You could also save all of your lolcats as TIFF or TGA; and ensure you don’t have a copy of IrFanView on your system. Throw a few RickRolls on there, too !

Of course if they’ve got a supercomputer at their disposal or you’ve got really weak encryption then that’s a different story.

Nathan Sales mentioned a laptop search that turned up a terrorist in his testimony in the Senate hearing.

More recently, in 2006, a laptop search at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport helped U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detect a potentially risky traveler. Once he was referred to secondary inspection, CBP discovered that he had a manual on how to make improvised explosive devices, or IEDs – a weapon of choice for terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. Inspecting the passenger’s computer, officers also found video clips of IEDs being used to kill soldiers and destroy vehicles, as well as a video on martyrdom.

What Mr. Sales did not mention is that this person wasn’t randomly selected for search, but rather he was pulled for secondary screening after being flagged by an anti-terror profiling tool called “Automated Targeting System.”

Mr. Sale’s failure to mention that fact makes the reference a bit disingenuous, as no one disputes the right of DHS to search laptops when they have a reasonable basis for suspicion. What is in dispute is whether DHS can search laptops at random. If anything this example demonstrates that DHS is better off focusing their searches on people they can identify as being suspicious through profiling tools, a point made by numerous people on both sides of the issue in the Senate hearing.

However, as an abstract matter, there are terrorists, they have laptops, and they travel into the US. It is possible that DHS will find one through random searching. If you oppose random searches you have to be comfortable with not finding that terrorist. I am. The likelyhood of finding a terrorist this way is astronomically low and the cost to the dignity and privacy of travelers is extremely high. The exact same balance of risks and costs exists in our decision not to allow DHS to perform random searches of houses inside the US. Part of being a free country involves limiting police investigations to contexts wherein you have some reasonable basis for suspicion. If we throw that away we aren’t the same sort of country anymore.

I don’t know how I managed to post the comment on the wrong story.

My apologies for the confusion, and for making these comment threads even more disjointed than normal.

I hardly think so. Change *we can’t* believe in.

This does not protect Americans! This is oppression, not security. This gives any border agent the right to screw with any traveler for no reason at all. I can picture it now:

Agent: Sir do you have any electronics?
Traveler: Yes I have two Personal Computers with me, and an Iphone.
Agent: Sir we MUST have those checked out at our off site tech facility. You have been randomly chosen.
Traveler: Really, what for?
Agent: We need to ascertain whether you are carrying data that may alert us to terrorist plots that you may be organizing. Also, we wanna make sure you don’t have any child pornography. You’ll get your PCs back in a month or so.
Traveler: I don’t have any porn let alone child porn!!! And I’m not a terrorist! One laptop is personal, one is for business!! I’m only gonna be in the country for 3 days!! What the hack do you want my I Phone for?
Agent: *draws gun* “CODE 5, CODE 5″
*More agents swarm the vehicle weapons drawn; locked and loaded*
Agent: “GET ON THE GROUND! GET YOUR FACE ON THE GROUND!”
*Months later due to a severe backlog the PCs are checked, many hours wasted, nothing on ‘em. They are returned to the traveler who is in jail for resisting a data search.

Any criminal hell bent on bringing “terrorist data” into the U.S. does not have to physically bring the data across the border on a memory device.

Just about anyone is capable of hosting “sensitive” data on a private file server. They could then go to the U.S. and use the internet to connect to their private file server. Then, they could just download the “nefarious data”. This effectively circumvents the entire logic of this legislation.

Not only does this legislation fail to provide any security. Travelers will believe that the U.S government will steal their classified and personal business data. The agents will also have an opportunity to tamper with the laptop, ie. load government sanctioned spyware and trojans.

The only way to make sure foreigners aren’t going to obtain “nefarious data” would be to have a security officer escort every traveler who enters the country. The escort could watch them 24/7 to make sure they don’t download a terrorist plot. They would even have to sleep in the same bed as the traveler to make sure that they aren’t trying to sneak data under the covers using wireless technologies.

Pfft.

We really do need more protection from our government in many cases than we do from “terrorists.”

(Don’t expect to get it, though…)

Also, border searches are why I’ve resolved never to take a computer across international borders. If I need to, I’ll buy some server space and store a harddrive image then grab it once I’m at my destination.

I could just Truecrypt the whole thing, but I don’t want to have to face the “Give us the password or don’t fly” choice.

Just like there is no Rule Six.

You watch; they’re going to change the Fifth Amendment to “No Poofters!”

cheers,
M__

What are the odds that the $9-an-hour types in the airport would be able to figure out it’s not a dll?

No, I’ve never done this, and no, Mr. FBI Man reading this, I’m not a criminal.

Sadly, that one is easy to answer. The Congressional Research Service published an extensive summary of the law recently:

“Few exceptions to the presumptive warrant and probable cause requirements are more firmly rooted than the ‘border search’ exception. Pursuant to the right of the United States to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into the country, routine border searches are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border.”
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL31826_20080115.pdf

“ah! I see now. You were personally stung by my counseling young people to desert before they were trapped into killing the innocent for the profits of the elite and few. I stand by my words. Blood does not wash off. I feel sorrow for those who learned this too late or the hard way….”

If you were indeed referring to your own credentials, however rhetorically worded, I lay the blame for misreading you on coincidental comment positioning and my own imagination. (Who would credit an old Trotskyist with being so thin-skinned?) Therefore, I am happy to retract my hasty accusation of slander, and hope that I have not slandered you.

Concerning that conversation you had with Greg London about conspiracy, let me venture, however belatedly, that Karl Marx never wrote a truer line than, “The history of mankind is the history of class struggle.” No further conspiracies are necessary.

Customs: Wow. India and Thailand?
Me: Yes.
Customs: Are you traveling with anyone?
Me: No.
Customs: That’s a lot of luggage for one person.
Me: I got some gifts for my wife and daughter.
Customs: Was this trip for business?
Me: No.
Customs: You went on vacation to India and Thailand without your family?
Me: Yes.
Customs: Blue line, please.

He wrote a code on my customs declaration and I went to the blue line.

In the blue line, a tag-team pair of early twenty-somethings checked my customs declaration and did a double take when one pointed at the code on my form. They took me aside and one ran interference with my bags while the other took my laptop aside and proceeded with an image search of my hard drive. After 25 minutes with my laptop and finding nothing of importance in my bags or computer, I was sent along and thanked for my understanding.