't provide the key, you've just bought endless legal trouble for yourself.
You can either gamble that they don't notice/care what's on a bunch of portable hard drives, or you can host it securely in Canada and download it once you're back in the US.
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I dunno. I was planning on saying that I was storing high entropy noise on those drives for a crypto project or some other bullshit. The guys on the border aren't all that bright.
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Border guards aren't that stupid, most of them are halfway decent people, but they've got fairly broad ranging powers and nobody likes a smart ass.
Unless your border guards have had a recent donation from the RIAA/MPAA/BSA they probably don't really care, realistically unless they're bored they're not going to do much about data even if they bother to look at it. It's none of their business and doing anything about it would require filling in paper work.
On the other hand, if you act like a s
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Good point. I was kind of a dick to them when I realized that my car was getting searched regardless of what I did or said, but I guess they could have fucked up my car if they wanted to.
You almost have to ask yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
You almost have to ask yourself, why do we need a bill to fix a problem that is against the
constitution anyhow.
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