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.
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here's how to do it. image your harddisk to an img or iso file. encrypt it. upload it to a web server. reformat your laptop to a clean/new system. travel to the US. dl your image & restore it when you get there..at least when your lucky enough your unit is not confiscated because its brand new or it looks funny, or you have beard down your chin.
there are terrorists but there are also terror places, places you feel you just want to get the hell out of there. places like iraq, afghanistan, Heathrow airport, US border checks & international entry ports and airports, among many others. everyone there has a face like they will eat you alive if you just say the wrong word, look or act different, or disobey a simple rule. simple terrorists too.
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.
That's the voice of naivete!
You don't know what you have to hide, until it's too late.
Do you think the Armenians in Turkey, the Jews in Germany, etc. had anything to hide?
The vast majority of the people prosecuted all over the world are normal people with nothing to hide.
It is the ability to hide things, just like the ability to keep and bear arms that are militarily effective, that keep a democracy free and the self-declared rulers in check. The sovereign in a democracy are the people, the president and rest of the government are SERVANTS.
Unfortunately, with enough pomp and circumstance, they managed to flip the perceived roles in the minds of most people. Why do people bow to the President, but not to their maid or waiter? They have all three the same function: to SERVE, not to rule.
And lets be clear about one thing: throughout history, there have been more victims of organized religion and governments than there were victims of terrorists. So to call on the government to protect the people against terrorism is like calling upon the devil to protect you from some minor form of menace.
The number of lives that terrorism claims world-wide pales in comparison to the lives lost to preventable causes, such as hunger, unhealthy diet, smoking, drunk driving, AIDS, lack of health care, etc.
The trillions spent on the war on terrorism could save more lives every year than we could possibly lose by having our borders wide open to terrorists.
In short, the government is knowingly killing its own citizens in the name of terrorism, because the opportunity cost of the so called war on terrorism costs more lives than are saved by keeping the country "safe". All this serves as is a great pretense for an unprecedented power grab of the executive branch. (for a definition of the term opportunity cost see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost )
How can some monkey prick at customs, tell me that I have to prove that I bought the material I ripped from vinyl into an MP3, or on my iPod rips of DVD films I own, my film collection is not all in one place, my vinyl collection and CD are with a friend and I mainly in fact entirely access my 140 GB Music Library electronically. Some of my music on white label.
If you stop me, I will demand you take me into custody, and charge me. If you have child porn on your machine you deserve severe pain, but really isn't the wider problem the people abusing children and producing it. This is where the immediate and physical pain is felt, images are sick and disgusting but if I wanted to frame someone, I would push child porn onto their machine and inform on them. Then they would be ******, the evidence would put them away.
There is too much pressure, and too much risk even for someone planting material on your machine. If you are worried then you need to simply work on an encrypted volume (Not necessarily a full system but an encrypted image (TrueCrypt for example) You need to ensure you supervise your machine at all times so a cold boot attack cannot be executed. Never write down your password and think of a complex phrase involving characters and numbers like a memorable but complete sentence as a a password, more than 16 characters is best.
Make sure your system is not Windows, and also protected, your browsers must be safe, if your desktop is compromised you are ******, never mind logging into your profile, modern attacks are rarely done this way.
This latest development is a sign of a country imploding on itself, for too long America and the American way was the best, biggest, baddest, strongest, fastest and most superior in it's own standing what threats could possibly be so grave that someone would bring them on a laptop on a commercial passage.
Do me a ******* favor, serious threat, serious comms equipment and serious backing. Oh sorry I forgot the obvious one, all criminals all use MSN for their planning, how silly of me.
How can some monkey prick at customs, tell me that I have to prove that I bought the material I ripped from vinyl into an MP3, or on my iPod rips of DVD films I own, my film collection is not all in one place, my vinyl collection and CD are with a friend and I mainly in fact entirely access my 140 GB Music Library electronically. Some of my music on white label.
If you stop me, I will demand you take me into custody, and charge me. If you have child porn on your machine you deserve severe pain, but really isn't the wider problem the people abusing children and producing it. This is where the immediate and physical pain is felt, images are sick and disgusting but if I wanted to frame someone, I would push child porn onto their machine and inform on them. Then they would be ******, the evidence would put them away.
There is too much pressure, and too much risk even for someone planting material on your machine. If you are worried then you need to simply work on an encrypted volume (Not necessarily a full system but an encrypted image (TrueCrypt for example) You need to ensure you supervise your machine at all times so a cold boot attack cannot be executed. Never write down your password and think of a complex phrase involving characters and numbers like a memorable but complete sentence as a a password, more than 16 characters is best.
Make sure your system is not Windows, and also protected, your browsers must be safe, if your desktop is compromised you are ******, never mind logging into your profile, modern attacks are rarely done this way.
This latest development is a sign of a country imploding on itself, for too long America and the American way was the best, biggest, baddest, strongest, fastest and most superior in it's own standing what threats could possibly be so grave that someone would bring them on a laptop on a commercial passage.
Do me a ******* favor, serious threat, serious comms equipment and serious backing. Oh sorry I forgot the obvious one, all criminals all use MSN for their planning, how silly of me.
All authority of the state (any and all states) is illusory. The only difference between the state and the mafia is the degree of collective popular belief in their respective legitimacies. Both are violent criminal enterprises and nothing more. Discussing what the so-called DHS may or may not "legally" do is like arguing about hit points in Dungeons and Dragons. Granted, the so-called DHS can actually affect our lives, but only because a critical mass of people falsely believe in the legitimacy of their authority.
If I had one wish from a genie in a bottle, it would be that no one would ever again believe in the legitimacy of any political/contractual authority that was not derived from unanimous consent.
Fourth Amendment Practice should be taught, re-taught, and personal ethics classes with Fourth Amendment focus should also comprise the training of any TSA, U.S. Border Patrol, FBI, DEA, DHS, US Marshal, or any other Federal Law Enforcement Agency.
Training of individuals in Personal Responsibility, Civics, Constitutional Freedoms Protections, and the Sanctity of Individual Freedoms for Others, is essential to re-establishing what the Founders of the "Union of the Several States" desired for their posterity, which means, their descendants, of which all of us in the US are derived.
Here is a suggestion or two:
1. If your laptop is seized, be polite. Don't argue with the people with the guns. They're touchy by nature and are essentially taught to over-react to *everything* around them. You may get one in a hundred that has some serious martial arts training and can do the job as outlined in the statement above, while the others--the majority, unfortunately--onl7y tend to emotional reaction.
2. Politely ask to have a receipt given for the property seized, and gently inquire as to where one may apply to have the laptop returned in operating condition.
3. Get the name of the TSA Agent, Operative, or Officer who did the seizing, or the name of the Supervisor who is in charge of the officer, agent, or operative, and ask to have a paper trail so you may keep track of your property.
4. If you are treated violently by anyone for merely making what can be construed to be expected inquiries, especially one in uniform who is, by all expectations, supposed to be protecting the public and is not expected to act overly-vicious, by all means indicate that you want Federal Law Enforcement Assistance at once. If you find you are having the life choked out of you, defending yourself would then come in handy, but one shouldn't go overboard, just enough to keep one's throat from being choked, bones broken, etc.
Putting a small distance--say out of arm's reach--and a physical object between you and the individual being overly-violent would also be wise. Just don't run away. Stay in the general area, and indicate strongly, in a very loud, determined, and set tone of voice, that you feel that the individual in question is not being fair, that you have complied with the law (after all, you did surrender your laptop or other electronic device), and just wanted to know how to get your equipment back after the agency was through with it.
5. If detained, obtain legal counsel immediately. If legal counsel is denied for any reason, again, being polite, ask why legal counsel has not been granted.
6. At length, if you find yourself being separated from your family, you know you're correct, then escape might be the prudent choice if it can be had. The Founders knew the threat from king George's redcoat army, and sometimes, when Rights are trampled upon, one must do what one must do. Just do it Ethically, Justly, and Morally.
7. I think this is just about anything that any reasonable person can expect from reasonably people in a reasonably free society.
Leaving you with my Warmest Regards,
Firefishe
Use the free tools like...
Truecrypt at http://www.truecrypt.org to encrypt a partition to store your documents in
Whisper Bot at http://www.whisperbot.com to send secure notes instead of e-mail
...and there are plenty more - Keep secure, people.
a) If I have nothing to hide, then why should I have something to worry?
b) if I encrypt information, it shows that I have something to hide and it will arouse suspicion
c) if I encrypt information, I can be forced to reveal the password, so why encrypt in the first place.
d) operating system built-in encryption and proprietary solutions are "good enough"
I addressed these issues in replies to specific posts, but these replies are not very visible due to the nature of this forum which hides replies to replies rather well.
So I'll put up here the permalinks to the various answers of mine to these misconceptions:
a) http://news.cnet.com/8601-13578_3-10004646.html?communityId=2071&messageId=771672&pageNum=6#771672
b) http://news.cnet.com/8601-13578_3-10004646.html?communityId=2071&messageId=771651&pageNum=2#771651
c) http://news.cnet.com/8601-13578_3-10004646.html?communityId=2071&messageId=771624&pageNum=5#771624
d) http://news.cnet.com/8601-13578_3-10004646.html?communityId=2071&messageId=771630&pageNum=3#771630
1) If I have nothing to hide, then why should I worry?
First of all, you do have something to hide. You have passwords to your banking institution, email accounts, and other such information that can easily extracted from a laptop that you want to keep confidential. If the DHS has unlimited rights to seize AND keep your laptop, then that information can be comprimised.
2) If I encrypt information, it shows that I have something to hide and it will arouse suspicion.
Anyone who thinks that correctly protecting sensitive information from being extracted from a laptop should arouse suspicion is not thinking rationally. Besides simply keeping all your personal information out of the hands of criminals, there are lots of legitimate reasons to encrypt a hardrive. If you are a writer, you'd want to keep your work away from eyes that could steal your work. If you are a musician, you would want any unpublished music you have protected from being stolen from you. If you are a software engineer you'd want to keep your proprietary code secret. If you're an architect you'd want the plans for a multi-million dollar building project from being leaked to competitors. If a fallacy to believe that encryption equals criminal.
3) If I encrypt information, I can be forced to reveal the password, so why encrypt in the first place?
Forced? By whom? Even if my laptop were seized by the goverment, there is no law that forces me to reveal the passwords to any encryption that exists on my laptop. In fact, it would be for a judge to decide if it's warrented or not. And what's more, under these rules, the DHS doesn't have to give up my laptop if they so choose. So again, another fallcious argument.
4) Operating system built-in encryption and proprietary solutions are "good enough".
Operating system built-in encryption and prorietary solutions are being circumvented all the time. They are not "good enough". But the point of protecting not only your rights but your personal information by encrypting your laptop is to keep people out of your personal information as best as you possibly can. If you think it's good enough, then by all means do it for yourself, but tell others it's ok to be wide open out in a world that seeks to take your very identity away from you.
And by the way, your "permalinking" stinks. Each link leads you back to this very same post.
- by KalpeshJoshi August 4, 2008 10:06 AM PDT
- Just another way that the gov't is trying to control its people in the name of terrorism... have we forgotten about the interim prison camps in CA (against our own people), lets not forget about McCarthyism (apparently everybody was a communist according to the gov't). Big Brother anyone? 1984 was a book that has been foreshadowing the future to come. Why are we living in fear of the government who is supposed to obey the wills and wishes of it's constituent people?! Are we that powerless? Can we not fight back? Revolution may be in order.
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Showing 3 of 4 pages (107 Comments)In other thoughts - why don't you change all the file extensions on your "questionable" music/movies, then hide the extensions, and watch the border agent do a search for "mp3." they will have a tough time trying to find music that is not viewable by that extension, and how will the know where to look to change the extension back in the first place, or what the extension even should be? :-)