warrantless laptop searches at US borders
Dear all, If you are traveling to/from the US, please take note of the following. (Yet another reason not to have the annual meetings here...) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR200808 0103030.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter Best, Julie
You mean: another reason not to have international meetings anywhere. US citizens will be subject to the same rules when returning home from Copenhagen, as will many of the people who come through the US on the way from and to other places in North America. Note also that encrypting your stuff isn't a useful solution, since you can be denied entry if you don't cough up your passwords when asked. I suppose you could say you didn't have passwords for some stuff, but that seems to be a great way of having a lot of trouble getting back into the US. (Even though I don't think there is a legal requirement that you not carry encrypted messages across the border.) If you want to try being my data mule, email me and I'll send you a large chunk of encrypted data (purely innocuous data--trust me!) to try bringing across the border, but no password. Of course, the natural response is to travel with either no data devices or with a clean laptop. (Actually, given the increase in baggage fees by US carriers, I suspect most of us will be traveling naked soon enough.) It's probably a good idea not to have your most sensitive information on a laptop that you are traveling with anyway, and I often travel without my primary laptop for this reason. Cleaning the other devices (mobile, etc.) is a bit more bothersome. If you don't mind the US government knowing your contacts, that's not a worry, I suppose. Oh, and did you pay for every one of those MP3s and video files and can you prove it? If you are traveling with a clean machine, you'll store your information, encrypted of course, online and download once you arrive back to the US. Sure, the government still gets a look (would be naive to believe otherwise), but least then they have to put in a few million cycles of decryption work to find out you have a passion for ABBA. Alex On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Julie Cohen <jec@law.georgetown.edu> wrote:
Dear all,
If you are traveling to/from the US, please take note of the following. (Yet another reason not to have the annual meetings here...)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR200808 0103030.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
-- -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, cyberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net //
From what I understand in a recent post on the IP list by Wired's Declan McCullagh, this policy also embraces searches for "copyright enforcement" -- which opens up a whole new can of worms. Imagine if you have an iPod or loaded iTunes on your laptop. Do you need to prove you've paid for the bulk of your music or movies? What if you rip a few DVDs for the trip? Do we have to carry the original disc to prove we "own" (er, "licensed") the product? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? Further, as I read things, if you take your laptop, phone, or iPod and put it in a sealed First Class envelope, they can't search it without probable cause. So it seems like this policy has a built-in circumvention clause of sorts. Brilliant. Otherwise, I agree 100% with Alex' comments - my recently-rebuilt Powerbook is bare-bones, and rather sterile. Am i being paranoid? Perhaps. Does it mean more work for me when on the road internationally? Probably. Here again, I join other security professionals in voicing (or practicing) our intolerance of and protesting against poorly-conceived and horribly implimented policies enacted by the USG (or UK, et..al) in the name of "homeland security" that do more to inconvenience the innocent than catch the criminal. As I said back in 2003, in the post-9/11 New Normal (tm), we are all presumed guilty until proven guiltier -- often without knowing what standards are being applied in making such determinations. In a supposed democratic society like the United States that cherishes notions like checks-and-balances and an informed citizenry, the social and cultural effects of this recent phenomenon (2001-) I presume are clear to all. (end mini-rant) See also: Peter Swire: No, You Can't Search My Laptop http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/laptop_testimony.html Cheers - rick infowarrior.org
participants (3)
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Alex Halavais -
Julie Cohen -
Richard Forno