Tell Congress to rein in DHS travel abuses
The ACLU has set up a form that makes it easy to tell Congress to overhaul the broken terrorist watch list and to require reasonable suspicion for electronic searches at the border.
Tell Congress to rein in DHS travel abuses (ACLU)With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information -- including your personal and business documents, emails, phone calls, and web history. The Department of Homeland Security confirms that this is the official policy.
What happens if you refuse to let the agents download your personal photos? Or if you have encrypted your private information? Then Border Patrol -- which is now an agency of the Department of Homeland Security -- can simply copy your entire hard drive or even take your device and hang on to it indefinitely.
Unfortunately, seizing laptops and cameras at the border isn’t the only travel security measure that infringes on our civil liberties.
Just last month, the U.S. government's "terrorist watch list" surpassed one million names and is growing by over twenty-thousand names per month. The watch list includes the names of prominent people, like Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), plus hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans -- many of them with common names like Robert Johnson and James Robinson. Your name might be on the list, but there's no way to know for sure until you are delayed -- or even detained for hours in a back room. If you discover your name is on the list, it's nearly impossible to get off. It actually took an Act of Congress to get Nelson Mandela off the list. No joke. An Act of Congress.
These abuses have something in common: They make all of us into suspects, with no rule of law and no accountability.
the latest
latest episodes
Can they only confiscate and search my electronics on the way in?
Because every day I'm more tempted to head out and never come back.
And the award for irony goes to - the ACLU for helping DHS add names to the no-fly list! Hey, at 20,000 names per month, they've got to get them somewhere...
need to get the snitch line list and start a coordinated effort to flood the list makers with the names of the real terrorists.
I was supposed to be in Seattle this weekend, visiting an former fiancee of mine (besides the relationship she also kind of wanted a way out of the USA) but between when I made plans and now, it became public about what border security has been doing. Now even if I cleaned all my stuff to make sure there is nothing that could even be percieved as infringing, I just don't want to take the risk that my Ipod or my Computer ends up being a border security guards sons/daughters birthday present. I cannot afford that, my data is worth a great deal more, but electronics don't come cheap, and while I could just leave it at home, I figured its just easier to STAY at home. I care a great deal for my friend and I miss other friends I have in Seattle, but I guess I won't be visiting them anymore. Too bad not being an American pretty much means my own complaints won't be taken at all seriously.
Used to be the government had to be transparent to us. Now it's vice/versa (*as I've said here before)
Just curious how long until someone (malware authors/virus creators) load a whole bunch of nasty things onto a drive with the one purpose of giving the DHS/TSA/clown with a badge who is supposedly in charge, plenty of things to electronically paw through... Hard to say what's worse- unscreened baggage handlers going through luggage and grabbing at will, or basically the "authorities" doing basically the same thing in front of you.
I'm sure this is just another example of the fine folks at the TSA & Customs opting to err on the side of caution, and simply following their written guidelines to-the-LETTER, thereby confiscating the laptops of travelers who fit certain distinct profiles, which most travelers manifestly do NOT.
Normal people don't have to worry about having their private data stolen & snooped by TSA goons, just hotties...
Jael referred to the DHS employees at borders as Officers. Is this accurate? My understanding was that they were private security guards brought under the DHS umbrella, but not actually officers.
Mark Rasch, of SecurityFocus.com, had a great column about this subject a few months back:
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/469
For this reason I'm picking up a cheap Eee style pc before I fly next time. Load it up with whatever I want on the way out and secure wipe it towards the end of the flight back. No data, no muss, no fuss. Anything created whilst abroad will just be electronically transferred back home before I leave.
Jesus. "Electro-muscular bracelet".
/shudder
There's got to be a serious market opening in uploading data from an American traveller's laptop to a secure server, downloading it to a loaner laptop in the visited nation, letting the business traveller fly laptop-free, pick up the laptop, do their work, return it to the hire company, have the diff of their data uploaded to the server, fly back, and then download their data again.
I agree with you , Thank you very match.
Why don't they just close the border and be done with it? It's obviously what they want.
Why not just sue as their behavior is in obvious breach of the constitution. Or has that been tried yet? Why are we begging congress?
Dear Federal Government, U.S.A.
Are my Civil Rights and Liberties standing in the way of your need to control everything?
Hmm, I'm seeing a pattern here.
I was about to write about how I can encrypt my home folder, and have a backup waiting at home. I also see that other posters have made other technical suggestions. However, that avoids the real issue: The government should not not NOT have the right to do this. In no way, shape, or form. The fact that this is going on is an example of the most absurd twisting of the law to get around the Constitution in the name of "security".
Welcome to the United Fucking Policed States of America.
ok, legal scholars help me out: I absolutely believe what the DHS is doing at the borders is a violation of civil liberties. But I talked to a law student friend of mine (who's not a legal expert per se, but a lot more than I am!) and he tells me that while he'd agree the border seizures are unethical, they're not unconstitutional. The 4th Amnd. doesn't protect in this case, and border agents enjoy a special privilege even beyond that.
Any thoughts, from a legal view?
why are there so few comments on this thread and so many on the gun thread?
I'm afraid. It's official. The terrorists have won.
Takuan "why are there so few comments on this thread and so many on the gun thread?"
The muffin cart is on that thread. It's a steampunk cart. The muffins are steampunk, too. Steampunk.
There. I've filled the quota. No more mentions of punks or steam or any combination thereof are necessary.
not a dim sum cart?
I thought the muffins seemed a bit off.
mmmm. dim sum.
The 9th Circuit Court ruled unanimously that TSA has the right to do this. Thus our legal redress must be to Congress, to the next (Obama) administration, and after a few of the present SC Justices have been replaced, to the Supreme Court.
What is so supremely offensive about electronic searches is that they are concerned with information, which is to say, thought; and that for most of us, our digital devices are effectively extensions of our own brains. In effect, TSA is claiming the right to search our brains, and scrutinize our thoughts in the most intimate way: including our speech, associations, publications, our intimate communications with loved ones, our perfectly legal sexual fantasies, our hobbies and interests, our politics and religion, our thoughts and feelings and beliefs in their entirety.
In another way it is as if, upon returning to the US, they are able to search the entire contents of our homes and workplaces.
The monstrous invasion of privacy, the complete and all-encompassing and totalistic nature of this, is far worse than any harm that could possibly be done even by child pornography and terrorist atomic bomb plans sneaking in on un-searched storage media. It truly is a form of totalitarianism, total control with no accountability under law.
This is one of those cases where citizens have a right to direct action, entirely apart from the pursuit of legal remedies: by analogy, like the right to engage in armed revolt in the event that a rogue regime attempted to suspend the Constitution.
We are not dependent upon government to enforce our rights. We as a free people are capable of doing so ourselves, as directly in this case as we would with physical force against a rogue regime. And the way to do that is:
Establish a VPN or a secure server account within the USA.
Set up crypto keys specifically for the purpose of protecting your privacy when you travel. Keep copies of the public and private keys on thumb drives at home, as well as on another thumb drive you take with you when traveling.
Use an inexpensive laptop such as one of the more basic eeePC models when you travel.
Before returning to the US, encrypt everything and upload the encrypted files to your server account.
Next, erase your "travel copy" of your crypto keys.
Then wipe the storage drives on the eeePC (eeePC does not use a hard drive, but uses a solid-state storage medium that is easier to sanitize). Wipe your travel thumb drive that contained your travel crypto keys. Do a multiple wipe to be sure everthing is sanitized: 7 times overwrite with random bits.
Restore the eeePC's original operating system from the backup CDs (you'll need the portable CD drive).
If you're adventurous, load up some pictures from East Germany or the Soviet Union or North Korea.
When you get to the border, all you are carrying is a sanitized machine with some optional pictures of other historic totalitarianism.
So long as they do not take the machine out of your physical sight, you win. If they take the machine where you can't see it, they could install some kind of snoop hardware, at which point the machine has to be considered fatally compromised.
You can minimize the risk of the machine being physically compromised, by sealing the case and marking the internal hardware in a manner that would require substantial time to duplicate in the event they attempted to stick something in there that does not belong.
However, the basic 7" eeePC costs less than $300, so in a pinch you can let it go entirely.
Now here's how to seal & mark the hardware. You need to do this before you leave the USA.
Go to your local hobby shop and get a few bottles of Testor's Enamel, paint for models. Get a few different colors.
Now get a couple of paper clips and bend them out straight.
Now mark every chip in the machine with a paint mark consisting of a few different colors, swirled together using the tip of an unfolded paper clip. If you do this right, the result will be a pattern of interleaved paint swirls (since you are not "mixing" the colors but swirling them into a pattern) that is almost impossible to duplicate.
You can do likewise to secure-foil stickers that can be placed over the screw heads on the case.
Let the paint dry overnight.
Now take close-up photos of the results on each chip, and on each of the external screws. You can use these photos for comparison later. They will show you evidence of any tampering with the hardware. And so long as the Stasi doesn't have your hardware for more than a couple of hours, they will be very very difficult to duplicate, perhaps impossible to duplicate precisely.
When you get home, break the external seals and compare the marks on the chips to your photos, to be sure.
And then do a full wipe of the drive again, with a 7x overwrite to get rid of any spyware they may have installed, and then re-load your original materials, using the copies of your decrypt keys you have kept at home.
See also www.eff.org and while you're there, send a donation. EFF is our most valuable ally in the war for freedom of thought.
Okay since I work in this field, either these people have no idea what's going on or they are lieing. It's against policy to confiscate laptops by the TSA. Customs I dunno, but TSA doesn't do that. If someone from TSA. does "confiscate" a non-suspicious laptop (and there's a whole list criteria that must be met)they get fired faster than you can say, "Hey! I'm a bunny rabbit!" And technically no, the Constitution does allow something called "implyed searches", if you know you're gonna go through a situation that you have to be searched, it's protected by the Constiution, sorry but that's the sad truth. Whatever is going on with this, either someone really had a laptop taken by some idiot supervisor or customs agent(by some mistake on that person's part the officer's) is probably being driven way out of proportion. Yeah because every agent (be it TSA, customs, etc.) have been said you lose you job if you do this, and I have known only one time someone has done his and that years back that got thrown out of DHs for that. Okay.
Astounding. Where's the outrage? The anger at your own government's descent into fascism? I'm not in the US, but it seems like everyone there is somnambulent! Looking at this thread as it stands, there's more posts about steam punk than there is about civil liberties!
It's no wonder americans are losing their rights. They're letting them slip away without so much as a fight.
@24:
Please understand, that at this point I would not trust the TSA with my lunch, let alone something as important as my laptop. The criteria for search is a secret, so how can I confirm that it even exists? In the end, if it does happen, it constitutes theft. They are legally permitted to steal my laptop if they wish. That is not acceptable. I don't want it to be against policy, I want it to be against the law.
wackyvorlon "Looking at this thread as it stands, there's more posts about steam punk than there is about civil liberties!"
"Steampunk" gets mentioned in this thread a total of three times. All three of those are in the same post (four in total, if you include Takuan's reference to the steampunk "gun" thread that lead to the rapid-fire steampunkness escalation that followed it).
What may explain the lack of postings in this thread is the feeling that this laptop/Million Man List thing is the least of the bad. It's still bad. It's just that it's less bad than the whole...everything else.
It's not the terrorists that "hate our values", it's the fascists/big business/Christian Right that "hate our values". They're already here, they've been here all along, and they're doing far worse than purloining laptops and adding more names to a bloated list that never worked in the first place.
Small thefts and incompetence don't add up to much compared to the big thefts and massive incompetence behind them.
...and in the end, isn't it all a small price to pay to protect us from dangerous people like Nelson Mandela (and his iPod)? You know that he was planning to take pictures of stuff (outside of the couple of cities that we let him visit). Stuff like buildings.
That's right. Buildings.
Think about it.
I don't think people are sleepwalking, I think some of them feel overwhelmed and the rest are the products of a school system that preached specialization and fact memorization at the expense of critical thinking, rhetorical analysis and civics. I also think that this was a deliberate choice (to not teach skills necessary to comprehend the enormity of what's been done and the knowledge of how different these laws are from the original Constitution and enough history to understand what countries have to do to rid themselves of the roots of fascism.) We are (as Americans) a fairly young nation and surprisingly vulnerable to nationalistic appeals and a scorched earth political (ethical, business, human rights) policy as we are surprisingly vulnerable to a particularly vicious brand of oversimplification (smart baaaaaad.)
I also blame the rampant materialism and the glamorization of cut-throat and unethical business dealings (since in capitalism, business is what life is thought to be modeled after) in a generation which spent more time watching TV and being isolated and indoctrinated by newsertainment than actual news and human interaction.
And I say this as someone who luurves her intertube time. But the sources of information reaching the most people (compulsory K-12 education, TV, advertising marketed to particular groups) are designed to dis-encourage political involvement, analysis and action, I think on purpose.
*gets off soapbox*
*ahem*, I was referring to the gun "rights" thread, not the innocent art-project steampunk mercury rifle.
In other words: why are Americans more worried about keeping a gun in every hand instead of worrying about the real and present destruction of their basic civil rights by DHS?
#15- if it's a constitutional issue, I'm pretty sure that it falls under congress' mandate. but I'm neither a US citizen or a scholar specialising in US law, so I could be wrong.
I'm just wondering why it doesn't seem to be considered a story to the mainstream news at all. The DHS is clearly grasping at straws, and has no idea what it's doing. There's a not very fine line between being secure and being totally paranoid, and they crossed that line a long time ago.
Baldhead, I think most people do not understand and are not equipped to understand the difference between what keeps them safe and what keeps them compliant.
I blame 24.
Takuan, I think that's because they can touch the guns.
sounds like border patrol to me...in the late 90's my brother and i took a road trip from fl. to cali. whilst driving thru new mexico we were 'detained' by border patrol at a station outside los cruses. they asked my brother for permission to search our vehicle. he told them that no, it was against our constitutional rights against unlawful search. they laughed and laughed, then handed us a piece of paper that stated (in several languages) basically " we are the border patrol, you have no rights." then proceeded to search our car.
That's my state, alright. It's strange to me, in a state with such a high percentage of Latino/a, hispanic voters, that we end up so frequently with paranoid, racist, power-mad assholes on Border Patrol.
Of course, it's stupid of me to assume commonality here, but some of the Minuteman project abuses seem to me like they should ring bells all over the place (including following rescue groups around and destroying the caches of water so that people crossing the desert don't die of dehydration. It's dry out there. Real dry.)
For sh1ts and giggles, google 'minuteman project' and 'border security' and read what pops up. The blogs are especially entertaining, in that head clutching kind of way.
I found a simple hack to bypass homeland security (aka martial laws) madness:
I stopped travelling to USA (E3 sucks so it's not a big issue) 2 years ago...
Something that puzzles me is the fact that American citizens don't have yet realise that their LAND OF FREEDOM is second only to China (among the 10 most industrialized countries) as privacy and individual freedom limits... do you think this statement is false? Please try to travel in Europe and Japan and try to find a US like "martial / militarized" society...
if America falls, all get splashed.
Takuan "*ahem*, I was referring to the gun "rights" thread, not the innocent art-project steampunk mercury rifle."
Why must you fill the space between us with lies?
I fill it wi a boot in yer haid if ye question mah honour agin , ye scurvy, blethering scunner!
By God, DHS is not martial law and it is not the violation of anyone's laws. Okay the Constitution states if you know you are going to be searched, you can be searched. It's an administrative search. The criteria isn't really secret. If your computer looks all funky or unusual people will look at it. THE TSA IS NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE YOUR COMPUTER WITHOUT YOUR WITNESS. ANYONE WHO DOES THIS IS REPRIMANDED. The TSA does not look through your computer. Customs may, but customs is an entirely different beast, but last time I heard that happened. The agent at Customs was fired.
Ya know, I'm going to be frank and because I come from a security background. I notice the worse thing about airports is that people are so obsessed with themselves they don't understand what's going on. people are supposed to push their stuff into the x-ray because of a liability issue and we yap at people to do it all the time. But ya know what? Most people leave their stuff out and we did an experiment and we found 68% of people don't care abou getting their stuff to where it's supposed to, especially people of the Western European persuaion (The Japanese and Koreans and a moderate amount of Americans watch their stuff but theirs always exceptions).
This being said, people accuse us of stealing their stuff and they haven't even done half of what they were supposed to. We send them back out to put their stuff on the belt. Now what's funny is some people run off and forget their stuff(our lost and found is huge) and people lose their crap come back weks later, accuse us of stealing their stuff and I have put my name on lost and found cards where people LEFT their laptops or clothes even sex toys on the belt.
So as someone who does this:
1. We don't open and turn on your computer. It is policy you get fired if you do that.
2. Mostly the whole fault of most passengers is their own fault.
The last time I flew was not quite two years ago. In the Baltimore airport, they opened my laptop bag, opened my laptop and turned it on. They also pawed through my clothes in my carry-on, unfolding everything in my bag, and, as I scrabbled to get everything stuffed back into the bag to keep the line moving, the guy who had been wanding me asked me out.
You sure that opening the laptop and turning it on is not common practice? 'Cause none of the other four uniformed TSA people lifted an eyebrow.
Nope, they are not supposed to do that. Well here is the problem.You have to take your laptop out of the bag. Why? Well it helps us screen the bag. There are signs that tell you take it out of the bag all over, annotuncements, even loaders advise you guys to, but most of the time, the passenger is too busy focused on being a cow\livestock. For Pete`s sake, if you cannot see through a bag, what are we supposed to do? Well, sometimes if a computer is suspect it goes through tests, but you have to be a witness. The rest of the stuff I cant say cause of security, but pretty much it is all about making sure if it is okay.
The thing about a really early flight, or, say, one scheduled with less than twenty minutes to make it across to your connection, is that sometimes you're a little vague while you're getting there. I mean, you're herded into long lines like cattle, you're busy removing most of your clothing in an oddly anonymous, shuffling file... what's not to make you not feel calm, collected, able to slowly peruse the signs in a thoughtful manner? I wore flats on purpose, but the weather was chilly so I had to remove all of my outer layers and hold them and the carry on and the laptop bag and the tickets and keep pace with the person traveling with me, who was almost running whenever she could because we were short on time and she had the watch, so you'll pardon me if I missed a sign. I was busy.
I sure don't remember being asked to pull out my laptop. But I could have missed it in the somewhat humiliating process of stripping for the guy with the wand who was obviously checking me out and felt compelled to comment on what he saw.
However, if you dislike the cattle mentality, take a close look at the conditions airports force onto their passengers. Long winding lines, you can't take your coffee with you-- hell, you can't take much of anything with you to keep you awake, and if you're traveling, chances are good you're a bit sleep deprived-- single file shuffling across corridors and in lines where you can't necessarily see what's very far ahead of you. Oh and the people rushing like hell to try and make their flight (nothing like a nice, brisk jog across an airport you've never been to before at o-god-thirty) do tend to make you feel a little stressed and not at your most attentive.
And what, exactly, is an x-ray machine for if it can't see through a bag?
Quite aside from the issue of personal privacy violations, it sounds like this is another case of corporate data being compromised.
If they can make a copy of any data on your laptop, including business material, where is the outrage from companies?
Maybe that isn't really an issue for most companies, what with their secure data policies and no mistaken releases of customer data through stolen laptops... oh, yeah, that is still a problem. So what does it matter if TSA copies corporate data?
So what could they do with such data? The TSA grunts on the front lines hardly seem capable of any shennanigans, but obviously there must be some analysts working there behind the scenes. So if you were smart, and had access to the corporate records of all sorts of companies, and you also knew that your job was a bogus pile of crap because "searchin' teh laptops fur turrerists" is pointless. What would you do? Hmmm. Let's think. Oh, how about get the scoop on a merger deal and purchase stock before the deal is revealed? Oh, or how about blackmail a company that the revealed data shows is doing something illegal? Or gosh, the mind reels.
If you are essentially above the law, what couldn't you do?
Or am I completely off base? If so, how?
So some nerds can tell you how to screw with a Medico key and it’s a good thing. After all, they’ve pointed out a weakness in a security system. So, after 9-11 all sorts of people (some really smart people) started pointing out how you could improve security at airports. Now, if Medico was the Federal Government we would want them to fix the vulnerabilities. If we expect a private company to do so, I think we’d expect our paid officials to do as much. But now we have all these security “fixes” and it’s pissing off everyone. What is the right fix for a plethora of theoretical security holes. You basically have to tell people that there will be less hassles at the airport but that their chances of dying in a terrorist attack may also go up. Because, in theory, that statement could be true. What we really need to do is to define what level of security we want to live with and make sure the government responds accordingly. But, no one will be allowed to point any fingers at the feds the next time a plane is used as a weapon. It might never happen, but if it does we can’t expect that anything other than insane security precautions could have stopped it.
And once of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Is that really true?
Jeff, are you familiar with the term security theater?
That would be what a lot of the current precautions amount to. Theater. I have no problem going through a metal detector, nor having my bag scanned, and there are extremely sophisticated chemical sensors that can detect trace amounts of bomb making chemicals. Those are fine, too.
The locking door on some cockpits also good, and should not be voluntary to the companies involved, but this endless business with names-like-names or putting peace activists on the no-fly, no-buy list are, at best, slipshod and at worst acts of political sanction for people whose political opinions differ from the current administration. The lack of oversight and the inaccessibility of recourse to your average citizen have less to do with security and more to do with creating a deliberately easy to manipulate population.
And creating a situation where no one can see what the department of homeland security is doing and no one can complain and anyone who does can be detained (again, so everyone else is somehow safer) is not about your safety. It is about your compliance.
I'm not interested in fake security measures by an organization who is not subject to the oversight and citizen protections of the regular law. I feel less secure about that than I do about the chance that someone would use a plane I'm on to try and fly into a building. Moreover, if I'm going to die anyway, why not try to get the plane back? And they bloody well have federal marshals on the things, so what we're talking about is still bogus.