Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: laptop, airport, security | Themes: Business Notebooks, Laptops and Notebooks
San Francisco - A Federal Appeals Court has ruled that US Customs officers do not need reasonable suspicion to search the contents of laptop hard drives and other media. In a 3-0 decision, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that laptops are just like any other physical property and can be searched at the nation’s borders. The judges also said airports with immigration checkpoints also serve as border stations.
The case involved 43-year-old Orange County California resident Michael Arnold who was returning from a three week vacation in the Philippines in 2005. Arnold landed at the Los Angeles International Airport and was randomly selected for secondary screening by US Border and Customs officers.
The officers instructed Arnold to turn on his laptop and then went through his desktop folders. They saw two folders called "Kodak Memories" and "Kodak Pictures" and found two nude pictures of women in those folders. Supervisors were called and agents found child pornography in other folders. Arnold was charged with transporting child pornography and traveling overseas to have sex with a child.
Arnold and his attorney appealed to suppress the evidence. He argued that reasonable suspicion was needed to start the search because laptops were protected environments much like a home or the human mind. A lower court agreed and suppressed the evidence, but the Ninth Circuit has now reversed the decision.
The decision written by Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain states that border agents don’t need any suspicion at all to search laptops because they are considered to be physical property like any other luggage going through the border. The decision can be interpreted to cover the contents of mobile phones and any other digital media.
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I do not agree with this. I am one the IT people for my company and we have people travel in and out of the county on occasion and with one of the company laptops a lot of the time. I do not want some TSA agent to start looking at our private emails that could be on the computer or any company documents. Let alone anything else that could be on the computer. also I do not want them looking at my personal laptop that mine and they don't have to right in my mind to look without a warrent.
Anyone ever heard of encryption??? -- TrueCrypt comes to mind but other programs would also do!
Encryption's fine, but if you've ever been tagged by one of these people at a border... you'd be held for many hours and questioned by several people about why you were hiding things. There's a presumption of guilt when dealing with customs.
It can make you wonder why you'd really want to return to the US.
It says they only searched through the folders on the desktop... the only thing I usually keep on the desktop are Recycle Bin and a folder for installation files.
I will say that searching a computer really shouldn't be enough of a concern to search them. It's not like there's such a thing as a digital gun or a soundthatwillkillpeople.mp3. The child pornography thing is one of the few things to be worried about, especially since that might be done online just as easily.
I agree with cojak. Laptops are mostly carried by business people and they therefore will almost certainly contain sensitive data in the form of intellectual property. I do agree with a physical search of a laptop thorugh an x-ray machine for explosives etc. or a fake laptop being used to smuggle something onboard a plane etc. Something else worth considering, what is legal in one country is not necessarily legal in another and thus the most inocent file in one place might be all sorts of trouble in another. Where will it end..? Got a police record and soon you wont be be permitted entry to buildings where someone has made an arbitrary decision that you are undesirable after having used face recognition software. Seen the movie Minority Report.? How far away do you think we are from that sort of technology. It's pretty much already here, just not deployed everywhere but in the next lifetime there's every chance it will be. Scary thought considering all the errors bureacracy already make with something as simple as our credit ratings.
That looks like evil but what if I have a locked lead suitcase they want to inspect? Can I say "it contain private data from my business to prevent them from inspecting it? Even if it contains drug or explosives in reality? Sure, people may have access to internet while travelling so they could use vpn to connect to their office, or use a private server to ensure no confidential data is on the laptop. Don't forget that officers and the justice in general have no ideas about how to deal with technology. Anyway, this guy is a pedophile, he only deserve to be shot.