Homeland Security Continues To Expand Border Searches: Now Can Copy Your Paper-Based Documents
from the probable-cause-is-so-last-millennium dept
We've been covering the stories of how the Department of Homeland Security has a policy in place that lets it search and copy the contents of your laptop as you cross the border without any probable cause. DHS's reasoning for why it needs this power are not particularly convincing -- focusing mainly on scare mongering rather than rational argument. Now, the EFF has discovered, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, that it's not just computer data that DHS wants to copy. Last year, it quietly changed its policies to allow customs and border guards to read and copy any personal papers the traveler has, even without "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause." Compared to searching through and copying your hard drive, this may seem like a minor deal, but it's yet another example of DHS expanding its authority in ways that are very likely to be abused.
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Filed Under: border patrol, customs, homeland security, personal documents
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I think youve got it
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Twenty years later it seems Homeland Security are the invasive and intrusive ones.
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I can't take credit for this one.
Sums it up.
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Re: I can't take credit for this one.
I don't travel much, but if I ever do and cross a border anywhere, US Customs better prepare for a fight if they try taking my stuff without probable cause.
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Re: Re: I can't take credit for this one.
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Re: I can't take credit for this one.
You better prepare to spend some time in the pokey.
I would, and happily so, all the while screaming "4th Ammendment foul" in technicolor detail to every media outlet in the land.
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Good News
I am sure there are plenty of people crossing the border every day with hundreds of megs of data on their laptops which of course will need to be copied.
I think someone should look in to hard drive lobbyists and see who they have been writing their checks too.
Seriously though, it is only a matter of time before you will have to provide DNA when you cross in to your own country. WFT man?
Like a bad guy would cross in to the country legally ie. thru a border crossing, with a hard drive or brief case full of evil plans! If they did, and we did copy it, just how long do you suppose the backlog is for DHS to wade thru the 438 billion porno pix, and temporary internet files they have collected before they get to the bad guys files? Oh and wait... perhaps the bad guy was smart enough to have encrypted the hell out of his files, and it takes a huge computer 5 years to decrypt enough of the information to determine there was a threat. By that time, the bad guy will have done his damage, and the government will be wasting our time with a HUGE investigation to determine what went wrong.
If it were not happening in real life, it would be laughable!
I agree 100% #3, Benjamin Franklin was a smart man.
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Re: Good News
And to #8 - Civil Disobedience is still disobedience [insert graphic of policeman beating a protester here]
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Re: Re: Good News
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Re: Re: Re: Good News
But the World Trade Center was an inside job, USA putting shit on its own citizens in order to generate enough fear to pass things like the "Patriot Act."
PS - Godwin's Law.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Good News
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Disconnected hardware
These kind of searches will only hurt the innocent . A person that has something to hide has to be mighty stupid to not be able to hide it.
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Re: Disconnected hardware
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Fourth?
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Civil Disobedience
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Re: Civil Disobedience
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hahah..
hellz yea! i have a cd w/some pretty old school viruses from back in the win95 days. throw some malware on there and top it off w/320GB of just random spam.. yea.. thats fun! :)
i'd prob throw a hidden partition in there for fun and also add encryption to it too..
:P
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Re: hahah..
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Re: Re: hahah..
1) The ban on exporting munitions (which included encryption technology) was expunged a few years ago.
2) The mere act of walking around with encrypted data is not exporting munitions as defined in the act. The exncryption SCHEME (the recipe, the code that described the encryption) was the point.
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A paper
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I am sorry
Where is Ben Franklin? We need him!
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Maybe it's time
for a new revolution. Is it lost on everyone that the dickwads foisting this crap on us are the same folks from the 60's who were singing kumbay-fucking-ya, smoking everything that would burn, staging sit-ins, and - ahm - blowing up government buildings because "the man" was "oppressing" the "people"?
Maybe a fresh dose of CCR and a swift kick in the ass would awake their sense of irony?
Oh, yeah, Mr. CBP, please stop by and explain how this is only to stop the evil kiddie pronners from coming back in from Canadexico or where ever.
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Re: Maybe it's time
Gotta hold back them crazy canajians, eh?
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Re: Maybe it's time
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Re: Maybe it's time
This administration, and the Republicans who wish to be next in line, are feeding us a diet of fear, because they believe that if they scare us enough, we'll let them get away with anything. So far, and to the detriment of us all, this tactic has worked very well for the Bush
administration.
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Re: Re: Maybe it's time
Ha ha ha ha ha... you mean they're the ones CAUSING this. Whatever "this" is. I assume you mean the financial crisis.
Those same flower children are the ones in power, "Ralph".
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Re: Re: Re: Maybe it's time
Thanks for your comment. Remember, 'tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt. Thanks for removing all doubt.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Maybe it's time
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Re: Maybe it's time
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Re: Maybe it's time
No spots were changed in the years between.
Bullshit. There are a lot more Repubs in that generation now than there were then. There has most definitely been some spot changing in the intervening years.
I'm not saying everyone changed, I'm not saying that Bush and his cabinet were Hippies (though I have no doubt Bush did his fair share of smoking, drinking, and/or snorting shit), but I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that a bunch of the folks in Congress would be counted among "those we can't trust" by their younger selves.
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w o w
Besides... everyone knows the next attack will come from the sewers of NY. Terrorists are going to crawl out of those things like Ninja Turtles!!! :)
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Re:
Even damaged disks,
Hey, that's a great idea! I have an old HD that failed that I'd LOVE to recover, it's just not worth the dough. But if Border Patrol will do it FOR me, that'd be great :-)
Mr. CBP: "This computer won't boot."
Dos: "Yeah... the hard drive flaked while I was gone. Shame, too, I miss my pr0n collection and my Annotated Reader's Guide of the electronig Quaran."
Mr. CBP: "Oh,REALLY? No worries, we're right on that..."
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??? State border checks?
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I live 25 miles from a wonderful boarder and every day I am glad that boarder is there.
P.S. Ben Franklin was the first Post Master General in Canada.
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Re:
2) If you think that anything major going on down south won't effect Canada you're off your rocker.
3) Canada is infested with Quebecois.
4) Is that comment about Franklin supposed to be a jab? Guess what, no one gives a mad fuck what Franklin did.
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Re: Re:
3) Canada is infested with Quebecois.
Hold on, I think I have a cream for that...
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if DHS would just....
they wouldn't need mass amounts of storage and no "electronic" contraband would flow into the country...
....except over the internet, of course.
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w 0 w two
1. I have a 2GB microSD card in my cell phone. If I was going to transport 'terrorist' or other criminal data, I'd put it on a microSD card and shove it down my pants (or I'd put on a g(oogle)-drive and I could retrieve it from any library or coffee shop in the world).
2. If data on a laptop, or printed pages in a back pack are going to bring down this country, we're f'ed.
3. If a cell phone being on could bring down an airliner they wouldn't let you take it on the plane at all. The reason to make you turn it off is because your f'ing annoying the people around you!
4. Unless they're going to ship you off to GITMO when they copy your hard drive, you'll be long gone before they find anything (NOTE to DHS: I'm not advocating this).
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SS anyone ?
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Oh my, just dump your stuff to an FTP site!
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Re: Oh my, just dump your stuff to an FTP site!
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Re: Re: Oh my, just dump your stuff to an FTP site!
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interval
Born in the '50's lived through the bombings, kidnapping and War Measures Act in the late sixties early seventies. Think armed troops in the streets.
Yes we have our own problems but I would rather live in Canada than under the current regime in the U.S. police state
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Re: interval
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Oh my, just dump your stuff to a OpenBSD machine running OpenSSHD! :)
The real issue is, what they are planning to do. They are only starting at the border. They want to control all information, some countries already limit what sites can and can't be viewed. I would not be shocked if something like that comes about.
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CharlieO
Having to go through "Military Check Points" to deliver newspapers for a few months. (I lived in a upscale area with a lot of Political/Wealthy (targets)residents).
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Big Brother
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taking credit
franklin also said, "beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy." coincidentally, that's also the extent and limit of my religious beliefs.
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Remember Remember the 5th of November....
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"All persons who are brought to this place are washed clean Winston. The execution of their sentences is relatively unimportant, by the time we are finished with them, there is nothing but sorrow for what they have done and love for Big Brother. It is so touching how they love Big Brother."
The agents will just take you to one of the back rooms and interrogate you by whatever means necessary to find out what they want and you'll be happy to get out and go home.
Hey brother, where're you bound?? Supertramp
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