Following in the wake of February's news that customs agents were seizing electronics and making copies of all the files on cell phones and laptop hard drives, a federal appeals court has ruled on the legality of such searches. The result: Yeah, customs can do whatever it wants to your computer when you come across the border, without a warrant, and without cause. The ruling extends to all electronics: In addition to laptops, feds can seize phone records and even digital pictures on your camera as they hunt for evidence. The ruling was unanimous among the three appellate judges. Be assured that the ruling has little to do with thwarting terrorism. The appeal was actually part of an ongoing trial of a man named Michael Arnold, who returned from the Philippines and had his laptop scoured by the feds. They found purported images of child pornography on the laptop and later arrested him. In his trial, the evidence was suppressed for probable cause issues, as the court said that customs had no reasonable suspicion to search his laptop in the first place. That ruling has now been overturned. As Wired notes, the court did not rule on whether you have to help agents access your hard drive. If you use a password or encryption, the court was mum on whether you can be compelled to provide information on bypassing that security in order to access materials on the drive. If you find yourself in such a situation and have anything on your computer that might be considered at all suspicious, you are probably wise to keep mum on providing login information. This is an issue that will undoubtedly keep developing (and will probably be submitted, in the end, to the Supreme Court), but anyone traveling overseas with sensitive information (even confidential, legal stuff) should for now consider storing it elsewhere (online, perhaps) or simply leaving it at home. POLL: What do you think? http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/90325
security. put a password on everything. They cant copy your pictures if you take the SD Card out. Idk kind of screwed on the laptop thing. If you have Linux, you can access the drive and by-pass restrictions though Windows. If you use Windows, you can by-pass restrictions by using Linux. This is bunch of bullshit. My ass can only hold so much, now I gotta make room for drugs and my electronics?! Fuck.
Thats some bullshit. I guess you need to take out any sd cards, hard drives, etc and put them in your checked luggage and hope they don't go through that.
They should have shoved that laptop right up his ass before cuffing him. Personally, this doesn't bother me nearly as much as other things because taking into consideration this applies to anyone crossing the border. I have nothing to hide, but I can't speak on behalf of the rest of the world...
You know guys, you can always go into the BIOS and slap an admin pass on the thing. That way the OS won't even be able to boot up unless they know your password. Though I would imagine if they really wanted to they could get around it.
Time to fill a laptop with gay porn, faces of death stuff, and every offensive joke one can find about cops, customs officials, and religion (hopefully it will be one they subscribe to) and make repeated trips across the border. Then move to a land, far, far away to get away from the bullshit.
Cool. You don't mind customs agents leering at those pictures of your girlfriend stored on your phone/computer? Good for you.