Death Cab for Cutie guitarist's album disappears down the DHS memory-hole
JM sez, "Death Cab for Cutie Guitarist Chris Walla had a hard drive containing his next album confiscated at the US-Canada border for no apparent reason by the Department of Homeland Security.
Wow, for some reason that doesn't make me feel like my homeland is secure - when art is blindly confiscated by authority figures."
"It's a true story. Barsuk [Records, which is putting out the record] had hired a courier — who does international stuff all the time and who they had used before — to bring [the album] back from Canada, where I was working on it. And he got to the border and he had all his paperwork and it was all cool, only they turned him away, and they confiscated the drive and gave it to the computer-forensics division of our Homeland Security-type people," sighed Walla, who has produced nearly all Death Cab's output, as well as records by the Decemberists, Hot Hot Heat, Nada Surf, Tegan and Sara and others. "And now I couldn't even venture a guess as to where it is, or what it's doing there. I mean, I can't just call their customer-service center and ask about my drive. There's nothing I can do. I don't know if we can hire an attorney ... is there a black-hole attorney? You can't take a black hole to court."Link (Thanks, JM!)
Update: Looks like the DHS has been trying to return the confiscated hard drive but can't reach the courier service.
the latest
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in case i forgot in my hurried rush of anger to spread the word - because i'd frikkin' love to hear this darn album already! - i came upon this courtesy of "making light".
That's it. They were after the art.
Why do they hate us? They hate us for our art.
Why on earth would this be the only copy? Who only keeps one copy of valuable digital media?
Something smells fishy.
I think there was a backup copy
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WA_Walla_Seized_Drive.html
Still I generally advise people to avoid going to or being in the U.S. if they can avoid it. Sure the terror problem appears to be taken care of, but now who'll protect the US from it's anti-terror security?
Moonbat: Seconded. Why the hell didn't they back it up? Kinda defeats the whole point of digital media if you only have one copy.
Meanwhile, in a man-sized safe in the West Wing of the White House, Dick Cheney is rockin' out.
Bush is out of control. Completely and utterly out of control and must be stopped.
Something seems off about this. Perhaps the courier had prior convictions that raised suspicion? Or maybe Customs is getting serious about the "commercial imports" rules? Not making excuses, at all, but as f'ed up as things are, there has to be more to explain this . . .
Someone carries an item from one nation into another, an item which apparently must be declared, and fails to properly declare it. Item is seized, item is analyzed, item is returned to location of seizure for pick up.
From the MTV article:
Milne said the reason the hard drive containing Walla's songs was taken had nothing to do with politics or security measures, but rather was a simple case of commercial merchandise — the tapes and drive, specifically — being brought across the border at an incorrect point and without necessary paperwork. Conspiracy theorists, he scoffed, should go look elsewhere.
A week later people who don't know anything more about the event than any other shmuck go all crazy cause they want to 'attribute to villainy what was caused by ignorance', and probably ignorance on the part of the traveler.
Something wrong with the "commercial paperwork" explanation, too.
They said they hired a courier who does international work all the time. Why didn't he know that paperwork was required for the hard drive if it was considered "commercial property"?
The original report said he had his paperwork, but perhaps that was only his personal paperwork.
Still, you'd think somebody would detail what was missing. What ARE the regulations? I mean, this was a case where a record label hired a courier to bring back a product which was clearly theirs under contract from the author of the product. The product was a US product coming back from Canada. The courier's personal paperwork was okay.
So why seize it? Why not simply refuse entry of the product? Saying that this was not a "security matter" smells. DHS probably seized the drive because they thought it had contraband in it or on it, then because of bad publicity, they put out this "wrong commercial paperwork" garbage.
Would the album have fit on an iPod, on a hard
drive installed in a laptop, or even on a
usb stick?
That might be a less problematic way of
carrying it across the border.
Thinking about it further, why does a
physical drive need to be moved at all?
Couldn't the files containing the album
have just been "transported" by ftp?
Couldn't the files containing the album
have just been "transported" by ftp?
That was my first thought, but sometimes reliable connections for large amounts of data can be hard to come by. I remember seeing a multinational company with its own secure network Fedexing a hard drive full of data to another office because the network just couldn't handle the amount of data to transfer.
Sorry, Homeland Security = Straw Dag in this case.
This story has been debunked already. The seizure had nothing to do with the content of the drive or the political nature of the music.
The whole incident has been blown out of proportion and trumped up as a controversey to promote a CD.
Chris Walla has responded and basically said as much.
Read his answer and a breakdown of how the non-story became media fodder in a slow news week here.
BillEligible's right. Modern albums often contain hundreds of audio tracks, stored losslessly at 96 or even 192KHz. They will not fit on your thumb drive, and uploading them is a painful, multi-day thing.
So burn them to a DVD. And burn three copies, in case two of them get confiscated or melted.
This is a pretty silly non-story.
"Coming up next, MSNBC refutes CNN's story on RIAA's DMCA vs. DHS's action vs. DCC." Acronyms asplode.
@14: You wouldn't get a whole album of multitrack at 96kHz onto DVD, I don't think. Well, maybe a White Stripes album. But in that case it'd be stored on Edison cylinders or something.
Still looks like a story to me, since there doesn't seem to be a cogent explanation for why the drive was confiscated and not the tapes.
I wish BB would post the debunking as often as the bunk.
Ain't that the truth.
well if it hadn't been backed up, at least it wouldn't have been a great loss.
We're living in 2007 peeps. A backup is not a hard thing to do.
Also, 100% of conspiracy theorists are attention starved dorks. They see something happen, they see people confused/in-doubt and they just make something up so as to get a chance to be an "expert" on the scenario. They are the lowest form of opportunists.
#9: Debunking don't make headlines like bunk does!
If this album appears on Torrent in the next couple of days, that'll say something interesting about DHS won't it?
Here's another article on it. It was never a conspiracy. More like total ineptitude, and - again - if the hard drive was deemed scary, why are the tapes allowed through?
The notion that this is a commercial snafu would insist upon the confiscation of the tapes.
Even a scenario where the hard-drive gives the DHS employees the willies should have led to the confiscation of the tapes. Because tapes can hold "dangerous" data really well, too.
Ask me who I believe more on the phone call thing, a government employee covering his ass in a media storm, or a record exec who would have probably really liked to get that hard drive back around call #1?
Pff... This is no conspiracy. This is a bunch of border guards exercising bad authority.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1572314/20071018/death_cab_for_cutie.jhtml
Quote:"
"I don't buy the whole 'politically motivated' thing. They had no means of listening to the music on the drive at the time they confiscated it. In some ways, I think that whole side of things is a bit of a red herring. It seems like a funny coincidence," he laughed. "I mean, a hard drive containing data, and if it was confiscated for commercial reasons, why would they let him leave with the tapes? There's something that doesn't make sense about the whole concept of it being confiscated for commercial reasons.
"My initial thought was that Customs didn't know what was on it, so they thought it was a security issue, and they seized it," he continued. "And then I think, 'Does U.S. Customs have no idea things like FTP sites exist in the world, and data can be brought across borders much more easily and without any questions, and not on a hard drive?' "
What I don't understand is why conservatives suddenly believe in the ability of government to get things right. Why defend Customs of all people? Have you ever traveled?
Clearly, they saw something scary -- in this case a hard drive, which everyone knows is the place all terrorists put their viruses to bring the Pentagon network down -- and they Acted Quickly. And then when it turned out they'd Acted Stupidly, they huffed and puffed and denied it all, and blamed it on the courier for having gotten the paperwork wrong.
It's beyond belief that calling a spade a spade -- or in this case, stupidity stupidity -- is suddenly a conspiracy theory that requires a followup from Boing Boing now that you fine folk have "debunked" it (meaning that you found official denial of government incompetence).
I have never understood the desire of people to come to Boing Boing, read something they don't like, then demand that Boing Boing change it to suit them. It's beyond weird to me. I guess you envy their access to an audience. Could it be that they have the traffic because they have something of interest to say beyond "Our leaders have again reassured us that they know best"?
Get lives.
It is worth noting that by definition one of the functions of a country is to "promote the arts."
This is a good example of not doing that.
It seems like Customs has promoted Chris Walla's art pretty well!
DHS was just doing its job and very well may have prevented an auditory terrorist attack.
I"m a little confused on the "commercial property" aspect of this. Since the album is not yet finished, it isn't really commercial property in the sense that it is something that could be sold when it entered the US. It wasn't being sold in the US when it got there, it was being transfered for mastering (and most audio techs will likely agree that the 'original' is better than a copy). If it's "commercial property" as a work product, anyone who travels to the US for work across this particular entry point should also have things confiscated. For example, if an insurance salesman crossed there for a meeting in Seattle or wherever, and has client files(digital) with him, those, as a work product, should be seized?
I do see that this has gotten out of proportion, but I can understand why. It's a realitvely (sp) big name, with an anticipated album, which may be delayed by unrecognizable reasons.
You're meant to be confused on the "commercial property" -- it's a convenient part of the official bluster. And it's doubtlessly the first more or less fitting point of dubious law that a frantic administrator could find.
But even if it's true that this is law -- why should people traveling on business between Canada and the United States be restricted to certain crossings, apparently defined in secret as convenience dictates? It's bad for business -- but it's primarily bad for small business, and I think therein lies one of the key points of this little vignette.
But what do I know? I'm just a conspiracy theorist who's naive enough to enjoy Boing Boing, certainly not one of these worldly commentators who are smart enough to avoid being taken in by baseless rumors that, say, our government isn't looking out for the best interests of every least person in these United States. Perish the very thought!
Another confusing aspect of the commercial property angle is the "hard drive".
I freelance. I have a computer, and a hard drive. It is my work computer, and my work drive, yes. They are also my lifeline to friends and family, and personal property.
If a DHS employee at a border crossing confiscated my computer for any length of time, both my personal data and my professional data are gone.
When I travel with it, is it a commercial property, or a private property?
If I hop on a plane with the wrong computer, and I hire somebody to go get my computer and bring it to me - a scenario that isn't as unlikely as I'd like to think - what do I do when the computer is deemed "commercial" and gets swallowed into the DHS all of a sudden?
In this day and age of integrated communication devices, computers and hard drives and flash drives are like your cellphone or blackberry. If they're confiscating hard drives because it's a commercial thing, why aren't they also confiscating the courier's cellphone, or blackberry? A Sidekick is a pocket computer, after all, and one that can be used for commercial purposes containing commercial data.
A computer "hard-drive" is usually both personal and professional. Since the tapes were - apparently - deemed not commercial property, when they are the most commercial part of the stuff carried, and they should have been confiscated, too.
If we don't raise a stink about stuff like this, government middle-management never will.
Unless we're jumping to conclusions, the headline should be "Big Time Record Producers Neglect to Backup Album".
I find it hard to believe this data couldn't have been transmitted digitally faster and more reliably than carrying the data across the border in a physical container.
8471.50.0000 is an acceptable Harmonized Tariff Code for the transmission of hard drives through customs across the Canadian border. It only takes 3 minutes to whip up an evaluatory commercial invoice, this courier should have known better.
I resent my job for making me know this.
Well thank god. I was beginning to worry that we'd see another DCFC release.
"Still I generally advise people to avoid going to or being in the U.S. if they can avoid it. Sure the terror problem appears to be taken care of, but now who'll protect the US from it's anti-terror security?"
Who do you advise, and why do they listen to you? That's like advising people to stay away from Britain because the food is terrible.