Device Security: How Border Searches Are Really Used 223
onehitwonder writes "Newly released documents reveal how the government uses border crossings to seize and examine travelers' electronic devices instead of obtaining a search warrant to take them, according to The New York Times' Susan Stellin. The documents reveal what had been a mostly secretive process that allows the government to create a travel alert for a person (regardless of whether they're a suspect in an investigation), then detain that individual at a border crossing and confiscate or copy any electronic devices that person is carrying. The documents come courtesy of David House, a fund-raiser for the legal defense of Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning." A post at the ACLU blog (besides being free of NYT paywall headaches) gives more details, and provides handy links the documents themselves.
Re:Just upload your encrypted data online (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't exactly shocking news.
To save them and you the inconvenience of physically handing it over, I guess?
What's the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Only reasons I see to examine everyone's electronic devices are:
A) keep privatized prison populations growing
B) revenue from confiscated electronics
C) revenue from war on drugs
I guess that's believable
Re:Any different than those other governments? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ohh wait, those governments are not democratic but ours is...
No it's not. If you're only allowed to vote for 1 of 2 people that mostly agree on everything, your vote doesn't really count. If you're voting democrat or republican YOU are the problem.
Re:Any different than those other governments? (Score:4, Insightful)
For one thing, you are free to post on slashdot about it without serious concern that you'll be dragged away to a secret prison. Yes, there *are* government abuses in the land of the free, but realistically, they're pretty rare. It is the freedom that exists that allows you to hear about them in the first place, and to have that discussion.
And yes, we are a democracy, but like all large organizations, the ship of state turns slowly. We do screw up, spectacularly (Dred Scott, Volstead act, etc), but on the whole, these things do get corrected. It just takes decades, not the minutes or hours that modern society working on "internet time" seems to want.
It has been 50 years since the famous march on Washington. While there is still a ways to go, if you look at what has changed since then, it is dramatic: in the 60s, DC was still segregated: African Americans riding the train south had to get off in Baltimore and move to the "colored cars" at the back. There were riots and conniptions in the 70s & 80s about integrating schools. When was the last time you heard about people firebombing school buses in the US?
Yes, all of this stuff about the NSA is disturbing, and it should be. But realistically, the mere fact that we are discussing it here is a good thing, and for all the grandstanding in Congress, there will be changes. They'll be slow; there will be bodies of dead pioneers along the sides of the paths of progress; but change will happen.
And here's your chance to poke at your representatives. Ask them (or tell them) how unhappy you are. Granted, your comment will likely just wind up as a checkmark on a tally sheet prepared by an underpaid congressional intern, but the existence of those tally marks does have an effect in the long run. Politicians aren't totally stupid and beholden to their funding sources. You start seeing 90% of the tally marks in the column for change, and you start thinking.. there's not enough money in the world to buy ads to support the 10% column, I'd better start thinking about it.
Re:What's the point (Score:5, Insightful)
In the light of recent developments, if I were to get any of my devices searched at the border of a country (any country) and it wasn't confiscated outright, my default stance now is to treat the device as compromised until I can nuke it from orbit, do a complete re-install of the OS and reload any data from backups.
Re:Any different than those other governments? (Score:5, Insightful)
voters are not the problem. the system, being rigged to ONLY allow D or R to get in, is the problem.
people like you keep perpetuating the myth that american voting system matters at the national level. it does not. stop being stupid, ok? the sooner we remove this myth, the sooner we can get on with fixing THE SYSTEM.
voters are not the main problem. we'll always have idiots who vote against their own best interests, but the last few cycles, D or R would not have mattered one bit when it comes to privacy and removing PATRIOT (etc).
Re:Any different than those other governments? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with everything you say is it can be countered with "for now".
As your government gives itself more and more power to intrude on your lives, ignore your Constitution, or use one set of laws to skirt around another the abuses magnify.
So, you can say to yourself now "well, they haven't taken this away yet" and convince yourself everything is OK. But in a few years if they've taken that and even more away from you, it's too late.
Complacently thinking everything is fine when it's increasingly not just means that by the time you've got nothing left there's not a damned thing you can do about it.
Slowly expanding the scope of these things over time means you should be worried, because eventually that 100 mile 'border' zone can cover your entire country, and searching your digital devices or scanning through all of your information can be used for everything they feel like.
Nobody plans on ending up in a police state, but if you don't stop the steady march while you can, it's all too easy to wake up one day and realize just how badly screwed you are. Joseph McCarthy demonstrated how easily things can change.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke"
Re:What's the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Installing backdoors would be too easily detected, eventually. But if I were running a secretive national spy agency, I'd have the border patrol grab any certificate files, credentials or VPN keys as a matter of routine to go into the big database. Never know when they might come in handy.
If anyone objects, claim it's to fight terrorism or child porn.
Re:Just upload your encrypted data online (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't exactly shocking news.
Oh, I disagree! The USG has established 100-mile 'non-Constitution' zones around the national borders. Due process and security of personal information is suspended.
How is that not shocking?
Yeah, but many of this have been fully aware of this for some time... Shocking news would be if the general public and mainstream media gave a fuck.
Re:Any different than those other governments? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine, but one day when you can be detained anywhere based on arbitrary things, ask yourself if your willingness to pretend that nothing is happening was the problem.
It's a fact that they've been steadily cutting into Constitutionally protected things, and that it's getting worse. Just ask anybody in a state where these 'border' stops covers the whole state.
If you want to act like it isn't getting worse and isn't likely to continue to do so, then you haven't been paying attention.
Dismissing the argument on the basis that it's a slippery slope and therefore invalid is the height of willful ignorance.
hey, look over there! new iphones. (Score:4, Insightful)
horrifying news about civil rights, but obama shouldn't sweat it because new iphones are being announced in an hour so everybody's attention will swing to that.
Re:time to impeach (Score:5, Insightful)
... So anybody who cares about their civil rights, regardless of political persuasion (liberal, conservative, republican), needs to support and donate to republican candidates...
The solution to the problem of an overreaching Democrat president is not, nor ever will be, to elect Republicans. The only peaceful solution is to never elect a Dem or Repub again.
Re:Just upload your encrypted data online (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Chelsea? (Score:4, Insightful)
The "treason" charge didn't seem to happen and Manning was certainly never convicted of that. Oliver North didn't get charged for treason for selling weapons to a terrorist group that had killed over a hundred US Marines only a year prior, selling them via a declared enemy of the USA no less. Manning doesn't even show up on the scale.
Re:Chelsea? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did someone remove the right to decide your own name too? They're falling so thick and fast now, I may have missed it.
You have the right to decide whatever name you want to be called by. I have the right to form an opinion of you based on that name. If I really hate your name, I may choose not to use it, but that won't stop it being your name. That's as far as our respective rights go.
Gender identification is a bit more involved. But declaring it a "silly whim" just shows you know nothing about it.
Re:Just upload your encrypted data online (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess you missed the part about it being encrypted?
I doubt it; did you miss the recent news regarding the NSA?
People are still trying to figure out if TrueCrypt is compromised.
Re:time to impeach (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you noticed the deafening silence from the Republicans (including even Tea Partiers) who were crowing about impeaching Obama over Obamacare? You should think about why they choose to clam up now that they have an actual legitimate reason to want him impeached.
The answer, of course, is that the Republicans are just as complicit in the totalitarianism as the Democrats are.
Re:hey, look over there! new iphones. (Score:5, Insightful)
When are you guys gonna elect some libertarian guy who at least stops your evil forgein policies?
I'm afraid we need more than a wink and promise from a presidential candidate, but rather real checks and balances restored. Depending on the good character of the guy that gets elected not exceed his authority seems unreliable.