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US Judicial system debates the legality of searching laptops at the border for no discernable reason.

Thursday 10 January 2008 at 2:49 pm
For a while now I've been hearing about (and thus keeping an eye on) stories from people whosee laptops are being confiscated at the border and examined, as sort of a gill net for anything shady (or that they don't understand). Usually you hear about it in the context of people getting busted for carrying child pornography but more often than not it's Joe or Jane User. The US government says that going through someone's data without a warrant is no different from going through someone's suitcase without a warrant; Idisagree, for reasons better elucidated by Judge Dean Pregerson of the US District Court of LA than I: "Computer hard drives.. can include diaries, letters, medical information, financial records, trade secrets, attorney-client materials and information about reporters' "confidential sources and story leads." (quoted from the article, which quoted Judge Pregerson - click link for context).

Imagine it: Everything on your laptop can be copied and examined after the fact - your e-mails, your web browser's history, pictures of your kids, the book you're working on, notes from your last field assignment (I really doubt that the people who are going through all of this data while you're standing in line waiting would understand what a penetration test is, or the fact that they are often legally done)... they could potentially misrepresent anything on there in such a way that they could hassle you, bring you up on charges, or potentially whisk you away with a black sack over your head. The people in the field doing this aren't infosec professionals or lawyers, they are people trained to be paranoid, and to keep an eye open for anything that could potentially be illegal or dangerous (which usually amounts to things that they don't understand).

I don't know about you, but it worries the hell out of me.

EDIT: The following links will be of interest to people following this matter:

• Staying safe at border searches


• More on customs-proofing your laptop and border searches


• Update on Alabama activist hassled by feds




Used tags: big_brother, border, confiscation, disk_imaging, gill_net, laptops, us

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three comments recorded.

Of course, the legality of searching carryons for criminal infractions is more than a little dubious itself. After all, they’re not opening up your suitcase to make sure your magazines don’t have child porn in them – they’re exclusively checking for weapons and explosives: items of immediate danger.

What strikes me, though, is that technically by virtue of the laptop being searched at the border the evidence collected is invalid. They’re not being checked by infosec professionals and the laptops aren’t being immediately secure, therefore the chain of evidence is broken. IT wouldn’t take a top=flight defense attorney to put reasonable doubt on that.

Hasufin - 12 01 08 - 15:43 - Reply to comment?

They’re looking for anything, really – when my luggage gets searched, they typically turn both my shaving kit and packed reading material inside out. Books are opened and riffled through, because I find my sticky-notes and bookmarks all over the inside of the suitcase.

There is evidence that they’re making forensic disk images because a couple of people have found the boot CDs for the imaging software still in the drive when they got their laptops back. Whoops.

You do have a point, though – the chain of evidence is compromised from the get-go. I don’t know why anyone hasn’t done anything with that.

The Doctor (URL) - 15 01 08 - 01:17 - Reply to comment?

You do have a point – but even there, I do wonder as to how admissible such evidence would be in court. Are baggage screeners considered to be police officers? LAst I checked, no, but that’s been a while.

laughs
Simple, low-tech fix: keep your laptop in carry-on – but your CD drive in checked luggage. Disable boot options in BIOS. No, it won’t keep them from popping out your HD, but it will slow them down. Put a funky security screw to hold in your HD, and I wonder what they’d do?

Hasufin - 15 01 08 - 09:37 - Reply to comment?




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