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.

[wolfbeast71]

One thing a lot of people seem to overlook as far as copyright goes: If you are the legal owner of the copyrighted works, or have obtained a legal copy of works owned by someone else, the ones committing a crime is whomever makes a copy of it, meaning the authorities!
They are creating illegal copies in the process of their "investigation".

[gmh_in_mclean_va]

The Bush administration likes to remind us that we haven't had a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. That's not entirely true. Aside from the fact that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch in the first place, it didn't end when the last tower fell. It is an ongoing event that only began with planes crashing into buildings . In fact, the damage continues to an increasing amount in a very real way. The original Al qaeda attack is the "gift that keeps on giving", the goal being to undermine our way of life and destroy the ideas we hold dear. That they have done with an excruciating amount of success. It may not have been their specific intention (or maybe it was), but it turns out there's no real need for terrorists to attack us again, and again in order to do us great harm. If your intent is to harm a free society efficiently, execute one well coordinated act against it, which from that point forward puts its inhabitants in such state of fear and paranoia that they give up the ideas and freedom that make them who they are and implode by their own hands. Our "mainstream" society generally ignors the blunders and atrocities our government has occasionally committed in our national history because compared to our counterparts throughout the world, we've usually been able to think of ourselves as, "the good guys" (more or less). It's time we all stopped looking at our government through the eyes of adoring elmentery school history students and started seeing it with wide eyed clarity and remember that it exists to serve us, not the other way around. This latest 8 year blip in our 200+ years of existence has resulted in our government having difficulty laying credible claim to being "the guy in the white hat" in current times. The US government now more closely resembles the man in black sporting a twisted handlebar mustache tying damsels in distress to railroad tracks.

We are no longer the country we were. Our government can slap the monicker "terrorist" on an individual and hold them indefinitely with no recourse to justice. It adopts methods that are clearly torture and justifies them with the semantic loophole of renaming them "aggressive interrogation" and implying that when performed off-shore such tactics doesn't really count. Looking at the Spanish Inquisition, you can see the worthlessness of statements gathered through intimidation. That is, unless you believe Europe was once rife with actual witches and the satanically possessed as opposed to victims that would say and admit to anything their "interrogators" suggest to end the pain and fear.

This next dangerous move, aimed as much at "we the people" as it is at foreign "evil doers", lays direct aim at our right to privacy and our right to hold personal property among other things. It does so by using one of our greatest assets: technology brought to the masses that is now ingrained in most aspects of our personal and professional lives. What's next, the government hacking into our home and business computers through some twisted application of eminent domain? Have they already done so? Are they doing it right now? It seems to me the Bush administration has not kept us safe from further terrorist attacks at all. Instead, it has ignorantly become one of the best allies Al qaeda could ever have hoped for by unwittingly becoming the fuel to the flames with which we are burning our most cherished ideas to cinders.

Somewhere, there is an isolated cave containing dialysis equipment and a banner written in Arabic that reads, "Mission Accomplished".

[biviator]

[last 'graph:]
"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."

Uhmm, storing info in analog form? That sounds like a book, or a photograph, so those must be "electronic devices" per DHS...

[ruggedlaptops]

Yep, seriously doubt if the bad guys use guns with permits. Don't believe they talk on landlines, or use cell phones either, let alone cart around a laptop with any info that may implicate them in criminal activity. Sick.

I have to agree with the last two comments. This has little to do with terrorism.

[shonyx]

How about taking the HD out of the laptop and sending it via mail, say FedEx or something, and you show up at the border/airport with a laptop with no HD, what can you be accused of? I mean Online shopping of OEM HD's go oveseas too right? and I guess they get scanned, but do they open all of them and inspect them ? can they get seized too? How about all those USB thumb drives that come from Japan, China, Mexico, etc., etc.?

[zelrik]

Unfortunalty, I have to travel to US quite often for my work, and my laptop is my main working tool....So I am screwed all over. Thanks Bush and Folks.... :/ :/

[Brian Gasperosky]

John wanted to hear a story about this, so I have a story about this. I was traveling from Seattle to Chicago to Detroit in 2001. After September 11th, long before Homeland "Security". SeaTac let me board the plane, no questions asked. While I was in the airport at O'Hare though, I was transferring from my arrival gate to my departure gate to take the last hop home to Detroit. While passing through the gate, the U.S. Marshall checking bags stopped me, and refused to let me pass because I was carrying a Psion 5 organizer. The next thing I know, I'm in front of a bunch of security "officials" being interrogated in a locked room, while my girlfriend is freaking out at the gate. In turns out the idiot U.S. Marshall was a James Bond buff, and the Psion 5, or something just like it, was used in Never Say Never Again by terrorists to blow up a plane. He insisted on "diffusing" (his word, not mine) my organizer by destroying it before I could pass. Needless to say, the airlines don't get my personal money any more. If I have to travel for business, I suck it up. But if I'm traveling for fun, I'll take a boat around the world long before I give my own money to these morons again. Also, they never replaced the $500 organizer. Instead, all I got was a letter of apology for my "lost" organizer.

[Too Old For IT]

Note to law professor Larry Cunningham: The pictures of skinny Russian child porn stars on someone's laptop are not what is dangerous. What is dangerous are the young to middle aged Arab men who are fanatic Isalmics and bent on blowing up things in America

[rodporter]

When we allow the constitutional limitations on govt to be brushed aside we empower tyranical govt too - if they had to have a warrant signed by a judge they couldnt intimidate the entire population as they are clearly wishing to do - at this point, we SHOULD be concerned that any good patriot could be targeted for any reason or no reason at all - if you hand these guys a clean computer who can say they will give you back a clean computer? - they can use this unfettered access and private time alone with your computer to GIVE you a felony or ten - does anyone really think govt tools will blanche at placing illegal material on the computer of anyone they wish to silence or control? police plant evidence all the time - this is one more reason why the unconstitutional War on Drugs and the absurdly unconstitutional War on Pictures of Nekid Ladies should really be reconsidered - the sad thing is that we couldnt repeal a law now if we wanted to (and I do think a majority of the American People would want to scrap the War on Drugs, for example, if presented the facts in an objective manner) tyrants use such laws to control the People. :(

[AlfalfaMale]

This is a ridiculous breach of privacy and opens the door wide to rampant abuse. Ask yourself this question: why would anyone need to transport illicit data physically through customs? Have these people heard of the internet where traffic between nations is easily achieved?

[Angelsilhouette]

"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."

So... The internet is slower, more expensive and more cumbersome than taking a plane somewhere to deliver electronic information? Seriously? Even if they didn't want to use the internet to transfer data, they could put it on a micro SD and mail it inside of a child's toy and it would get there faster, be cheaper, and far less conspicuous.