Customs Now Performing Laptop Strip Searches. Protect Yourself.
August 6th, 2008 by Laurel Petriello 
In the past few years, U.S. border security agents have become more and more aggressive in their search techniques. There was a time when the worst thing you had to fear was an agent opening up your luggage and picking through your dirty underwear looking for contraband. Now, according to recently-disclosed border security policies, agents can strip search your laptop.
According to the new policy initiated by Homeland Security on July 16, agents can search, replicate data, and seize laptops, hard drives, PDAs, mp3 players, and other digital devices belonging to travelers entering the U.S., whether they are citizens or not. The policy states that the examination of mobile devices is a “crucial tool” for catching illegal activity such as drug running, child pornography, software copyright infringement, alien smuggling, and of course, terrorism.
“The policy that Customs officials can inspect travelers’ possessions at the border was formulated in a time where everything a traveler carried to the border could fit in a trunk or in horse-borne saddlebags,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology. “Today, travelers carry much of their lives in their laptops: what interests them, with whom they communicate, what their business secrets are, and even their love letters. We need a border search policy that accounts for this 21st century reality.”
Under the current search policy, Customs officers do not have to adhere to any restrictions; laptops can be searched, confiscated for an undetermined amount of time, and they can even make copies of travelers’ files. Nothing is sacred; not financial data, business data, or even attorney-client privileged information.
Is searching your hard drive without cause constitutional? The Supreme Court has yet to rule. However, in the wake of U.S. v. Arnold, in which California resident Michael Timothy Arnold was arrested in 2005 after the contents of his laptop were reviewed by Customs upon his return home from overseas travel, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco held that the Fourth Amendment—protecting citizens against searches and seizures of property—does NOT apply to personal electronic devices.
Smuggling MP3s
Have any music ripped onto your computer from your CD collection? Have a movie you ripped from your DVD collection for the plane ride? Technically that’s a violation of copyright law, a criminal and civil offense. The government can prosecute travelers for any illegally copied or shared software, music and movies found during a search on a laptop, mp3 player, or other personal handheld device.
Will border security agents actually be checking out your MP3 collection? Probably not. A search of news archives did not reveal any known cases of travelers who have run into copyright troubles.
What If Your Laptop Doesn’t Boot?
If you are selected for a random laptop search and cannot boot the computer due to a dead battery, forgotten power cord, or hardware/software issues, you are likely to be sent on your way. Catch a curious agent on a bad day, however, and he has the power to seize the laptop and plug it in from a “remote location.” If he still cannot boot it, he may even call in outside forensic experts to recover data. In such cases, most Americans would only be detained for a short time; the laptop, however, could be detained for a few hours to a few months.
Tips for Keeping Your Data Safe
So many people travel in and out of the U.S. each day that the chances of actually being stopped in the airport or at the border are slim. There is no denying, however, that anyone can be detained. All travelers should take precautions to protect their digital data while traveling. Here are a few tips for maintaining as much privacy as possible in case you get pulled aside for a special search:
Back up all data. It sounds like a nagging reminder from Mom, but we can’t stress it enough. Not only does backing up your data protect important information from untimely computer crashes, it will also save your files in the event of a Customs seizure.
Leave confidential documents at home. If you’re concerned about privacy, store the contents of your laptop’s hard drive at your home or office and take only the files you will need when traveling. This practice will aid in your personal privacy in case your files are compromised.
Encrypt data. By encrypting or password-protecting digital data, you create an obstacle for those trying to inspect the contents of your computer. When faced with encrypted files, Customs officers may choose to send you on your way because they do not want to deal with the hassle. This method is not foolproof, however. Officers can request that you input passwords and/or decrypt files. Should you refuse, they have the power to call in decryption assistance backup, and they can also keep you from entering the country.
Practice obscurity. This falls in the realm of data protection 101. If you are traveling with important business documents, private information, attorney-client privileged information, do not store the files on your desktop with file names that are blatantly obvious. Take a few extra measures to disguise file names containing important information and store files in folders on your hard drive. You can even opt to store important documents within password protected folders or zip files.
Keep data online. Travel with a clean slate. Store files needed during travel on an FTP server or install a remote desktop program such as logmein (www.logmein.com). While you are abroad, you can access information over the internet. When you are preparing for your return trip, upload important, private documents to your home base or to the FTP server and remove the files from your laptop’s hard drive.
Legislative Action
In light of the new mobile technology searching policies and procedures, a select few government officials are attempting to protect the digital privacy of US citizens. California State Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren introduced a bill on July 23, 2008 to prohibit the search of laptop computers at the border.
If the bill, dubbed the Electronic Device Privacy Act of 2008, makes it through Congress, it will no doubt garner support from Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold who spoke out in opposition to the government’s search policies in a Washington Post article last week. Until then, travel smartly.
Our Related Content
From Other Sites
- Is Cloud Computing Dangerous? (Technologizer)
- Facebook Trojan Brazen but Benign (Technologizer)
- Google Dashboard: Good--But More Explanation, Please (Technologizer)
- Will the CIA Snoop on Social Networks? (Technologizer)
- China Forcing News Sites to ID Commenters (Technologizer)
Related Deals
- Super Bowl Celebration - 20% off site wide at Skinit (custom skins for electronics) at Skinit
- Targus Tornado Laptop Chill Pad With Dual Cooling Fans (Refurb) $8.97 at yugster
- Dell Off Lease Coupon Code: 25% off Any Item (No Minimum) at Dell Off Lease Refurbished Computers
- AT&T GT 3G Ultra Air Card $19.99 Free Shipping at Newegg
- Dell Off Lease Coupon Code: 25% off Any Item (No Minimum) at Dell Off Lease Refurbished Computers
| Powered by: |  |
9 Responses to “Customs Now Performing Laptop Strip Searches. Protect Yourself.”
Leave a Reply
Featured Sponsors |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
August 6th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
It is a pretty sad day in this country when we have to take steps to protect ourselves against our own government. Our rights are slowly vanishing in the name of protecting us from terrorism and the term “Police State” is not so far fetched. As Ben Franklin said, “Those who are willing to give up liberty for security deserve neither.” It’s time to speak out for our freedoms before it’s too late.
August 6th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Another good way around this is to run a second OS, a linux distro that loads but doesn’t mount any of you HDD’s that way they can’t be searched by people that don’t know linux. If your really really worried you can always take a DD image of a drive with info on it and then save it on a separate drive, then you can restore all of your data. If you have encrypted the dd file they won’t know what to do.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
One nice way to protect your private data is to create a hidden volume oder even hidden os using truecrypt. http://www.truecrypt.org
August 6th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
uh, sorry @Don Crossland, it’s already too late. It was too late 6 years ago… Headlines should read “America new internet backwater” given the degree of chill the Homeland Security business is causing (not to mention RIAA). I don’t mean to be insulting, I’m canadian and not intending to bash americans, but your current government is clearly a problem. You are right and to be commended for quoting Ben as you do: the world looks to america to live up to its promise as the leading experiment in democracy, but too often we are let down by reality…
@Rob W and @cunni, see Bruce Schneier on this subject http://www.schneier.com/essay-199.html (among others)
September 18th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I personally don’t agree with this. As a Canadian, if I go to the U.S. on business and bring my business laptop with me, I shouldn’t have to worry that confidential records can be copied. In a nutshell, I’ll run linux, encrypt the hard drive, leaving the pgp key files on a flash drive. You could even store the flash drive in your luggage, so that you can’t boot the laptop (just have a bootable usb linux flash drive so you can boot the laptop and show the laptop in a working state).
You don’t insert the hard drive, you have a very difficult time decrypting the contents of the hard drive.
For general folks you could always take the hard drive out, run a live linux distro on a usb flash drive. That way there is no confidential information on the laptop at all. No data on the USB flash drive either for that matter.
Usb flash drives are cheap as sin these days.
September 20th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
It seems the objectives of the search have changed over time. In the past, we wanted to keep harmful substances, explosives, poisons, illegal drugs, etc. out of our country, and wanted to make sure that nothing was being exported/imported illegally. But data is different. Yes, data an be illegal or potentially harmful to someone, but moving it from point A to point B shouldn’t be such a big deal. If you’ve stolen information (e.g. MP3’s), why is that an issue for border security? Child pornography isn’t generally a border security problem either. If you plan on blowing something up, you could easily carry that plan out without bringing the project plan over in your laptop. In short, searching laptops might catch a few of these incidences, but it doesn’t prevent them, and the purpose of the search shouldn’t be to enforce those types of laws.
On the other hand, I don’t personally mind getting all my data searched, as long as I can trust it to be protected by those who do the searching. If I need to abide by client-attorney privilege, or EU privacy laws, or SEC guidelines, I’d like to believe that complying with border security policy doesn’t mean I have to break all those other laws for information security. Without that assurance, computing ‘in the cloud’ looks all the more compelling.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I think the truly important point here is the eroding of our rights as human beings. It can be said that this is done for money and that may very well be true. For example, water is not guaranteed to be a basic human need but a commodity that can be bought and sold. Yes, trying to prevent crime is important. BUT when the ability to protect oneself and stop others is taken out of our hands and handed to a select few, then we have a Draconian government. Our rights are being violated everyday and more rights will be removed as time passes. The thing that misses most people is that WE, the people of our respective countries, HIRE people to run the country for us IN OUR BEST INTERESTS. That means those employees (representatives, leaders, etc) must listen to what the collective will of the people is. But no. That is not the case anymore. Our employees tell US what to do! As a business owner, I have fired people for that kind of attitude. So what needs to happen is that everyone must lose their awe and fear of our “governments”, realize that we can pull them out of office just as easily as we hired them and take back our dignity. If this doesn’t happen, we lose. Oh and the government secret meetings? Garbage! All government must be transparent. That is a principle. So folks, no matter what the issue is, laptop searches, wiretapping, cameras everywhere, basic human rights being discarded, please realize that you can take action and stop this mess. If you are one that believes our governments have created a better world, look around; global climate change, clear cutting, war, famine hunger economic recession, erosion of human rights, abuse of power, bailouts to companies that cannot be self-sufficient, the list goes on and on. Sorry I babbled, this is not very organized. Very emotional topic for me.
April 24th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Quote:
“Laptop searches have proven essential to detecting people and materials that should be blocked from entering the United States. Officers have discovered video clips of improvised explosive devices being detonated, a martyrdom video and other violent jihadist materials. In addition, these searches have uncovered scores of instances of child pornography, including a home movie of children being sexually assaulted.
How often do we search laptops? Of the approximately 400 million travelers who entered the country last year, only a tiny percentage were referred to secondary baggage inspection for a more thorough examination. Of those, only a fraction had electronic devices that may have been checked.
As a practical matter, travelers only go to secondary when there is some level of suspicion.”
Source: http://help.cbp.gov/cgi-bin/customs.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1071&p_created=1216327692&p_sid=KrtZi6wj&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MjEsMjEmcF9wcm9kcz0wJnBfY2F0cz0wJnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9Y29tcHV0ZXI*&p_li=&p_topview=1
Honestly, I think they’re going for the big catches and not petty file sharers like you and me.
April 29th, 2009 at 6:34 am
If I want to keep Trade Secret, I use remote access to my office PC. I followed advice given at http://remote-access-software.net/security/reflections-about-cbp-and-remote-access.html.