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Homeland Security Continues To Expand Border Searches: Now Can Copy Your Paper-Based Documents
from the probable-cause-is-so-last-millennium dept
We've been covering the stories of how the Department of Homeland Security has a policy in place that lets it search and copy the contents of your laptop as you cross the border without any probable cause. DHS's reasoning for why it needs this power are not particularly convincing -- focusing mainly on scare mongering rather than rational argument. Now, the EFF has discovered, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, that it's not just computer data that DHS wants to copy. Last year, it quietly changed its policies to allow customs and border guards to read and copy any personal papers the traveler has, even without "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause." Compared to searching through and copying your hard drive, this may seem like a minor deal, but it's yet another example of DHS expanding its authority in ways that are very likely to be abused.
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
they boil you slowly, now you're at 60-65 degrees centigrade ;)
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Re:
Do You Remember?
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Re:
"they boil you slowly, now you're at 60-65 degrees centigrade ;)
"
I think youve got it
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I remember back in the 80s, Hollywood portrayed communist Russia as being invasive and intrusive and having little regard for personal privacy. America was portrayed as the land of the free.
Twenty years later it seems Homeland Security are the invasive and intrusive ones.
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I can't take credit for this one.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
Sums it up.
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Re: I can't take credit for this one.
Yep. I've quoted that here before. Very appropriate, once again.
I don't travel much, but if I ever do and cross a border anywhere, US Customs better prepare for a fight if they try taking my stuff without probable cause.
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Re: Re: I can't take credit for this one.
You better prepare to spend some time in the pokey.
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Re: I can't take credit for this one.
You better prepare to spend some time in the pokey.
I would, and happily so, all the while screaming "4th Ammendment foul" in technicolor detail to every media outlet in the land.
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Good News
Well this is all fantastic news for hard drive manufacturers. I mean just where the hell are they going to put all of this data?
I am sure there are plenty of people crossing the border every day with hundreds of megs of data on their laptops which of course will need to be copied.
I think someone should look in to hard drive lobbyists and see who they have been writing their checks too.
Seriously though, it is only a matter of time before you will have to provide DNA when you cross in to your own country. WFT man?
Like a bad guy would cross in to the country legally ie. thru a border crossing, with a hard drive or brief case full of evil plans! If they did, and we did copy it, just how long do you suppose the backlog is for DHS to wade thru the 438 billion porno pix, and temporary internet files they have collected before they get to the bad guys files? Oh and wait... perhaps the bad guy was smart enough to have encrypted the hell out of his files, and it takes a huge computer 5 years to decrypt enough of the information to determine there was a threat. By that time, the bad guy will have done his damage, and the government will be wasting our time with a HUGE investigation to determine what went wrong.
If it were not happening in real life, it would be laughable!
I agree 100% #3, Benjamin Franklin was a smart man.
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Re: Good News
Seriously, all this "no privacy" bullshit hasn't got a god-damned thing to do with catching terrorists. It's all about controlling the population. Some days, I even doubt there ever were terrorists--as they do so easily fit the "needed" enemy image profile without needing such mundane things as an actual "country of origin."
And to #8 - Civil Disobedience is still disobedience [insert graphic of policeman beating a protester here]
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Re: Re: Good News
REALLY? You doubt there ever were terrorists? Did the World Trade Center fall down on it's own? Maybe Hitler never really existed either?
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Re: Re: Re: Good News
Oh, Hitler existed.
But the World Trade Center was an inside job, USA putting shit on its own citizens in order to generate enough fear to pass things like the "Patriot Act."
PS - Godwin's Law.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Good News
What about occam's razor? I'd believe that some economic interest (terrorist or otherwise) blew the towers to take advatage in the turmoil it caused in financial markets before I'd believe that the US gov really cares about what I have in my pornfolio when I cross the border. The simplest explanation is usually money.
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Disconnected hardware
You can easily store media (Micro SDs for instance) inside the laptop, simply use the Laptop as a "case", and have them disconnected from everything, glued to something obscure inside.
These kind of searches will only hurt the innocent . A person that has something to hide has to be mighty stupid to not be able to hide it.
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Re: Disconnected hardware
Humans always find a way. Ways around little problems like this. Every crypto scheme the DMCA has thrown in the way of media security has been cracked. Every little scheme this Fatherland Security tries to throw down can be circumvented as well. Its easy enough to keep your documents online. Don't give the bastards a way in; Don't walk around with sensitive papers.
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Fourth?
Fourth Amendment? We don' need no stinkin' Fourth Amendment!
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The RIAA is paying them off to search for illegal music.
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Civil Disobedience
It would be tempting, would it not, to perhaps perform some civil disobedience? Take an older laptop and fill the hard drive with fanfics, appropriately mislabeled. Also to encrypt a couple of gigs of spam e-mail, then make a border crossing....
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Re: Civil Disobedience
Oh yeah, show the government who is boss nerd style.
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hahah..
@DarkDancer
hellz yea! i have a cd w/some pretty old school viruses from back in the win95 days. throw some malware on there and top it off w/320GB of just random spam.. yea.. thats fun! :)
i'd prob throw a hidden partition in there for fun and also add encryption to it too..
:P
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Re: hahah..
Only problem is that it is against the law to export certain encryption schemes. So if you did use encryption, just make sure its exportable. Or they could use that against you.
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Re: Re: hahah..
Wrong with every breath you take:
1) The ban on exporting munitions (which included encryption technology) was expunged a few years ago.
2) The mere act of walking around with encrypted data is not exporting munitions as defined in the act. The exncryption SCHEME (the recipe, the code that described the encryption) was the point.
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A paper
Take a stack of paper, I don't know, how about 500 pages, make a title of something terroristy. Then write a 499 word essay with one word on each page with some good flagged words. Then watch them scan/copy the whole thing. Use like a condensed, #6 font, too.
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I am sorry
I feel for kids and grandkids. With this shi* and the credit "crisis" the face of America is changing dramatically.
Where is Ben Franklin? We need him!
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Maybe it's time
for a new revolution. Is it lost on everyone that the dickwads foisting this crap on us are the same folks from the 60's who were singing kumbay-fucking-ya, smoking everything that would burn, staging sit-ins, and - ahm - blowing up government buildings because "the man" was "oppressing" the "people"?
Maybe a fresh dose of CCR and a swift kick in the ass would awake their sense of irony?
Oh, yeah, Mr. CBP, please stop by and explain how this is only to stop the evil kiddie pronners from coming back in from Canadexico or where ever.
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Re: Maybe it's time
They don't have to explain anything. Drop soundbites onto Lou Dobbs and Bill O', then 50% of the country will be voting to save the children and build 1000 mile long walls.
Gotta hold back them crazy canajians, eh?
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Re: Maybe it's time
We have a revolution every 4 years. The problem is the people keep voting for the same damn assholes. We have other parties who place other candidates on the ballot, use them! Ron Paul has a vision of America I like. I'd love to see him get in the White House.
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Re: Maybe it's time
Maybe it's time for you to take your meds today. Your post, although readable, is so completely removed from reality that we can only assume you're on LSD yourself. The truth is, the folks from the '60s who were singing kumbay-fucking-ya are the ones fighting this. The rest of you, who've been fooled by "if we don't, the terrorists will win," are the ones who are allowing the government to foist this crap on us.
This administration, and the Republicans who wish to be next in line, are feeding us a diet of fear, because they believe that if they scare us enough, we'll let them get away with anything. So far, and to the detriment of us all, this tactic has worked very well for the Bush
administration.
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Re: Re: Maybe it's time
"The truth is, the folks from the '60s who were singing kumbay-fucking-ya are the ones fighting this."
Ha ha ha ha ha... you mean they're the ones CAUSING this. Whatever "this" is. I assume you mean the financial crisis.
Those same flower children are the ones in power, "Ralph".
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Re: Re: Re: Maybe it's time
You comment when you don't even know what the subject is? The subject is BORDER SEARCHES, asshat. The financial crisis is another post, on another blog.
Thanks for your comment. Remember, 'tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt. Thanks for removing all doubt.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Maybe it's time
Its all related. Get a clue.
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Re: Maybe it's time
Your assertion that "Is it lost on everyone that the dickwads foisting this crap on us are the same folks from the 60's who were singing kumbay-fucking-ya, smoking everything that would burn, staging sit-ins, and - ahm - blowing up government buildings because "the man" was "oppressing" the "people"?" is full of crap. The neo-cons in charge of these civil liberty destructions were members of the College Young Republicans in that era. No spots were changed in the years between.
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Re: Maybe it's time
No spots were changed in the years between.
Bullshit. There are a lot more Repubs in that generation now than there were then. There has most definitely been some spot changing in the intervening years.
I'm not saying everyone changed, I'm not saying that Bush and his cabinet were Hippies (though I have no doubt Bush did his fair share of smoking, drinking, and/or snorting shit), but I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that a bunch of the folks in Congress would be counted among "those we can't trust" by their younger selves.
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w o w
If they think the downfall of the U.S. will be the result of someone's laptop.... we might as well all kill ourselves right now to avoid the embarrassment.
Besides... everyone knows the next attack will come from the sewers of NY. Terrorists are going to crawl out of those things like Ninja Turtles!!! :)
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Have to hire someone to sneak ya' across the border now, maybe on a return trip from smuggling people in, lol.
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Why not start crossing the border carrying data in archaic format, just for the fun of it. Like 8 inch floppy disks and such. Even damaged disks, so thay have to work extra hard to recover the data?
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Re:
Even damaged disks,
Hey, that's a great idea! I have an old HD that failed that I'd LOVE to recover, it's just not worth the dough. But if Border Patrol will do it FOR me, that'd be great :-)
Mr. CBP: "This computer won't boot."
Dos: "Yeah... the hard drive flaked while I was gone. Shame, too, I miss my pr0n collection and my Annotated Reader's Guide of the electronig Quaran."
Mr. CBP: "Oh,REALLY? No worries, we're right on that..."
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This is why I do all my traveling inside the country, and by car. They don't do border checks on the back roads between states, yet.
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??? State border checks?
Where? I've never had any problems crossing a state border. I live in California (which I hate, but I have no choice right now) and drive to Nevada, up through Oregon to Washington, and over to Texas all the time. Last time I went to Manhattan I flew and had to do the usual shoe nonsense in the terminal, but then I took a cab ride to Hoboken; and there's no border check in the Lincoln Tunnel I can tell you. Why, I've even driven from Montana to Calgary and didn't have much of a check. Didn't even need my passport. And that was post 9-11. WHAT STATE BORDER CHECK????
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And people still ask my why I do not go to the States.
I live 25 miles from a wonderful boarder and every day I am glad that boarder is there.
P.S. Ben Franklin was the first Post Master General in Canada.
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Re:
1) Canada has problems of its own. Lots.
2) If you think that anything major going on down south won't effect Canada you're off your rocker.
3) Canada is infested with Quebecois.
4) Is that comment about Franklin supposed to be a jab? Guess what, no one gives a mad fuck what Franklin did.
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Re: Re:
3) Canada is infested with Quebecois.
Hold on, I think I have a cream for that...
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if DHS would just....
erase everyone's hard drive at the border... then,
they wouldn't need mass amounts of storage and no "electronic" contraband would flow into the country...
....except over the internet, of course.
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w 0 w two
I agree with a lot you.
1. I have a 2GB microSD card in my cell phone. If I was going to transport 'terrorist' or other criminal data, I'd put it on a microSD card and shove it down my pants (or I'd put on a g(oogle)-drive and I could retrieve it from any library or coffee shop in the world).
2. If data on a laptop, or printed pages in a back pack are going to bring down this country, we're f'ed.
3. If a cell phone being on could bring down an airliner they wouldn't let you take it on the plane at all. The reason to make you turn it off is because your f'ing annoying the people around you!
4. Unless they're going to ship you off to GITMO when they copy your hard drive, you'll be long gone before they find anything (NOTE to DHS: I'm not advocating this).
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SS anyone ?
Sounds like the SS
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Oh my, just dump your stuff to an FTP site!
You really need privacy? Just create an FTP site store all you data, cross over down load what you need. that's why they call it WWW. It's such a joke, Just remember they might drop a bot on your computer to send them passwords and login names. www.spectorsoft.com Don't put it past them, when in doubt their is no doubt.
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Re: Oh my, just dump your stuff to an FTP site!
Right, with one correction, don't use ftp. Use a secure https server.
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Re: Re: Oh my, just dump your stuff to an FTP site!
NO use WASTE
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interval
I was born and raised in Quebec, though I am English speaking.
Born in the '50's lived through the bombings, kidnapping and War Measures Act in the late sixties early seventies. Think armed troops in the streets.
Yes we have our own problems but I would rather live in Canada than under the current regime in the U.S. police state
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Re: interval
I'm not to pleased with the political situation in the US either. But I've been to Canada. You've got to be kidding. There is still much more opportunity here than up there. I guess if you're happy making shit in a shit hole, then its all good. If you have goals, however, no place like the states.
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Oh my, just dump your stuff to a OpenBSD machine running OpenSSHD! :)
Reaper, FTP and privacy really don't go well together.
The real issue is, what they are planning to do. They are only starting at the border. They want to control all information, some countries already limit what sites can and can't be viewed. I would not be shocked if something like that comes about.
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Inevitably, some lude photos are going to be leaked, or a love letter, and it will trace back to a border security guard, and then likely there will be a big scandal and these policies will come under a lot more fire.
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CharlieO
Yes I remember,
Having to go through "Military Check Points" to deliver newspapers for a few months. (I lived in a upscale area with a lot of Political/Wealthy (targets)residents).
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# 46 was posted by me not A. C.
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Big Brother
So, Orwell was right and big brother really is watching you!
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4th amendment being pissed on... People should be as upset about this as they are bailing out those banks.
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I agree the U.S. is a nice place with a lot of opportunities but for the past eight years I would rather stay up here than to get hassled at your boarder.
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taking credit
if i wanted to get information across the border, you wouldn't even know i was carrying a computer. so dhs is less imaginative than a bored geek, what else is new? here's a fun idea, write a virus that overwrites all available drive space with copy after copy of a chosen file. when they go to ghost your drive, they pick up the virus and rickroll their network.
franklin also said, "beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy." coincidentally, that's also the extent and limit of my religious beliefs.
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...and this is in addition to doing a forensic image of your drive? I supposed I shouldn't have zeroed out my drive's free space with the string "F**k_Bush" instead of random bits...
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Remember Remember the 5th of November....
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The weird part is that being secure in your papers is an explicitly enumerated right in the 4th Amendment. I'd LOVE to see the justification for that one.
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They will never let you scream to any media outlets. You'll just end up in the Ministry of Love being prodded to love Big Brother.
"All persons who are brought to this place are washed clean Winston. The execution of their sentences is relatively unimportant, by the time we are finished with them, there is nothing but sorrow for what they have done and love for Big Brother. It is so touching how they love Big Brother."
The agents will just take you to one of the back rooms and interrogate you by whatever means necessary to find out what they want and you'll be happy to get out and go home.
Hey brother, where're you bound?? Supertramp
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