EFF Asks For Details On Border Laptop & Mobile Phone Searches
from the guidelines-please? dept
Last month, we wrote about how more courts have been saying that customs agents could search the content of your laptop or mobile phone upon entering the country. For many, that's a pretty scary thought, considering the amount of personal or confidential information that people often have on their laptops and phones. It's even scarier when customs agents make a copy of that data, as it's not clear what they actually do with it or if they ever delete it. In response, the EFF, along with the Asian Law Caucus, are filing a lawsuit to force the government to give details and guidelines that explain its policies on these searches and what's actually done with the data. It seems like a totally reasonable question -- but given our government's belief in secrecy over all else, expect to find out that this cannot be revealed for "national security" purposes.
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Filed Under: border, customers, eff, laptops, search
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Interesting suggestion from Reddit
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Re: Interesting suggestion from Reddit
Well in that case, copying CDs is the same as looking at them in a store.
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Re: Re: Interesting suggestion from Reddit
Browsing your files == looking in your briefcase
Copying your files == making copies of your physical documents
Copying CDs ! = looking at them in the store
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Re: Re: Re: Interesting suggestion from Reddit
Copying CDs ! = looking at them in the store
Umm why not? How is making a photocopy of a piece of paper you don't own, different from making a CD copy of a CD you don't own? In either case, you are taking the information contained and transferring it to a second container, without affecting the original container. Or are you just being a superliteral pedant because copying a CD means the shrinkwrap that's on it in a store has to be broken?
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What about chain of evidence
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
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Re: What about chain of evidence
It should make drive encryption utilities like TrueCrypt and Bit Locker very popular with world travelers.
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Chain of Evidence
Secondly, if the RIAA (or anyone else) tried to sue the government over copyright violations, the govt. would just invoke the state secrets privilege to slap it down. Mentioned right here on Techdirt on 20th Sept. 2005.
Lastly, if the govt. want to know what it is you've encrypted, and you refuse to decrypt it or give them the keys, they would just get a court order to force you, and then lock you up in jail for contempt until you give in. Remember the CIA leak case???
Best thing of course is to record any sensitive info in your head, or at least, don't try to cross borders with it.
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Re: Chain of Evidence
> you've encrypted, and you refuse to decrypt it
> or give them the keys, they would just get a
> court order to force you, and then lock you up
> in jail for contempt until you give in.
Nope, they can't force you to reveal your password.
A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9834495-38.html
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Pass on Phone Searches, Pass on the US
Foreign companies would be better off skipping doing business with us. We are not the only market in the world anymore, and more often, not the best. Who would submit to have your trade/ personal secrets copied at some airport? Unless there are very clear rules out in the open with oversight, don't do it. I would not do it anyway.
Our religious, anti science, paranoid ways are already causing our influence to wane. Do you believe in creationism? Do you believe this is OK?
It may seem a dubious link to many, my point is we are less and less a reasonable or rational country.
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NUF SAID
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RE: Pass on Phone Searche...
So you think that this will change when the Communists move into the White House on January 20th, 2009??
Have you got a BIG surprise coming!
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Wrong, as of today, you do not have to turn over your encription keys, although no court has ruled on this topic.
The above mentioned canadian border cross case, stupidly, the idiot waived his miranda rights and told custom officials that he had accidently downloaded child porn but always deleted the files. He allowed officials to view his computer and they saw files like "2 year old being raped during diaper change"
Later they tried to get into the computer but couldn't because of encryption.
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Hows this...
This is going to do wonders for tourism in that nation.
Also, George Orwell must have been a prophet.
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