Comments on: Homeland Security: We can seize laptops for an indefinite period

It's time to encrypt your hard drives: Homeland Security now claims the right to seize laptops, other electronics at the border for an indefinite time and copy the data.

[rrod182]

Maybe they hope to find bin Laden hiding in my World of Warcraft.

[triadfreedom]

I think it is more than invasive, I think it is a definite failure of the Patriot Act, because it is soooo patriotic to be controlled by your government.

People need to learn. DONT SUBMIT. FIGHT BACK. TAKE BACK THE GOVERNMENT.
And I AM NOT an Obama or McCain supporter. This election I am forced to choose none of the above.

http://triadfreedom.blogspot.com/ <- because something has gone terribly wrong in our country.

[jjbraunius]

Sounds to me like unreasonable searches and seizures. I see a huge potential for abuse, say how can you prove the files found on your PC weren't yours to begin with?

[superuser2]

They already have the Internet tapped; remember the room at AT&T? They're just covering all their bases.

I'm not going to even bother with how this goes against everything this country was founded on. I will say this: pretty soon I won't give a crap whether I'm living under the Jihad or the Department of Homeland Security. You don't protect us from an oppressive regime by becoming one, because people don't care who violates their privacy and destroys their freedom; they care simply that it was done.

But all this is useless. McCain will win the election and further cement these once-clandestine practices into bona-fide officially-sanctioned law and the realm of the established and well funded. Obama is our only hope.

People think torture is okay as long as they're only doing it to people who don't follow the same religion. But I wonder how long we'll put up with this being done to ourselves?

[sanenazok]

Yay Obama! A German crowd's choice. I think Obama's better, but don't expect him to change much.

[winstein]

I thought it was ridiculous when I heard China might detain you if you have a copy of Playboy in your briefcase. So much for human rights in the United States.

[Michichael]

Yes because people are stupid enough to transfer illegal programs and files physically on their person where they can be associated with them. Come on, there is no reasonable expectation that you will catch a "terorrist" or "child pr0n" smuggler by seizing people's laptops and liquidating them to fund your own operations. Welcome to America, your rights are slowly being forfeited so you don't care until they're already gone.

[JamesMeinken]

Anything on a hard drive can be sent into of out of the country via the Internet.

Grabbing someone's laptop or HDD is clearly over the top. Our 'government' is out-of-control on so many things that this is just one more thing to add to the list.

You have less freedom today than you had 1 year ago. And next year at this time you'll have even less freedom than you have today.

When the economy tanks and just about everybody is out of work, then you'll see a 'revolution' as described by Karl Marx. Everybody will have LOTS of time to look for their 'government folks'.

Not to mention all the lawyers. They should remember that there are more lamp posts than there are lawyers so there'll be plenty to go around !!

[rogg]

Here's another reason to have a strong logon password -- and even better, if your laptop supports it, a BIOS password as well. Then encrypt ever data folder on your laptop. It's easy to do with Windows, both XP and Vista. This will protect you from laptop theft and a data breach -- even if the "laptop theft" is by DHS.

[rcfa]

XPs and Vista's native encryption techniques are useless and can be rather easily defeated.

If you want proper encryption use TrueCrypt, it's free, open-source, and it allows for hidden partitions, etc. all done in a way that even if you're forced to give out your password, nothing relevant will be found (there are two passwords, that reveal different information).

Check out: http://www.truecrypt.org/

Unfortunately, this doesn't work yet for boot disks on the Mac. There's the commercial PGP disk encryption, but how trustworthy any closed-source encryption is, is dubious.

[GlennAllen]

Nazis will be nazis.

[Dead Soulman]

They're using "fighting terrorism" as an excuse to steal your stuff and then sell it. Airports, and/or whomever is involved in the whole "confiscated" depts, make millions of dollars selling other people's stuff. I guess now they're moving up to high tech. Thieves is what I'd call them.

[mattumanu]

The reason you'd want your harddrive encrypted is so that punks at the border wont be able to access critical passwords for things such as bank accounts, email, websites, and such. If it were me, I wouldn't take a laptop across borders at all on those grounds alone.

See, I don't trust anyone with my computer. There's just too much information there that could be used to steal identity, money, real goods... And DHS has no business looking at any of that, period. Not without a warrant.

[Yankinwaoz]

So what happens to your data when it is in the custody of DHS? What if a hacker steals your data from DHS? Is DHS liable (I'd bet they aren't). What is to prevent DHS employees from selling your personal information to ID theft rings? What is to prevent them from doing anything above and beyond examining it for contraband? Nothing.

[wizardb]

I stopped traveling to the USA when after 50 years of crossing the border they tell me I need a passport and now this to hell with them I'll holiday at home from now on.

[AintNoSin]

Isn't it just time to defund the DHS? Transfer customs, INS and border patrol back to DOJ, the Coast Guard back to DOD. Return airport security to private hands so we can sue them when they get out of hand. Almost nothing we've done since 9/11 has made us safer, just less free.

[The_Decider]

Coast Guard was under the DoT.

[paulej]

While this might offend a few, just think for a moment who is working at DHS and every other government agency. By and large, it's not the brightest people. The smarter people work somewhere else. (That said, I do know some intelligent folks at DHS, but I suspect they are in the minority.)

So, with a government comprised largely of individuals who are not on the higher end of the intellectual scale, what can we expect? And have you ever considered working for the government? It often does not matter if you have 20 years of experience in a scientific field, if it is your first year they want to pay you a starting salary. So, the government hires idiots, retains idiots who become more complacent and disconnected from the rest of the world, and gives no incentives to more intelligent people to work for them. (Perhaps DHS is different, but I suspect it is not.)

Now, while these ?bright? folks are studying a person?s laptop and only find games and family photos, the files they are really after were probably encrypted and e-mailed or might even be encrypted and stored on a micro-SD card that is sewn into the seam of some terrorist?s or pedophile?s pants.

I travel a lot and cross the border frequently. It absolutely amazes me how utterly useless the security measures are. And, they take them so serious, which I find laughable. I think it is reasonable for them to search for and remove guns, but it is annoying that they try to make the population feel like they are doing any more than that -- that they are somehow actually making America a safer place. They absolutely are not.

All of these new rules, such as making you take off your shoes for a scan, limiting liquids, disallowing pocket knives and baseball bats (while allow cork screws and scissors and wrenches -- I swear, that kills me: http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/prohibited/permitted-prohibited-items.shtm), sounds like a load of crap that half mindless individuals thought up sitting around a committee table to me. I think what they forget is that 9/11 happened, because we were all taught to sit down and follow orders if a hijacker wants a plane. In the future, if somebody tries to take a plane, the passengers will get up and beat the heck out of them: and it has happened!

Further, the terrorists know this, which is why they would not likely try to do the same sort of thing. There are so many more opportunities for them aside from airplanes. Perhaps it might not cause the same kind of panic, but it would stir our government idiots to action and they would create more restrictive rules for us all.

Welcome to the 21st century America.

[rcfa]

True, but idiots are scary, because all they know is follow orders, and thus the follow evil orders as likely as they follow stupid orders.
If Nazi Germany or for that matter Iraq or any other despotic government teaches us one thing, it's that the bureaucracy will just go along, because there are too many followers who are more worried about feeding the mouths at home at the dinner table than about such "lofty" concepts as freedom and justice.

[ngcomputing]

Electronic device would also include a digital camera. In any case, I really hope we get the first case of this abuse of our constitutional rights soon. The faster it goes to court, the less time they have to make thousands of people give up their property out of fear tactics. The Constitution is the Constitution, period. You simply cannot let the government bend it every time they decide that it is "beneficial" for all Americans. There are more suicides during holidays, should the government ban all holidays for the "sake of Americans" ?

[Marc Myers]

What's the point of inspecting the information on people's hard drives when that same information can move across borders with impunity via the internet? Since it is impossible to interrupt the movement of data across the net, what does seizing people's laptops accomplish? There's a world of difference between moving dangerous materials across borders and moving dangerous information across borders.

As was predictable, the deterioration of our civil rights because of the Bush administrations scare tactics has extended beyond "homeland security" to invade every aspect of our private lives.

[Andrew Wolfe]

Sorry - encryption won't help. According to numerous reports, you will be detained until you provide the password or biometrics.

[rcfa]

Read up on TrueCrypt.org on how to deal with that situation.
There is such a thing as *truly* hidden partition, and multiple passwords. So when forced to give out a password, you give out password for plan B, and what it reveals is useless stuff, otherwise, you regularly use another password.

See: http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability

[ngcomputing]

Another snafu, Bush signed into law the new wiretapping bill where as the U.S. government can now monitor any and all phone calls, internet activity and e-mails without probable cause. Google the news "wiretapping bill"

Isn't this what the KGB did during the Cold War? Change the laws to best serve the state, and not necessarily the people?

[alegr]

KGB didn't even bother with laws. Same as Bush's agencies.

[mikeburek]

It has been proven that child porn and terrorist plans can only exist on computers. Maybe someday we can perfect that experimental "paper" thing. (sarcasm) How often does DHS look at even a single sheet of paper in a briefcase?