Once Again, Court Says Homeland Security Is Free To Seize & Search Your Computer Without A Warrant At The Border

from the bad-rulings dept

We've noted, repeatedly, how troubling it is that customs seems to feel no duty to obey the 4th Amendment at the border, and that the courts have allowed this. It's even worse when it comes to searching digital devices, such as laptops. As we've explained before, what you have access to via your laptop is entirely different than what you pack in a suitcase for entering the country:

1. You mostly store everything on your laptop. So, unlike a suitcase that you're bringing with you, it's the opposite. You might specifically choose what to exclude, but you don't really choose what to include. With a suitcase, you specifically choose what to include.
2. The reason you bring the contents on your laptop over the border is because you're bringing your laptop over the border. If you wanted the content of your laptop to go over the border you'd just send it using the internet. There are no "border guards" on the internet itself, so content flows mostly freely across international boundaries. Thus if anyone wants to get certain content into a country via the internet, they're not doing it by entering that country through border control.

And this becomes even more ridiculous in the era of cloud computing, where a drive may be mounted over the network, and thus never actually cross the border at all -- and yet, Homeland Security seems to think it has the right to search all of this, and the courts have mostly agreed.

And, once again, we have yet another appeals court ruling that says this is fine even if the laptop is taken away from the customs station and brought into the country. We've had similar rulings in the past, and this one involves laptops that were taken away from the border and brought to another location, 170 miles away, where they were searched. The lower court said this evidence could not be used, but the appeals court reinstated the evidence, claiming that tossing out such evidence "would only reward those individuals who, either because of the nature of their contraband or the sophistication of their criminal enterprise, hide their contraband more cleverly or would be inclined to seek entry at more vulnerable points less equipped to discover them."

But that makes no sense. I mean, if you're good at hiding your "contraband" that's already true. Nothing about this ruling changes that. All this ruling does is say that it's okay for border officials from Homeland Security to search through your stuff without reasonable suspicion. It's not about rewarding people who better hide things, it's about the basic requirement of the 4th Amendment that there be probable cause before the government can take your stuff and search it. Only the dissenting judge seemed to recognize this basic issue in the ruling, which is embedded below, noting: "I add my voice to the chorus lamenting the apparent demise of the Fourth Amendment."

The majority ruling claims that it's not setting up an "anything goes" situation at the border, but it's difficult to see how it's placed any limits at all on Homeland Security. It claims that it's fine to search laptops at the border, because Homeland Security and ICE have a compelling reason to keep material out of the US that it doesn't want crossing the border. But, when it comes to digital content, that's just silly. No one is crossing the border with a laptop to "get content into the country." They can do that using the internet just fine. Claiming that searching the contents of a laptop are like searching a suitcase is as if you are technically illiterate.

Of course, since this is a child porn/child abuse claim, it's easy to say that it's a "good thing" that the search caught this guy -- which it did. And I'm happy he was eventually arrested. But I'm still troubled with how the evidence was collected, and anyone who crosses the border with their computers should be equally concerned. Don't let the fact that this case was about child pornography detract from the important issues about your own privacy rights concerning information stored on a laptop.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, border, computers, homeland security, ice, searches

Finally Found: A Human That Can Beat Watson... And It Turns Out To Be Rep. Rush Holt

from the bow-down-to-the-superior-mind dept

While IBM's Watson obviously got a ton of attention for winning its big national TV challenge against two Jeopardy stars, apparently, IBM is taking the Jeopardy playing machine on tour, with a key stop being Congress. It got to play against a group of our elected officials... and one of them actually beat Watson. Say hello to Rep. Rush Holt -- who was a bit of a ringer, since he's actually a five-time Jeopardy champion. Holt apparently outscored Watson $8,600 to $6,200, though all the other Congressional Reps who went up against Watson were unable to master the computer. I guess this means that we should make Rep. Holt our new leader when the machines come to try to enslave us.

Filed Under: ai, computers, game algorithms, jeopardy, rush holt, watson
Companies: ibm

Some Discussion Around Children And Tablet Computing

from the good,-bad-or-in-how-you-use-it? dept

This post is Sponsored by ASUS Windows Slate, in partnership with Microsoft and SAYMedia -- as is fully explained in the post -- but the content and views are entirely my own.

David Pogue, over at the NY Times, had a fascinating post last week about the debate that goes through his head concerning children using iPads and other tablet/smartphone devices. He worries that his son is too engrossed in using it, but the more he works through the issue, he begins to realize that maybe it's not as big a problem as he originally thought, and it's not necessarily the same thing as plopping a kid in front of a TV -- which many people agree is probably not the best idea:

What makes my feelings on this subject even more complicated is that, in general, my 6-year-old isn't playing mindless video games. He's not allowed to play shoot-'em-ups or violent games at all. Instead, he's encouraged to play creative apps -- and most of the time, he does.

[...] Come on, how can apps like that be bad for a kid? Is it really that much different from playing with paper cutouts? Or blocks? Or a toy drum set?

When he does play games, he favors thinking games like Cut the Rope (a clever physics-based puzzle game) or Rush Hour (strategy puzzles). Heck, even Angry Birds involves some thinking. You have to plan ahead and calculate and use resources wisely.

In the old days, we used to tut-tut about how much TV kids watched -- but parents usually made an exception for educational shows like "Sesame Street" and "Between the Lions." How is this any different? Shouldn't we make exceptions for creative and problem-solving apps?

He goes on to note that we shouldn't just assume that something is "bad" for kids because it's electronic, and that perhaps use in moderation makes plenty of sense. This is something I've been thinking about a lot as well, as a father, in trying to figure out what's appropriate technology-wise for my kid to use.

So, with that, it seemed like a perfect opportunity when SAYMedia, along with Microsoft, approached us about participating in a new "conversational" campaign they're running, getting people discussing what are the best ways for parents to use tablets with kids. As you may see on the website directly, we have a unit between the first and second story, which is a "conversational" unit, that lets you input your own thoughts on the topic, in order to get some wider ideas. Beyond the general interest in the topic, we were interested in experimenting with this type of campaign, because (as we've stated for years), we like to see what happens when you build "marketing" or "ad" campaigns that aren't one-directional, but which really involve communities, and really involve getting their thoughts on things. We hope some of you will also find it worthwhile to participate in this discussion -- and let us know your own thoughts on the role of such technology in the lives of kids. Thanks for participating.

Filed Under: children, computers

Australian Gov't Official Fired For Googling 'Knockers' From Home With Office Laptop

from the don't-go-knocking dept

If your employer gives you a laptop, which you sometimes use from home, does that employer still have the right to look at what you're doing while at home? Down in Australia a long-term government employee in the Commonwealth Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism was apparently fired after the monitoring software on his laptop notified his bosses that he had done the unthinkable and Googled the word "knockers." The monitoring software apparently takes screenshots of the computer every 30 seconds, which revealed the search. The guy fought back in court, saying that while he was using the laptop provided by the government, it was on his home connection, and he felt the intrusion was a gross violation of his privacy. The judge disagreed, saying that the guy should have known his computer was being monitored and that surfing for porn was a serious issue.

Filed Under: australia, computers, privacy

Guy Building A Working (Yes, Working) Computer Inside A Video Game

from the mindblowing-minecraft dept

I have to admit that I haven't been all that familiar with Minecraft, the video game, though I keep hearing about it. We did recently write about how the game's developer, Markus Persson, has taken a very user friendly view towards "piracy," arguing that it's better to give people a reason to buy than worry about the people who will never buy. We got a number of comments from people who really liked the game, and now Karl Bode points us to a Kotaku story about a guy, who goes by the incredibly accurate username theinternetftw on YouTube, is literally building a computer within the game. Yes, a computer within the game. A working one. It's slow and limited, but as he says, "it's implemented in a video game, what do you want?" So far, he's built a 16-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU), and he's planning to build an entire computer around in. As Kotaku explains:

In this video he demonstrates a city-sized, fully-functional arithmetic logic unit, or ALU. The ALU is one of the fundamental building blocks of a central processing unit (CPU), responsible for performing arithmetic and logical operations.

Now that the ALU is complete, the creator plans to continue building the rest of the computer, starting with the memory. Once it's done he hopes to make the computer will run code based on the "Hack" machine described in the book The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles.

Just in case you aren't clear here, the man is building a working computer inside a computer game using a textbook as his guide.

Suddenly, Minecraft has become even more interesting...

Filed Under: computers, minecraft, video games

Court Says Border Patrol Can Take Your Laptop For Off-Site Search If They Have Reasonable Suspicion

from the 4th-amendment? dept

For a while now, courts have said that you have no 4th Amendment rights at the border, and border patrol/customs officials have every right to search your laptop. For a variety of reasons, this is problematic. As we've explained before, the contents of your laptop aren't the same as the contents of your suitcase in two very important ways:

1. You mostly store everything on your laptop. So, unlike a suitcase that you're bringing with you, it's the opposite. You might specifically choose what to exclude, but you don't really choose what to include. With a suitcase, you specifically choose what to include.
2. The reason you bring the contents on your laptop over the border is because you're bringing your laptop over the border. If you wanted the content of your laptop to go over the border you'd just send it using the internet. There are no "border guards" on the internet itself, so content flows mostly freely across international boundaries. Thus if anyone wants to get certain content into a country via the internet, they're not doing it by entering that country through border control.

Unfortunately, the courts don't seem to take this into account. Also, a separate point that no one has yet answered for me yet: if you have a virtual drive mounted in the cloud somewhere (i.e., something like JungleDisk) can border patrol search that as well, even if it's not actually on your computer that you have at the border?

Either way, this issue has received plenty of attention over the years, with some officials trying to change the law (without much success). Homeland Security initially claimed that there were basically no rules limiting what it could do. However, more recently, the new administration clarified the rules somewhat -- though they're still pretty free to search anyone's laptop. But, one of the rules was that you were allowed to be present in the room while your laptop was being searched (though, you didn't get to see what they were doing).

It seems one aspect of that was broken by a border patrol computer search that involved taking a guy's broken computer to search it. The guy then sued, saying that the content on that laptop's hard drive (which included child porn) was inadmissable, because the search occurred off-site. A court recently ruled that the guy was half right. It basically said that border patrol can't just take laptops off-site for searches, but if there was reasonable suspicion to inspect the laptop, then it was okay. In this case, because some child porn had already been found on another laptop the guy had, it was deemed that taking the broken laptop off-site was reasonable.

That logic definitely makes sense, but I'm still wondering why we're using border patrol resources for this kind of thing? Yes, cracking down on child porn and the like is important, but that's got nothing to do with securing the border. If anything you wonder if this kind of thing becomes a distraction?

Filed Under: 4th amendment, border search, computers, privacy

Disgruntled Ex-Auto Dealer Employee Hacks Computer System To Disable Over 100 Cars

from the welcome-to-the-new-world dept

Ah, the fun of the electronic age. A few years back we started hearing about tools to remotely disable a car. These were talked about as a security system to recover stolen vehicles, but also as a device to put on leased cars, in case they need to be repossessed. Of course, once you put that technology on the car, what's to stop someone from abusing it? Turns out that a disgruntled ex-employee of a car dealership that put such a technology on its cars, was able to log into the computer system using a former co-workers account and then started methodically targeting the cars that used that system:

Ramos-Lopez’s account had been closed when he was terminated from Texas Auto Center in a workforce reduction last month, but he allegedly got in through another employee’s account, Garcia says. At first, the intruder targeted vehicles by searching on the names of specific customers. Then he discovered he could pull up a database of all 1,100 Auto Center customers whose cars were equipped with the device. He started going down the list in alphabetical order, vandalizing the records, disabling the cars and setting off the horns.

Good thing he wasn't fired from a hospital that used internet-connected pacemakers, huh?

Filed Under: cars, computers, disabled, disgruntled employees

Psystar Wants To Make A Go Of Just Selling You The Tools To Install Mac OS On Your PC

from the and-the-lawsuits-shall-continue dept

Following Psystar's big loss to Apple over selling PC's with Mac OS installed on them, the company's website has gone dark. However, Psystar claims that it's going to stay in business and try to sell PCs with other operating systems and its $50 Rebel EFI software, which is what can apparently be used to allow individuals to install MacOS on their own. However, Apple still contends that even Rebel EFI is infringing. Again, this doesn't make much sense if you think about it. Why should a piece of software that lets you run another piece of legally purchased software be illegal?

Filed Under: computers, copyright, freedom to tinker, macos
Companies: apple, psystar