Seizing Laptops and Cameras Without Cause
A controversial customs practice creates a legal backlash
Reader Comments
re: sounds a little silly
If you object, you lose. You could win a cell in Gitmo, and never be heard from again. A customs agent can have you held w/o bail or hearing, cause you to forfeit everything you have with you, and humiliate you with intrusive searches.
So, if you are masochistically inclined, object all you want.
There is no safety concern that justifies copying a hard drive. Copying your hard drive is equivalent to copying your paper files. What I mean is they may search your briefcase for bombs and whatnot, but they don't take your business documents out and photocopy them. This is almost certainly designed to harvest trade secrets and insider information. Even if it's not, the potential for abuse is astronomical.
Junk Laptop's
Why not take a junk laptop with you and let them have it. Then you don't have to get rid of it and they have to dispose of it.
The 'Root' Cause
The problem is not with the our elected officials. We, the voters and citizens, are responsible for letting this happen. We do not sufficiently participate in the voting process. We are jointly complacent with respect to overseeing the work of who we elect. When we discover benign inadequacies or blatant incompetence, we do not actively engage in solutions. We could help them understand the ‘error’ of their ways and how they are failing their constituency. We could work towards replacing them. Or, we could just ‘speak up’ publicly and voice our opinion. But, we don’t. As a group, we don’t do enough. Bottom line: we are to blame for this situation.
I keep wondering what our great grandchildren will say about us and how we sat on the sidelines while basic human freedoms...the freedoms that our pioneering ancestors fought and died for...were eroded in the name of safety and security. This doesn’t sound very American to me. Our forefathers and foremothers ventured out from their relatively secure and safe places to find freedom. They stood up against the tyranny of the day and designed a place where individuals could be themselves without fear. They placed safety and security properly behind their ‘unalienable human rights’...the freedoms we have come to take for granted and now have morphed into only a memory of what was.
PTD / North Haven, CT
Canada
Canada is also doing the same thing by checking on all computers. We are all criminals and or civil liberties are being taken away thanks to the events of 9-11! If the The United States-Canada border is strict, why is there no visa enforcement policy and a wall between us and them?
post removed
Why was the post from " Paul of VA Jun 29, 2008 07:51:21 AM," removed?
Tin Foil Hats, sorry : TPM
Dear Paul of VA
Jun 29, 2008 07:51:21 AM,
Would you expand on your comment "They are all equiped with keylogger and a 4 Mbyte flash memory that dumps to DHS everytime you go on line"? I would like to locate this chip.
Are you referring to Trusted Platform Module (TPM)? If so, then this can be disabled in some BIOS (like mine). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module
There is nothing to trust about the TPM. The logic is that the companies that promote it don't trust you so they dictate what can or cannot be run on the laptop. Sony Vaio comes with TPM. The TPM is active in Windows, but for Linux one has to add the Trousers software for it to work as far as I know, which I have not done.
You are So Right
I have just had such an experience and I have seen much in traveling across America. 29 years ago we were warning people about what was happening, and no one listened. Abraham Lincoln warned us our enemy would come from within.
People forget that our Government is run by human beings and they are as much subject to corruption as anyone. The only sign I have seen across America for President is Ron Paul.
Today's election is just an insider trade and I also believe 9-11 was an inside job.
Every where I go I am turned down for jobs, medical charity help and even housing, unless I am a Mexican.
It was the people who fought the Revolution, they were the militia, that was the reason for the second amendment so we the people could rise up in armed conflict to protect our freedom. But do we want that? What other avenue do we have when it appears even the Judiciary is against the people?
Things are getting worse and many feel we are reaching a blow up point. I certainly do not believe anyone the press supports for PResident will do America any good.
DHS storm troopers
I thought it was just my bad luck when returning from Canada recently, my van was searched for 45 min. my camaera bag opened and the contents strewn about the vehicle, 2 interior lights broken, and being subjected to such stupid questions such as "Why were you only in Canada for 2 days?" Because I was on a photo assignment that only took 2 days to complete. "Don't they have photographers in canada?" Yes, but the Pope hired Michaelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, not Al Capp".
It's just symptomatic of the stupidity and incompetence that flows from the white house on down to the Gestapo border control.
Privacy
BTW, it will do you no good to encryp your computer, if you have a laptop built after 2004. They are all equiped with keylogger and a 4 Mbyte flash memory that dumps to DHS everytime you go on line. In the photos I've seen of the early devices, they are these little hardware based spy devices are spliced into the cable that connects the keyboard to the competer. By now, that circuity is probably an integral part of the mother boards.
The EE who discovered this inquired of the manufacturer what this circuitry was and was told he would have to request that information from the DHS. He did so and was told to file a freedom of information request. His subsequent request was denied on grounds of national security. He then did a search to find out what the various chips in that little bundle did and figured out the function by reading the chips. The government is compelling computer makers to facilitate the government's ability to illegally data mine your computer. If they confiscate your computer, the keylogger will almost certainly eneable them to recover your encryption key....4 mytes is a lot of keystrokes.
Regardless the above, the makers of all encryption software are required to make their algorithms available to the government, the NSA, so that your data is always accessible to prying government eyes. Unless you are writing your own sophisticated encryption algorithms, they're going to get your private information, including all emails you send or receive.
And then their is the government's PROMIS software, a very powerful data mining software package. If you have ever visited a government website and downloaded any forms, their spyware is on you computer, and your computer is being data-mined everytime you go on line.
It's getting to the point that if you have anything you want kept private, you will have to make sure it never enters any electronic or telecommunications domain. Privacy mostly doesn't exist anymore in the US, and the government has no respect for either the Constitution or the rule of law. America, for all intents and purposes, is a police state of ubiquitous law enforcement. The terrorists, such as they really exist, are a trivial threat when compared to the threat of a lawless government that is no longer responsive to the will of the people, a government that is lost in the smug self-justifying arrogance of self-righteousness.
