Protecting Yourself From Suspicionless Searches While Traveling [Telecom]
Monty Solomon
May 1st, 2008
Protecting Yourself From Suspicionless Searches While Traveling
Posted by Jennifer Granick
The Ninth Circuit's recent ruling (pdf) in United States v. Arnold
allows border patrol agents to search your laptop or other digital
device without limitation when you are entering the country. EFF and
many civil liberties, travelers' rights, immigration advocacy and
professional organizations are concerned that unfettered laptop
searches endanger trade secrets, attorney-client communications, and
other private information. These groups have signed a letter asking
Congress to hold hearings to find out what protocol, if any, Customs
and Border Protection (CBP) follows in searching digital devices and
copying, storing and using travelers' data. The letter also asks
Congress to pass legislation protecting travelers' laptops and smart
phones from unlimited government scrutiny.
If privacy at the border is important to you, contact Congress now
and ask them to take action!
In the meantime, how can international travelers protect themselves
at the U.S. border, short of leaving their laptops and iPhones at
home?
...
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05/protecting-yourself-suspicionless-searches-while-t
***** Moderator's Note *****
I think the way to resolve this is to have a high-profile attorney or
clergyman arrive with a laptop, and refuse to open, surrender, or turn
around with it: in other words, we need life to imitate Tom Hanks' art
and to turn some terminal into a home for what should become a cause
celebre.
Those of us in more ambiguous roles, not subject to traditional
protections against search, will have to install "magic door" software
on our laptops. The right password opens it, but the "wrong" password
leads to a "fool's chamber" containing nothing incriminating or overly
embarassing: something just salacious enough to entertain the dullards
behind the counter while giving the user the chance to go on his/her
way with a few sniggers behind his/her back. If noone has copyrighted
this idea before, or filed for patent protection on it, then I reserve
the rights here and now. Pay up!
The only other option is a logic bomb (NSA! Listen up! I said _LOGIC_
bomb, OK?) that will erase the drive when given an invalid
password. Of course, that leads to a rabbit-warren of legal issues,
and Kevin Mitnick can testify at length on how ruthless Uncle Sam can
get when he feels like it, but if there's something on my laptop that
I don't want an entry-level TSA employee pawing through, I'll use it
myself. This choice would be easier if you have good backups in a
secure location: as the EFF's article points out, that's often
impossible when you've been working on the plane, but it _is_ an
option.
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or
I may never see it. Thanks!)
Moderator's Note Copyright (C) 2008 Bill Horne. All rights reserved. Pay up!
Dave Garland
>Those of us in more ambiguous roles, not subject to traditional
>protections against search, will have to install "magic door" software
>on our laptops. The right password opens it, but the "wrong" password
>leads to a "fool's chamber" containing nothing incriminating or overly
>embarassing: something just salacious enough to entertain the dullards
>behind the counter while giving the user the chance to go on his/her
>way with a few sniggers behind his/her back. If noone has copyrighted
>this idea before, or filed for patent protection on it, then I reserve
>the rights here and now. Pay up!
Such a thing (or something similar) does exist.
Truecrypt is OSS encryption software (Win/Mac/Linux) that will let you
set up an encrypted file or partition (which can just appear as
unpartitioned space, though someone is hunting for encryption might find
the excessive randomness of it a clue). But what's neat about it is
that it will let you set up a second encrypted space inside of the
first.
So you have two passwords. The first password gives access to a stale
collection of viagra ads and drafts of personals ads, and some free
space. That's the password you grudgingly reveal to Big Brother. The
second password gives access to your secret plans to start a religion
with Alexander Graham Bell as its prophet and turn Guantanamo Bay into a
theme park devoted to the telephone. There is no way to detect the
existence of the second encrypted area.
In the encryption field, this is known as protecting against
"rubber-hose decryption".
There are several other encryption systems with similar features.
Dave
***** Moderator's Note *****
There goes my condo in cancun. ;-)
Seriously, folks, technical countermeasures aside, the government's
decision to "search" laptops amounts to a demand to know what
travelers think, instead of what they do. Make no mistake: the
websites you visit and the Usenet groups you subscribe to and the
contents of your name and address book tell more about you than you
can imagine, and that information can be used against you in vicious
and unstoppable ways.
Here's an example: buried someplace in one of my old laptops is a
record that I looked at a site called (IIRC) stormtrooper.com. I
looked at it since it was mentioned in a newspaper article that
appeared next to a story about a police helicopter which had crashed
down the street from the Bell Atlantic engineering center in
Baltimore. By itself, that record (cookie, history file, whatever)
shows that I have a sense of curiosity. In the eyes of a TSA employee,
it might label me as an anti-semite at best or a terrorist at worst.
Someplace in my son's current laptop is a record that I visited the
Vatican site: I know I did, because I put in parental-control software
and used it as the "forced" alternative to certain adult-content sites
my son was visiting. In the eyes of a government employee, that
information might label me as a religious zealot, or intolerant
ideologue. It's all in the eyes of the beholder, and their eyes aren't
going to behold what I do in private (Come to think of it, my laptop
probably needs some porn if I'm to appear normal. Come to think of it,
my son probably already took care of that :-( ).
Governments should be limited to judging people by their actions, not
their thoughts.
rest...@fastmail.fm
originating within the USA.
Have there been any instances where TSA security personnel have
done suspicionless, warrantless data searches on computers, PDAs etc.
belonging to American citizens travelling domestically?
--
-Herb
Steven Lichter
About a year or so ago I was coming home for the weekend on a flight
from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California. I was asked to turn on
my computer, and the TSA agent must not have been very computer
literate. He looked at a couple of things and was having problems;
through it could have just been because it was a Mac.
I did not like his comment about my machine and said so. I was asked
to step out of the line, they again tried to access files and when
they could not, they were going to take my computer. I asked for a
supervisor and that ended the whole thing.
When I got back on Monday I filed a complaint against the agent, [but]
when they checked on the action there was no record of this, nor was
the agent listed as on duty: that Spells cover up to me. I just let
it drop, but I have not had any problems going through that airport
again
--
The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2008 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co.
klu...@panix.com
> There are no such things as suspicionless searches. If you are
> travelling anywhere at any time for any reason, you are under
> suspicion now, so when everyone is under suspicion, all searches are
> with due suspicion.. Airline travel is no longer pleasant.
--scott