Border search and seizure of laptops are permissible
This post was published 3 years 3 months 13 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.In the US, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that border police may conduct random searches of laptops without search warrants or probable cause. These searches can include seizing the laptop and subjecting it to extensive forensic analysis.
WHA?!
This is not an isolated incident:
It was report last year from a U.S.-based marijuana activist says U.S. border guards looked through her digital camera snapshots and likely browsed through her laptop’s contents. A London-based correspondent for The Economist magazine once reported similar firsthand experiences, and a 1998 article in The New York Times described how British customs scan laptops for sexual material. [via]
It is understood that when traveling internationally you should expect a customs agent to search your bags to ensure that you are not carrying something into the nation that can harm the safety of its citizens, or the operation of its government. However, I feel that granting customs the right to forensically search a persons laptop without probable cause it a blatant invasion of privacy. What’s the next step in the future, attaching a person to a brain scanner so agents could figure out the exact intent and desires of the individual when visiting?
What do you think?
What are they going to search for, and how are they going to do that?
I have hundreds of thousands of files on my laptop. Granted, most are Windows files and Program Files and such. But if I did have something to hide, I would probably hide it in there. I wouldn’t leave this one single Word document on my desktop called “TerroristMasterPlansWithContactInfo.doc”. I might hide something like that as “mswnck2.dll”. Or I would encrypt it, or password protect it, or something. (Disclaimer: this is all purely hypothetical lol)
Would they really check every single file? If not, then they are wasting their time and our time. If so, they need to find something better to do with their lives.
Well well. If I ever end up going to the US I’ll just use an external HD to boot my laptop, wipe the internal HD. See what they think of that shell, hm?
Most forensic tools can recover a wiped HDD
I traveled to Canada a couple of months ago, and my boyfriend, as a joke, put a dirty comic book in my purse, with a note that said “in case you miss me in cold Canada”. The migration guy read it and asked me if I was going to Canada to make porn. I asked him “why the accusation” and he said that he expected porn in mature GUYS and not women, and that made me a suspect for porn producer or prostitution. I asked if porn is illegal for women in Canada, and he said “no, but it is too weird”. Then he opened my laptop and took it to a room and he read all of my files.. he even brought a spanish speaking officer to translate! and since I am a writer, he had a lot to read. After that he browsed through my family pictures and asked who is this and who is that. After that he read the comic book and found nothing illegal in it (child abuse, rape), but he was not done. He asked me if i had porn in my computer and I said yes, since I am a normal 24 year old WOMAN that can do whatever she wants with her sex life. He said “if i find something i dont like, i will arrest you and put you in jail”. I asked to call my parents or a lawyer, for that matter, and he would not allow me to talk to anyone, with absolutely no basis for what he was accusing me of. He (by himself) watched EVERY porn flick I had in my computer and found nothing “he didnt like”… He went through my clothes and kept asking if I was coming to Canada to write dirty stories like the ones in the comic book. “Are you involved in prostitution” he asked, and finally, the perverted bastard let me go. I can tell you, I aint going back to Canada ever.
Depends on how it’s wiped. If the data’s rewritten several times with random bits, there’s no chance of it being recovered. Sure, it takes a long time, but that’s probably the most secure way to go. Of course, when customs tries to boot it up and it won’t load, they’ll probably suspect it’s a dummy laptop with a bomb inside and either rip it apart or blow it up themselves.
Secure Empty Trash. Everyone’s best friend.
Ok its simple, before you go acros sthe border, just pop out your laptops hard drive.
They said they can search laptops, but if nothings in them, then good luick to them.
Same with digital camers, just pop out your sd card and put it in your wallet r some place they can never find them, lol
i have tons of pedophilia and i have expirience… no just kidding. Anyway, you have 2 posibilities
1. you let the “good” people to search in your laptop, usb drive, firewire drive, external drive, sd drive, etc.. and waste some time, or
2. you can do an scandal, saying that they harass you, and the just want to annoy you or a get an “extracurricular tax”, and since they dont have an warrant(is that said it well?), they let you go, and maybe the supervisors fired they, and you do some social service, by making that fired they,
also another posibility is saying tha you dont have a password, and you come to a IT in this country to fix that
and remember, always have the number of you ambassor and dont carry porn in your laptop, upload it in box.net
Wow. Just, wow.
Time to turn on FileVault before I decide to travel, and have a dummy account that appears as my “real” account.
There are Linux distributions that will allow you to move your /home/user directory to a USB drive…
What do I think about these warrantless “investigations”? It’s criminal. Period.
to LORENA
HEY lore, somethign similar happened to my friend from mexico, the lesbian bithch in the airport, like she didnt like the way my friend look like, she arrested her, for no reasonl, just like you, no calls, so all depends how the son of thousand fathers feel that day, and thats how decide yoru fate in that country in thata day, fucking bastards…
[...] Over two months ago, we reported that the US can legally search and seize laptops at border crossings, with reason or warrants. [...]
Just leave the hard drives and flashdrives at home—ON YOUR SERVER!!..
Take 1 CD with you…..
A puppy linux LIVE CD.
Yes there are many many LIVE LINUX DISTROS that require NO hard drive even be installed in the machine. (For real)
What can they unerase if you access your stuff through the internet or from your own server at your house.
Every time you shut down puppy–you in a sense–erase the memory by nothing more than sheer lack of voltage to the RAM.
Yep folks there are ways to do it—but you must be quite clever.