Homeland Security: We can seize laptops for an indefinite period
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border.
A pair of DHS policies from last month say that customs agents can routinely--as a matter of course--seize, make copies of, and "analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, re-enter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States." (See policy No. 1 and No. 2.)
DHS claims the border search of electronic information is useful to detect terrorists, drug smugglers, and people violating "copyright or trademark laws." (Readers: Are you sure your iPod and laptop have absolutely no illicitly downloaded songs? You might be guilty of a felony.)
This is a disturbing new policy, and should convince anyone taking a laptop across a border to use encryption to thwart DHS snoops. Encrypt your laptop, with full disk encryption if possible, and power it down before you go through customs.
Here's a guide to customs-proofing your laptop that we published in March.
It's true that any reasonable person would probably agree that Customs agents should be able to inspect travelers' bags for contraband. But seizing a laptop and copying its hard drive is uniquely invasive--and should only be done if there's a good reason.
Sen. Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, called the DHS policies "truly alarming" and told the Washington Post that he plans to introduce a bill that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches.
But unless Congress changes the law, DHS may be able to get away with its new rules. A U.S. federal appeals court has ruled that an in-depth analysis of a laptop's hard drive using the EnCase forensics software "was permissible without probable cause or a warrant under the border search doctrine."
At a Senate hearing in June, Larry Cunningham, a New York prosecutor who is now a law professor, defended laptop searches--but not necessarily seizures--as perfectly permissible. Preventing customs agents from searching laptops "would open a vulnerability in our border by providing criminals and terrorists with a means to smuggle child pornography or other dangerous and illegal computer files into the country," Cunningham said.
The new DHS policies say that customs agents can, "absent individualized suspicion," seize electronic gear: "Documents and electronic media, or copies thereof, may be detained for further review, either on-site at the place of detention or at an off-site location, including a location associated with a demand for assistance from an outside agency or entity."
Outside entity presumably refers to government contractors, the FBI, and National Security Agency, which can also be asked to provide "decryption assistance." Seized information will supposedly be destroyed unless customs claims there's a good reason to keep it.
An electronic device is defined as "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form" including hard drives, compact discs, DVDs, flash drives, portable music players, cell phones, pagers, beepers, and videotapes.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan.
Taking things in and out of countries has always been a hairy game. The advent of technology that helps hide your 'stuff' doesn't provide you with new rights that weren't there before. Before computers, the border agents could detain you and inspect every piece of paper you were carrying. This is no different, just now it's electronic.
You want complete immunity? Try a diplomatic pouch. Make nice with the embassy of your choice, and you are good to go.
I believe your comparison is incorrect because they are not limited to only inspecting the contents of your computer in or at least near you. They can tell you to move along while they ship your computer to some other organization to decrypt files and potentially copy that data without your knowledge or permission.
Although I admit it is an extreme case, it is possible that a government employees may decide that I have something they want on my computer. Potentially they may steal patent or copyright information.
United States Constitution, Bill of Rights, Fourth Amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Don't give me any of that "searched at the border" crap. If I am on U.S. soil when the search is requested, then U.S. law is in full force. This is yet another example of the Bush administration trampling on the rights of U.S. citizens.
They do
We really need the American public to GET SMART and realize that if you legalize pedosexuality and child pornography, and make the latter into a government regulated business, you will be making children safer by not having pedosexuals have to rape/murder children in order to satisfy their sexual desires.
When the heck will our government become "by the people: for the people", or have we gone too far? Before September 11th 2001, I was skeptical about the way our Country was being manipulated. Afterwards, I can only describe my feeling as nauseous. What future DO we have if not the one described to us in the movie wall*e?
And now that they can keep your laptop indefinitely with little or no reason, do you think they are more or less likely to hand it back to you if they find out your hard drive is encrypted? My advice is don't use words like Bomb, Assassination, or Jihad in file or directory names and you'll probably be just fine.
As for the felonious shared files, a whole drive full of ripped commercial DVDs may be a bit hard to explain.
Although I thought copyrights went too far when they started covering non-commercial use, but at the same time I guess prior to P2P non-commercial distribution required a friend physically handing you a DVD for you to copy.
Sadly, the only way to get this totalitarian BS stopped will likely require a revolution.
On another note I would love to see some clueless border agent prove that the music on my laptop or iPod was "illegally downloaded". They would have a hell of a time proving it was downloaded, much less done so illegally.
Uh, in this new repuke world order, I wouldn't desire to see that at all, for either you or me.
"Sir, was all this music legally purchased?"
"Yes, of course it was."
"Prove it."
"Excuse me?"
"Sir, are you resisting the TSA? That device will have to be retained until we can determine if it's a threat to the United States of Amerikka or not. GUARDS!!"
Just because DHS says it has a right to do this, it doesn't mean that it will pick out people at random. I think they had cause to interview Mr. Romm (on whose computer child porno was found and who sued claiming the search was illegal) who was bounced back from Canada. I'm for prosecuting people for serious crimes detected at border crossings, including child pornography. It would be different if the policy was being applied against IP violations...
It's sickening how quickly we're falling down the path that failed nazi germany.
The ONLY thing it does is make it so that those children have a more lax view of human sexual 'morality' and some people later in life try to guilt them into thinking that what they did with adults as children was 'wrong' (and which I say we should EXECUTE those people for!) and create the problems that they then try to blame on the sexual relationships themselves.
This is another time when they are making people 'fearful' of another group of people in order to make the first group give up their rights so they can harass/find the second 'easier'..... though it really WON'T be any easier.
So, the standard method of getting dangerous or illegal files into the country is to physically carry them across the border? Maybe these criminals should come up with a different method...like a series of virtual "tubes" that can magically transfer files from one computer to another without wires or cables. Ahh, science fiction.
As for "Bad" / "Illegal" files. If I wanted to transfer them, I'd just encrypt them, and e-mail the zipped files.
The facts are that it is FREAKING easy to tell if someone is a pedosexual: everyone knows that I am one before I even introduce myself to them, and once they get to know me...... WOW! Most of them like me and have no problems leaving their children alone with me because I do adhere to SOME morality (though not the same morality as 'society').
Geesh.
Now the U.S. government has become more efficient. The consolidation of the security apparatus under the Department of Homeland Security has resulted in greater cost-savings on the part of federal agencies in their efforts to bypass civil liberties. The new passphrase is simply: "terrorism."
You may think you've nothing on your hard drive that police wouldn't be interested in, and perhaps you're right. But given sufficient data and time, and given the state of the law today, police and prosecutors can frequently find that even the most outwardly law-abiding citizens are guilty of some crime or another. Check out Harvey Silverglate's forthcoming book on this subject.
My concern is that data that I am using to file a copyright, or patent could be present on my computer, and after my computer is seized that one in a million employee who sees a free meal ticket could have a chance to steal that data and beat me to the paperwork. It's a fringe case, but it is close enough to the way that Apple and Microsoft got started to make me worry. If I want to sell information to a corporation with an over-seas headquarters, the easiest and safest way to get the data there is to carry it. If I make it available over the internet then I need to go through the hassle of making sure all of the software I am using is completely secure, or password data could even be stored in the computer that identifies both where the data is and what credentials are needed to access it.
If the airlines want to freak out about anyone taking some sort of sharp metal object then ok, but when you mess with my data I take it very personally.
Our research Doc's go to conferences and work collaboratively with other researches outside the U.S..
I agree with you that if a laptop came through with a full disk encryption then the likelihood of that laptop being seized through this ridiculous program is very high.
But more and more Universities and corporate data is being encrypted through government mandates (HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, FERPA, and on and on).
I still think probable cause should be the rule but the U.S. has become a type of Government that we used to shun as it is so close to what Russia and the old Soviet Union had. Rendition, a President that refuses subpoenas from Congress, Agencies that can violate every aspect of the constitution at will.
What have we let happen?
What my government has become over the last decade sickens me to no end.
Anyone who's just a tiny bit aware of computer security and cryptography knows that you should ROUTINELY encrypted just about EVERYTHING, exactly such that the volume of encrypted information will overwhelm any entity trying to find potentially private information, and also such as to make sure that the presence of encrypted information does not in itself give any information.
If you only encrypt that which is secret, then encrypted information will show that something worth protecting is present. If you encrypt everything out of principle, then the presence of encrypted information will not provide any clue as to whether or not what is on your computer contains secrets.
It is therefore imperative that preferrably ALL e-mails are encypted (S/MIME or openPGP), and that whole-disk encryption be used on all portable computers.
I can only reiterate the recommendation of the article's author: the more people routinely encrypt their drives properly, the less information can be learned from such seizures and the more the so-called authorities will be trying to decipher information on the devices.
Given the political climate, where we have replaced the red scare with the terrorist scare and where no politician dares to vote for/against anything that would make him look "soft on terrorists", we can't expect these laws to change any time soon.
What we can do, is subvert them by encypting even the most trivial pieces of information and causing the resulting searches and seizures to be essentially worthless.
Now, who knows an insurance company that will pay for a new laptop while yours is being "indefinitely" held by the feds?
programs crash, systems panic, we kill processes, we squash bugs, swap files blow up, we run slave processes and torture tests, etc.
Obviously laptops are WMDs...
Encrypt your physical drive which runs a virtual machine guest who's drive is also encrypted and store your data in an encrypted disk in the virtual guest machine and use multiple keys. Is that what we have to resort to keep our bits private?
What is to stop a real terrorist from having two laptops on either side of the border and all their data is simply kept in "The cloud"?
Why do you think real terrorists would be smart enough to think of such a novel solution?
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by itsaspork
August 1, 2008 12:29 PM PDT
- A terrorist or tactical information won't be found this way - they'll use other means to transfer it. This is similar to the ID protocol the govt. is trying to force on us in the name of security. The terror planners deploy nobodies with clean IDs, like the bunch who destroyed the WTC. The "cherry" operatives can walk in with their actual ID no problemo, because it's not attached to a watch list or criminal record. These Homeland Security efforts are no help in fighting actual terror threats. You have to wonder about the government's motivation for these restrictions.
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