Quote:
Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
Now, hold on .... customs agents have been searching luggage at borders for a long long time. They do it in nearly every country I have been to ... and I've been to a bunch of them.
A lot of it comes in through the internet, and I doubt that they can do much about that ... but if they can stop some of the terrorists or pedophiles from operating, I don't have a problem with it. But then, I don't travel with a ton of pirated material, kiddie porn, or plans to blow up people and things.
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For one thing, "I've got nothing to hide" is a lame response. I also don't do these things, still I have no reason to trust the US government with my and my company's confidential and in some cases sensitive data. And the first thing terrorists and other wrongdoers are doing right now is encrypting their illegal data (especially after that single kiddie porn guy example), so the best possible result of all this is that "honest" citizens are going to be bothered and a lot of time is going to be wasted examining mundane data and devices. Time better spent actually doing something about security.
See also
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...ract_id=998565
And dumb luggage is one thing, and data is another. Taking 'any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,' including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover 'all papers and other written documentation,' including books, pamphlets and 'written materials commonly referred to as "pocket trash..." is another thing again.
"Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing"
I can't believe people are accepting this so meekly. I also don't see why you should expect to get your stuff back, ever. Because they certainly aren't telling you when (if ever) they will return it. How is confiscating stuff regardless of suspicion of wrongdoing (in essence, whatever and whenever the border guard guy feels like screwing with you) reasonable? What if he just has a bad day?
Schneier has an interesting article on it too:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-217.html