Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches, Travelers' Devices Seized At Border

[DeSwiss]

Source: Washington Post

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2008; A01

Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said.

The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR2008020604763_pf.html

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- "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." ~ Nietzsche

[SpiralHawk]

1. Big Brother Loves You

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. Prediction:

A lot of this stuff is individual border officials or posts playing jazz.

It has been apparent for a while that the border control agents, under the DHS umbrella, are pretty much out of control. For years, they and their duties did not amount to much in the larger scheme of things. Now, they have tons of unchecked power with budgets to match. Also, personal experience with a number of border crossings has taught me that there are a number of these individuals who ain't exactly the brightest bulb in God's chandelier.

Add to that some very, very aggressive supervisory people, ex-military yahoos with a chip on their shoulder and a love for black BDU's, replete with bloused boots and webbing(Sweetgrass MT, anyone?) and you have a system that has a great need of some new, tight and cleansing supervision. These guys are running amok at our borders and no one is doing anything to rein them in.

[BB1]

2. All of this, and more. Good reasons not to travel to the States.

But then again, 'they' wouldn't want us too, now would they. All of us librul thinkers out of Old Europe, we can't go stirring up the public.

I have a real father, as real as a father can be, living in rural Missouri. He and his wife have taken care of me for ten months when I was visiting the wonderful United States as an exchange student. This man loved me more than my own father ever did, and this man is perhaps the best reason for me to try and understand the current political situation.
He is not responsible for the war in Iraq. He did serve in Viet Nam. He sells insurance, has done so for a long time, and still doesn't use a computer to do his administration (admittedly he has a measured IQ of over 180). He raises cattle with his brother, nursing sick calfs if he has too.

To me, this man always seemed to me the personification of the free life any American could have. He hunts, but with a bow and arrow, and tends to the environment. He works hard, treats his wife with respect and wants his kids to finish college. He was a bit put off by his son for not marrying before having a kid, but he's the proudest granddad all the same.

And now I have promised for the umpteenth time to come and see him in Missouri. The money won't be the problem, not with the dollar at these lows. But I'm already 'scared' by the immigration officers. As a journalist, I went to Baghdad as late as september 2002. I'm member of a left wing political party in Holland. To Americans. we would rate as extreme hard core ultra fundamental left wing. In our standards, we are merely correct.
But htey will judge, won't they. The guys in the airport will take me, my bags and my conscience into a little room, and they will pry open my jaws and waterboard me into oblivion.

Of course, that's not going to happen. Besides that, I'm a former Black Beret, trained sniper and quite literate. I'm not really afraid or scared. But all the same, I'd rather not go through all that.

Still, I'll be flying to the States this year. The first time I did, we could still smoke on the plane. Those were the days...

[kirby]

3. Two of those people were US Citizens...

Traveling to the US was not 'optional'. They were trying to return home.

[MindPilot]

4. My employer requires heavy-duty encryption software on every laptop

"They" may get the laptop, but without the passwords and challange/response tokens, they get no data.

[ursi]

5. what a huge civil rights violation!