Judge still working on border searches of laptops

[thewayne]

Basically the Feds have occasionally been seizing laptops and copying their drives at border crossings. No warrant required, there is a special exemption to the 4th Amendment for border crossings. I don't have anything in particular to hide, but that's not the point -- I don't want these people poking around in my files.

I'll have to figure out what I'll do when I next cross borders. I'll probably PGP my data directories. I know Mac has some encrypted vault system, but I would definitely double it with something like PGP. Probably would be a good idea to buy some DVDs before my return and burn new stuff on to them and mail 'em home and to work.

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/06/laptopsearches

Comments

[silveradept]

Would encrypting your files actually be a deterrent, or would it invite stronger suspicion on you because you kept your files encrypted?

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would matter. If they take your laptop, they have some suspicion regardless.

[silveradept]

From the way I read that article, they take the hard drive, image it, and then search it, without having needed a warrant to do so in the first place. Anything they find could then possibly be used to arrest you. Which seems a bit like rounding up everyone in the city off the streets, and then processing them by name to see if there are any outstanding warrants against them. It's backward.

So I just wondered whether encryption on your files would make them want to scrutinize it extra hard, because "everyone knows" only law-breakers would use crypto on their computers. The whole "nothing to hide" argument and all that.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Yep. I have previously given some thought to this, and my conclusion is to have a "give up" account (I just didn't remember to post it initially). At least on my Mac, you can't really see evidence of other people being on the computer unless you're logged on as root. This would rely upon the non-expert computer knowledge of the inspector, but create an account with administration-positive stuff: animated American flag, some Fox News pages up on your minimized browser, bookmarks for Ann Coulter, Rush, etc. Remove anything that you don't want seen, or that might bring your political beliefs or patriotism under suspicion, and thoroughly scrub the drive afterwards so that it isn't easily recoverable. So if they want to see your computer and poke around, do a feeble protest so that you're on record as being uncomfortable with this ('Don't you need a warrant for this? But OK, here, let me unlock the screen saver.') then let 'em look.

It would probably be a good idea to thoroughly clean your computer after a couple of known good backups, it would be just my luck to get some guy saying 'Wait a minute! This is an 80gig HD, there's only a couple gig left, and I'm only seeing 10gig of stuff!'.

The thing that I really hate about them taking it and imaging it, from what I've read, is they're kinda slow about giving your equipment back to you. So you're deprived of a tool until they get around to it.

[deborak]

Or you could just set up Vista to run on the "innocuous" drive, which would make the prying bastard's attempts to look at anything frustrating.

"Do you want to open these hidden files? Really? Are you sure . . .?"

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. There are laptops that can support two hard drives inside the case....

[deborak]

BTW, Bill reports that Vista Ultimate or Enterprise comes with BitLocker, which can encrypt an entire partition for you.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

It also comes with a correspondingly higher price tag. :-)

[deborak]

But it's free with a new laptop! ;-P

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Most of the laptops that I've seen, unless you're paying top $$$ for it, come with the lowest or next lowest edition of Vista.

[silveradept]

Sounds like a reasonable way of avoiding suspicion. Of course, that requires significantly more effort on your part to produce this view for them. It would certainly be better for the individual if you didn't have to contort yourself into these games, and could instead, be secure in your papers and person from unreasonable searches.

[deborak]

The comment I'd love to make to this post would probably get me reported to the government, so I'll just bite my tongue.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I think your icon speaks for itself.