Only if its a she, and shes damn good looking ...
My customs agent...
Posted on 02/18/2008 1:01:58 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
Planning to travel out of the country? Maybe you want to think twice about bringing your laptop, your cell phone, or even that iPod. (And if you're of Asian or Middle Eastern descent, that goes double.)
Last week, the Washington Post ran a story detailing the electronic abuses international travelers have suffered at the U.S. border. (Infoworld's Ed Foster has also blogged about this topic.) Travelers are being asked to open up their laptops, hand over their passwords, and let customs agents have their way with their hard drives -- sometimes copying the contents onto another device or even confiscating the machine outright. Some folks report receiving the same treatment for their BlackBerrys and cell phones.
U.S. customs sees your laptop as no different than your suitcase, only instead of pawing through your socks and boxers, it gets to rifle through your e-mail, documents, photographs, and Web surfing histories. You say your laptop holds confidential business information, sensitive medical data, or the secret sauce that will make your company billions? Tough luck. It's all just socks and underwear to the Feds.
As security wonk and former federal prosecutor Mark Rasch notes, the dangers from this kind of digital body cavity search are far reaching:
Your kid can be arrested because they can't prove the songs they downloaded to their iPod were legally downloaded... Lawyers run the risk of exposing sensitive information about their client. Trade secrets can be exposed to customs agents with no limit on what they can do with it. Journalists can expose sources, all because they have the audacity to cross an invisible line. What are they looking for? Good question. So far, the Department of Homeland Security has ignored the Freedom of Information Act requests asking it to clarify its policies. Nor will it reveal its criteria for whose gear gets the full monty, though Asian and Arab individuals appear to be singled out with greater frequency.Last week, the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the Asian Law Center filed suit, demanding to know the how and why of U.S. customs searches and what happens to the data that's confiscated. Meanwhile, some corporations have ordered employees to avoid taking confidential data with them when they travel across borders.
In a related case, a Canadian man who's a legal U.S. resident has been accused of carrying child porn after customs officials found files with suspicious names on his laptop. By the time police arrested Sebastian Boucher, he'd encrypted his data using PGP. The government demanded he turn over his private key to unlock the data; Boucher refused, and so far the courts have upheld his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. That case is under appeal, and no matter which way it ultimately goes, it's going to have major ramifications for all of us.
Encryption can be used to mask criminal activity. At the same time, it can also be used legitimately to protect the very things being put at risk by overzealous customs agents, like sensitive corporate or personal data. Suddenly, I'm having a flashback to the 1990s debate over the Clipper chip and whether intelligence agencies should be able to have a "backdoor" to access encrypted information.
To me, it all boils down to this: what do you trust more, the U.S. Constitution or the U.S. government? When in doubt, I tend to side with the founding fathers. At a time when "national security" was far more tenuous than it is today, they enacted far-reaching laws that put the rights of individuals on at least a par with the rights of the state.
Resistance is Futile.
FedEx it overnight to yourself wherever you are going.
Only if its a she, and shes damn good looking ...
My customs agent...
Not even liberty, apparently....
That’s BS. If you were carrying a manila folder with your company’s latest 5-year strategy, you should willingly give it to a border agent to be copied?
No way.
What was this little nugget: Trade secrets can be exposed to customs agents with no limit on what they can do with it.???
A customs agent can steal your trade secrets and supply it to your competitor and that's within the limits of his authority. Please.
Fact is, people come into this country everyday with photos of themselves at al Queda training camps on their hard drives or thumb drives.
45 year old guy, never been out of the U.S. before, traveled to Thailand for ten days and doesn't know anyone there. What do you think is up? If he's bringing his hard drive or camera across an international border, he's made the decision to have it searched.
TB, list worthy?
Owl_Eagle
”You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being”-Hillary Clinton
(Yes, she really said that
Peggy Noonan
The Case Against Hillary Clinton, pg 55)
John Hancock knew how to deal with those types of snooping customs agents.
CBP can inspect that too.
As distasteful as it sounds, he was not subject to the US legal jurisdiction while he was out. If anyone thinks he was then you've basically advocated that you are a slave to your government as they have the final say over your actions.
They can, but much less likely. The only downside is you don’t have your laptop at the airport and on the airplane if you need to do some work.
They can paw through your hard drives all they want, but they cannot force you to give up your passwords.
Sex tour?
Maybe not in the US.
“They can paw through your hard drives all they want, but they cannot force you to give up your passwords.”
they can if you want to cross the border or fly. . .
Strong encryption and compression.
They should have to get a warrant to search computer files.
Not in the US. Federal Courts have held that the Fifth amendment protects us from being compelled to give up passwords.
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