Last post I wrote about the Aussie customs and their iPod searches - I was not picking on the Aussies but it was one of the first articles I had seen on the subject. Scary stuff.
Well here is a new article on news.com discussing how Homeland Security can seize laptops for an idefinite period of time. How does this help fight terrorism if I may ask?
OS X, Apple, has a nice way of encrypting my personal data but I cam curious that if the HS douche bags look at the iPod and assume that it has pirated music how would they prove it if they cannot look at the computer with the music? All seems so suspect and I still ask how is this protecting us in the skies? Or is that no longer the point of homeland security?
No, sorry Bkk22, I did not get out last night. So I have no getting out news to write and no one came over either so I have no stories to share. Terrible isn’t? Living in Bangkok but just having a normal work filled day. I stand guilty as charged.
Did anyone catch the release of the new search engine - http://www.cuil.com?
I am not impressed with it but I think it has some promise and god knows but they announced themselves way too early in the game. Well, leave it to one of my old co-workers, to try and beat Cuil at their own game. This is the stuff I miss about silicon valley.
More party news soon.
More on this from washington post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2008/08/01/laptops.html?hpid=topnews
View all comments by smitty
This is further evidence that in the USA it seems as though both the Democrat and Republican parties want BIG GOVERMENT to control everything. The Democrates want the Power to control our Money from cradle to grave and the Republicans want the Power to control our Behavior.
We are doomed!
View all comments by 8 ball
Politics aside, privacy is something one can control. Posted on the last thread, there are great options to protect data, from iPod to laptop. Get smart, learn a bit, know what you care about, and decide how important privacy is. There are options for security and privacy that are bulletproof if you want them to be.
I’d suggest reading the Schneier post from the last thread, great advice.
View all comments by tosh
No worries smitty. I ended up at Tapas in Silom. Interesting crowd there with a mix of hi-so type girls and some definite grey area girls. I’d go back as there is some pulling potential.
View all comments by bkk22
bkk - coolio. tapas is cool. the gray area is larger than people think and the hi-so types want to hook up. It can a goldmine on the weekends.
View all comments by smitty
This has been in effect for some time, but has only now hit the media. I know of three individuals (none US-nationals) who have had their laptops seized. One has yet to get his back.
Mobile phones and iPods are also subject to this process, and you can assume any electronic devices capable of storing information are also subject to seizure. From the WashPost: “Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today that “the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices.” Searches have uncovered “violent jihadist materials” as well as images of child p*rn*graphy, he wrote.” No suspicion, reasonable doubt or otherwise, is required. You can be sure that if you joke about the above-mentioned subjects within earshot of officials while waiting in an Immigration queue at a US border crossing that you may well be singled out for scrutiny.
Read Schneier, and subscribe to his free Crypt-o-gram newsletter: he’s always good value. Personally, when i have to go Stateside, i use Spotlight on my Mac laptop to search for filenames and delete anything that might cause eyebrows to raise…although i have nothing to hide, i’m traveling on business and can’t really afford to lend my laptop to the US Govt. You can of course encrypt your entire device and refuse to type in the password if so requested, but i feel that this would raise the level of suspicion rather than lower it. Remember that they can seize ALL your electronic devices and/or put you in a room and search you top to bottom. Realize also that memory-cards from cameras in your possession, including the one with those beach memories of Pattaya from last year that you forgot about, but which is sitting in a pocket in your camera bag, may come under scrutiny as well.
I am a US national and i find that as such, I’m in the shorter queue and most Immig officials assume i’m returning from biz overseas, i suppose. I’ve never had my laptop even opened. But were it to be scrutinized, it’s as vanilla as its white Apple-made doubleshot-plastic coating.
All that said, remember also that this is an election year, and the regime-in-power is not assured of continuance. I would be amiss if i did not mention that gentlemen possessing phenotypes typical of individuals from Middle Eastern or subcontinental regions may be scrutinized more closely than others. But Chertoff mentions two areas of concern in his written opinion, and the bottom line is: if they want to seize your stuff, they will.
I just got an iPhone, and part of the reason is that i can utilize its multi-band capabilities on Stateside biztrips. If/when it supports a Bluetooth keyboard, I could leave my Macbook at home. Less weight to haul, but given these not-new but newly revealed measures, one less thing to bring along.
I’m still puzzled over the Australian “music-piracy” initiative. Are you supposed to have receipts for every mp3 on your iPod or what? Odd.
JtB
View all comments by Jack the Bat
I recommend using TrueCrypt, its free, open source, and you can encrypt your whole operating system. You can also set it up for deniable encryption, which allows you to reveal your password to someone yet still have data hidden/encrypted.
I used this last time I went to Thailand just in case my laptop got stolen, and reverted back to an unencrypted system when I got back home.
View all comments by V
Comes on, guys, get real here.
If your laptop is inspected for any reason when crossing an international border, it won’t make the slightest difference whether your data is encrypted or not. You will of course be asked to provide the customs inspector with the password necessary to decrypt the data. And you will have to do it or the chances of you having your laptop seized will become darn near 100%.
What if you put a box in your suitcase and locked it? Then, when customs searches your suitcase and asks you to open the box, you tell them you won’t do it. What do you think would happen to your box then? Would you seriously just expect the customs inspector to shrug, close up your suitcase, and send you on your way with your locked box that you refuse to open? And why would you think you would, or should, be treated any differently if it’s your laptop that you refuse to unlock rather than a box in your luggage?
What is everybody going on and on about here? Customs inspectors everywhere have been looking through documents crossing national borders pretty much back to the beginning of time. Why should carrying the documents in digital form somehow make them exempt from inspection?
View all comments by Old Asia Hand
oah - i get your point but I don’t get their reasons for searching and what they think they are looking for. If I was a suspected terrorist and I had bomb plans on my laptop then have at it.
What if I have a home movie of a thai girl I shag. Is that illegal? would they assume she is underage and since I could not prove it nail me?
What about if I have some music from a friend and he is not signed yet. So I just have the tunes and no way of proving I bought them? Is this pirated music? Can they get me for it.
I understand search and seizure but I think they have used the supposed war on terror to create massive amounts of bureaucracy and now have to keep expanding their reasons for searching and making our lives hell but they have not made anyone safer. Just wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Thank god they are not mine.
I used to get checked every time I came back from my trips. They were always baffled as to all the stops I made in Asia. I would say I work there. They would say what do u do? I would say I do email. Then they would want to see my computer. So I showed them.
Then they found nothing but one guy thought my padded bag had something so he wanted to cut it open. I finally had to ask for a REAL customs officer to check the bag in a machine that sees through padded bags - wow technology. Of course I am sure the 2 hours they wasted on a normal law abiding citizen like me probably kept them from doing things they might have actually made some sense.
SO yes - OAH - they have the rights to do this but I think the bill is growing, freedom is shrinking and the skies are not really any safer. Most of the things that could have prevented 9/11 were pretty basic and had a lot to do with the in air actions - not so much the screening.
View all comments by Smitty
Old Asia Hand- Because all of your personal information, who you associate with, what you’ve done, and where you’ve been are usually not present in a briefcase. All of that and more is on digital devices. Computers, iPods, and cell phones are not so much containers for specific documents as extensions of yourself.
Put simply, its not just “this item that you’re bringing in is not allowed” its “we don’t approve of you speaking with so and so 3 months, 2 days, 4 hours, and 16 minutes ago. you’ll be coming with us.” Big difference.
Sound paranoid? A business associate of mine has already been in that situation and its only getting more severe and more common. Also, its our privacy- we’re entitled and apparently now required to be paranoid.
That said, I agree with your first 3 paragraphs in that you’re of course correct in the futility of the efforts described. However, your analogy with the box in the suitcase is off. I want to know the guy with the box in his suitcase next to me doesn’t have a bomb. The contents of his cellphone are none of my, nor the custom agent’s, business.
Personally, I no longer travel with any devices except a basic phone without any of my contacts in it.
View all comments by R9
OAH has a point here. Encrypting your entire drive would help protect your IP in the event it is stolen but it would also be a big red light to customs. There is probably better and more discrete ways less likely to trigger an immune response.
and for OAH: here is what I think has changed. In the past, the concept of personal and business were very different things. Sure, during a random search, a customs official could look though documents you carried etc. Your personal life was often neatly segmented from business. “sure, look through my luggage, my papers, etc”
The Personal computer and all of these digital devices have changed life dramatically I think. With search technology there is so many things about you that the average person (should I say US citizen to be precise here?) would have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a random search that can be revealed about you.
Ever shop at amazon?
Ever look at something racy?
Did a friend or other joker ever use your PC?
did you get innocently curious about bomb making and decide to google?
Heck I spent at least a few hours this week looking at Katooey pictures and having fun guessing. Would I like that to be common knownledge to my boss, my coworkers? Probably not.
You see what I mean? For most people who use a laptop daily, it is a digital thumbprint of ALL your activities, good, bad, and some frankly that should be private.
I think that is where the fear is. I know it is for me. I do not deny that govt’s right for searches to keep our borders safe but this new mandate and its intersection with technology takes us to new places no one would have guessed.
View all comments by fugu
Another comment from Old Asia Hand informed by his experiences from the dawn of time, when hookers were three baht long-time including cabfare and a chicken dinner. Your point is valid, though, OAH. The only safe approach is to have NOTHING on your computer related to p o r n or t*rr*r**m, or pirated materials of any kind. That’s screwed just about everyone we know, then. Before you fly your laptop into the US, upload all your shit to Rapidshare, scrub your hard disk with a wire brush and bleach, and wear a McCain For President sweatshirt.
Since when was “Homeland Security” about terrorism anyway?
View all comments by Pants Elk
smitty- “What if I have a home movie of a thai girl I shag. Is that illegal? would they assume she is underage and since I could not prove it nail me?”
US customs? Is she under, say, 35? Yes. You would be required to provide her ID and if you couldn’t you would at the very least need to lawyer up and be stuck at the airport for much longer than you anticipated and at worst (say someone has a quota to make or superior to please) you would go to prison. That’s not a joke nor an assumption.
View all comments by R9
r9 - forgot about the archaic porn rules. bad example.
View all comments by smitty
PE- Good advice. Another method is doing a full & automated backup to an external drive and shipping it to your destination. Wipe computer clean to factory settings before traveling and hit the restore button to get it all back when you arrive and have your HDD in hand.
View all comments by R9
Bring a laptop through Immigration.
That’s funny.
I like that.
View all comments by jack dawson
OAH: Why should carrying the documents in digital form somehow make them exempt from inspection?
In my case, because being a US Citizen on US soil, shouldn’t I be afforded the protection provided by the Constitution?
United States Constitution, Bill of Rights, Fourth Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
sip
View all comments by sip
Smitty: What if I have a home movie of a thai girl I shag. Is that illegal? would they assume she is underage and since I could not prove it nail me?
You could use YouPorn.com as an online storage and backup facility and delete it from your laptop after you upload it…
sip
View all comments by sip
@ OAH: as usual, you make good, salient points. Appreciate the input.
@ Smitty: ditto. But don’t look for reason behind of any of these “security” measures, because there isn’t any.
The bottom line here: don’t carry any electronic device into the USA if either it, or any of the information it contains, is invaluable or may be damaging to you. Your vacation snapshots, for example, may be misinterpreted in a way that could make for a very unpleasant experience.
When I travel Stateside I’m on business and I need a laptop. I could get my employer to buy me a Dell preloaded with Windows, then if it was detained I would be less concerned. But it would be a huge tradeoff in functionality relative to my own laptop.
The only time I’ve had any comments is when an immig officer flipped through my passport (which at that time had three extension-sections, all covered with visas and stamps from various countries), looked at me and said: “You travel a lot.” “I’m a journalist,” I said. “Oh,” she said, stamped it and handed it back.
In June I took the train from New York to Montreal and the Canadian immig officers who boarded the train and went from seat-to-seat conducting immig formalities were polite, efficient, thoughtful and competent. I felt as though everything I and my fellow passengers were asked was pertinent, as opposed to the “security theater” (useful Schneierism) show put on at Stateside airports. Just my observation.
JtB
View all comments by Jack the Bat
” because being a US Citizen on US soil, shouldn’t I be afforded the protection provided by the Constitution?”
Not sure whether you’re {technically} on US soil or not if you haven’t been admitted through Immigration yet.
View all comments by werewolf
US citizens are entitled to the protection of the constitution regardless of where they are, at least with respect to action of the US government. That’s just not the issue here. There is no constitutional protection from search that applies to people crossing an international border.
Most of you seem to think that you have had some right of protection in the past that you no longer have. That’s just plain wrong. For example, I carried a Filofax for years before I had a laptop. On more than one occasion, a custom’s officer looked through it, read my calendar, and glanced at the names in my address book. If he’s insisted on seizing my Filofax, there would have been bugger all I could have done about it. He would have had that authority.I didn’t like it then and I wouldn’t like it now, but having my calendar and address book in electronic form changes nothing.
Any nation state has always been entitled to inspect anything you carry when you cross an international border. For as long as I can remember, everyone who travels internationally for a living has followed the same hard and fast rule: carry nothing that you’re not willing to have viewed by customs.
Nothing about that has changed. George Bush has not stolen your privacy. You never had any.
View all comments by Old Asia Hand
OAH: Statement 1: “US citizens are entitled to the protection of the constitution regardless of where they are, at least with respect to action of the US government.”
Statement 2: “There is no constitutional protection from search that applies to people crossing an international border.”
From the US Constitution (via sip): “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
On the face of it, it appears that statements 1 & 2 are mutually exclusive. Specifically, if statement 1 is true, then statement 2 must be false, and vice-versa. If statement 2 is true, then 1 mush be false.
However, both statements can be true if these searches do not violate the test of “unreasonable searches and seizures” as per the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution as quoted by sip.
Presumably the fact that these searches do not violate the Constitution must be well established at law for centuries.
View all comments by Werewolf
Werewolf: My thoughts exactly.
I really don’t have a problem entering a foreign country and being subjected to the body cavity search for illegal MP3’s, nor anyone entering the US and being on the receiving end of “heightened scrutiny” - This is probably the only time in my many years on earth that I actually AGREE with the ACLU <-bunch of commies
I’m sure we’ll see this eventually end up back in court when someone more important than I get’s the treatment at some entry point and decides tp call their golfing buddy Senator, afterall the 9th circuit is the most overturned in the country.
OAH: Understood - and I know there’s nothing I can do short of not traveling if I don’t want to risk a “no probable cause” search and potential seizure of electronics. I just don’t like it.
View all comments by sip
@ OAH - Do me a favor and read the articles I linked to. Full disk encryption is mostly an anti-theft thing, of course I give the customs guys the password if they ask. I even do it cheerfully. I just want to be sure if I lose the laptop I’m safe. The next issue is if I have files that I need to keep private, there are other ways to deal with that so that it will take an extremely savvy customs guy to figure it out, and where I have plausible deniability as well.
I deal with these things because people I work with travel all over the world and sometimes have really sensitive info on their laptops. Yes, if the Syrian intelligence agency is sharp enough to work it all out, more power to them, they get the data, and that’s what our people do. If they are ‘caught’ all that we lose is sensitive corporate data, we’re not shooting kiddie porn or anything. But with a little work one can be 99.99% sure data is private.
View all comments by tosh
Boy, where to start? This was by far one of the most interesting post in quite some time. I have not traveled abroad as most of you gents and I am a computer novice. I’m with OAH on this one, if you don’t want it siezed leave at home. For the biz traveler maybe the way to go is to have a seperate computer just for biz. We compartmentize our lives so much now this is just an extension of that. The laptop with all the porn on it stays at home, don’t mix your personal computer with your work, fuctional? No but don’t give them a reason to look and hopefully they won’t. Honestly, the pirated music is a smoke screen by the law makers to please the masses, they are looking for bigger fish then you. Keep your life simple when traveling abroad and for the most part it will stay simple.
View all comments by burgerman
I should have just posted ” What Tosh said” because he said it correctly.
View all comments by burgerman
So let’s see, I ordered (on Amazon) books by Sayyed Qutb and Ayatollah Khomeini (to see what they had to say; the first is a theorist of jihadism, and is a terrible writer, quite clearly a sociopath; the second bored me to tears, droning on and on and on on irrelevant minutiae); I traveled to both Indonesia and Malaysia, visiting some mosques and Islamic museums in both places; and I carry two passports (one is a US passport). I’ve yet to have a problem entering the US… although I could live without the immigration officer’s questioning me as to the purpose of my trip (wonder what would the reaction have been had I been honest - ‘officer, I met this hot Muslim Indo gal on xxx.com, and after she sent me nude photos of her I just knew I had to go; I ended up in Malaysia running away from my Singaporean gf, and I stayed with an old gay Chinese guy the first night and a Laotian hooker the second.’)
I guess I should definitely be more careful from now on; I seem to recall that traveling to engage in prostitution is a federal offense.
View all comments by Julian
And not to flog a dead horse - this has been a great thread. Just a quick tip for those of you rushing to delete material from your Windows laptops. Keep in mind delete in windows does not remove the file from your drive until the space is needed again.
To be certain, use any number of utilities which actually wipe (overwrite with zeros) all free space on your drive. Here is one I like (because the author is highly respected in the Windows geek world):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx
And of course, its free.
View all comments by fugu
fugu - what is windows?
View all comments by smitty
reading this stuff is raising my already high paranoia to new levels. for my next trip i think i wont take any luggage, just take a toothbrush and some toothpaste. Actually no, that’s a bad idea, last time i went through customs that was confiscated as the tube was 20 mls over the limit.
View all comments by Mr Carpet
For once I agree with Old Asia Handjob, above and beyond what he has said about your lack of rights, and it doesn’t matter where you are from - once you are traveling you are totally exposed. These days if you use a computer, mobile or landline then you are visible.
In the UK traveling around Central London will cause your image to be viewed and compared to known terrorists - so if you happen to look like one you could be in for a very bad experience. The Brazilian kid who got shot on the Tube basically fitted a profile - the fact it was wrong caused an innocent to lose ALL of his privacy.
Sad times - but I don’t think it has ever been any different, just that the technology has gotten better. Best thing is to *be* innocent.
oh and if you look like a terrorist - stay home.
View all comments by psi100th
Great wired article on this subject:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/chertoff.html
seems encryption is going to do u squat in this instance.
fun stuff!
View all comments by sideshowBOB
I would say this whole laptop issue is really not as cut and dry as people think:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/chertoff-mislea.html
Even the government can’t agree on what should really be happening.
View all comments by sideshowBOB
Here’s an online petition if you want to make your voice heard on this search and seizure of laptops topic:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/752010580
View all comments by ACLU