Record the Customs agent and all he says, and post it on Youtube.

THAT will get their attention.

Brilliant! Now…we need a volunteer….anyone?

Time to buy a cheap eee-pc or old cheap laptop, and only ever use it when traveling to access legit sites. Or just avoid the States as much as possible, which is a real shame after living there for a while and dreaming of returning permanently…

I love American people, but I really don’t like what America does as a nation. And the fact the UK seems intent on copying so much of it – like privatising healthcare…

#31 – I nearly fell out my chair imagining them rooting around someone’s arse looking for their public key.

(Given my aunt’s experience on going to the USA, to a proton radiotherapy conference – the customs? border patrol? official asked her “So, did you bring any of these ‘protons’ with you?”)

#46 – I’d download an mpeg of that.

#48 – Awesome. I wonder if they’d actually bother to click through it all (or confiscate our laptop to take it to a lab for “further study”.) The image is hilarious, though.

#64 – Ponderous post, but there’s the gem of the English-to-Klingon translation of all your test files hidden in the middle.

Someone needs to compile these, per Takuan’s suggestion on the TSA thread the other day, and create a humorous guide to getting through US (or other) customs with a laptop.

Given my cheeky nature, I would then put an encrypted disk image on the desktop named “goatsexlove” and have within that 3 more encrypted disk images, each layered within the next, and at the root of all these images a text file containing choice swear words describing what I think of their practices with laptops.

I’m not sure I would give the passwords to the encrypted images up or not in that case, but I am leaning toward not. Seems much funnier for them to waste their time on this only to get insulted after weeks/months/years of trying to get into my faux-bestiality-laden encrypted files.

By the time they get down to reading the text file I’d probably have been shipped off to gitmo.

Interesting hypothetical brought up by a friend I was discussing this with:

What if you were an IT security professional and your job was to research attacks/viruses etc. and you loaded up the laptop with every virus/trojan/worm you could think of, and then fully disclosed to them the dangers in their copying data from your machine before the inspected it? How fast would those viruses fly through government computers? Would they hold you liable and charge you if you disclosed fully your job, your reason for having an infected machine, and gave full warning to them?

My bet is that it would end poorly for you, but at least it would throw egg on their faces.

Support the EFF and ACLU.

here ya goes
http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2005/06/memory_stick_ea.html

Seems to be they are after information. But WHAT information could possibly so important that they open laptops to find it, and what do these people have in common that links them?

I miss the country I thought I grew up in.

WRONG!
—–

you silly goose. he is right.
why are they stealing his computer?
its one this to examine the data, its another thing to steal a persons computer.
my friend just had his primary music production computer stolen EXACTLY like this and this needs to stop. where does this end?
if property and ownership of a 1000+$ laptop are not respected what is?

illegal HELLO!??? i dont believe the patriot act or the homeland security department charter allow or condone theft… they allow other stupid stuff but not theft

I don’t understand this at all. WHAT is the purpose?

Behavioral conditioning, like when TSA forced everyone to remain motionless for hours at a time, and then called it off without any explanation. Or how children are raised in schools to expect wearing identification at all times, with fast and thick punishment for disobedience.

Even with the rampant voting fraud, is there any way to get the majority of eligible voters to actually vote? Threaten to cut off their TV? Something?

No, wait.. I got that wrong, sorry. I was watching some Fox News bits on YouTube and my brain got fried.

I don’t understand this at all. WHAT is the purpose?

Orwell said it sixty years ago: “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”