It’s been well-understood for some time (in the legal community, at least) that the border is some sort of no-man’s land, where Constitutional protections really don’t apply. In practice, however, it hasn’t really been an issue, and the public is generally unaware of just how much power border agents can exercise over them when crossing. Well, I think that’s been changing, especially in light of the ridiculous practices of the Department of Homeland Security. The Congressional hearings earlier this month finally wrangled the DHS policy guidelines out of DHS, and, well, look what we have here:
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, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Anything, anytime, for as long as they feel like it.
You trust them, don’t you?
Scott Nolan
Ah, well – so long as your laptop is not running Windows, DHS will have no idea what to do with it anyway as they are Windows only and totally ignorant of security best practices themselves.
MB
I imagine so. Unfortunately, that means they’ll just keep my Macbook, instead of giving it back.
Anyway, I’m in the market for an app that shares a screen full of goatse to any TSA agent that pokes around on it. They want something to look at? I’ll give it to them.