The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruledthat authorities can search and/or seize your laptop for any reason they like. Refusal or resisting only gets you a free trip to the baton testing... More...
More reasons to avoid the States for many travels ... a lot of these measures discourage travel as it's a pain in the ass. I travel a lot and I don't approve of this. Swabbing the laptop was fine, but seizing without warrant? In Canada, seizing electronic equipment (personal or not) without warrant is illegal as it is a breach in privacy. Example: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-computer-private-court-rules/article1952239/ deltatux
I believe seizing equipment without warrant is illegal as well in the US. But the court say because this happen at the border, the Forth Amendment does not protect you....
well there goes the idea of me bringing my pc with me to the states, upgrading the parts and coming back without paying any taxes hahah.
Well, if I ever decide to visit the US, I won't take my laptop with me. Sucks for businesspeople, though.
The thing is it isn't just laptops, it covers other digital devices too so smartphones, tablets etc have that risk too.
Well, this means that not only should people avoid traveling there, doing business with people having to pass that border is risky as well, because their business laptops may get frisked. Given the US history of abusing intelligence services for financial gain (for campaign sponsors), I'd say that this basically means people should avoid doing business with US companies. //Svein
Not good at all. So they can take your laptop, but if its protected with password, are they allowed to try to hack it ? Haha.
how often would this be an issue though. I'd say that they would only search your stuff if they have reason to believe you are harbouring illegal information. But that is like 1 in a million?
The Ninth Circuit is the biggest joke court in the nation. They're constantly passing decisions that ultimately get struck down by the Supreme Court because they're unconstitutional. Though, this administration has such a hardon for the RIAA/MPAA I could easily see them milking this concept of 'suspicion of illegal information' to mean files that they believe infringe copyrights.
LOL timing fail! I am worried about my collection of games and movies, is there any way for them to tell if they come form questionable sources!
This is unbelievable, just wrong. Time to encrypt my hard drive, or in the case I do go travel somewhere, I will probably bring my spare laptop running Linux.
Yes, in some cases. However do you seriously think that your (hypothetical of course!) collection of pirated games is going to be considered a matter of national security? lol If this legislation is enacted in full the only thing they are going to be looking for is ties to terrorism, money laundering (aka "The Mob"), spying for other countries and maybe Pedo Bear Porn. Which is all legit if you ask me. The question is not whether the information they are looking for is legit. but rather if the act itself is Constitutional. Our Government and Courts are supposed to ONLY pass laws that do not invalidate or conflict with the Constitution or it's various Ammendments. That's all the potlickin' politicin' I'm doin' today. :3eyes:
Another case of 'your not legally in a country, we'll abuse your rights'. Meh. Wonder how they would react with encryption or a something otherwise pereiced as a blank drive - not a lot stopping you from removing the HDD before flight...
Thought this was already in place? What if you have your hard drive separate from you laptop? Just put in an old spare hard drive and have your primary has an external? It's technically not connected to the laptop. You could have a barley working hard drive that BSOD's on startup, those are always fun.
HA! simply use a usb flash drive that looks like a key (by LACIE) and keep your world domination plans on it, not on your laptop, they surely won't notice it next to yer car keys. i got 5 of these mainly to copy work stuff, pr0n etc but the evil ones can use it for other purposes of course.
