

Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first - lurkage
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/15/computing.security?skljds

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ojbyrne
One thing I wonder, there have been a slew of these articles which probably
push (at least somewhat) people to use online services to store their life.
Will customs agents ask for passwords to your gmail, facebook, etc? If they
aren't doing that now, how long before they do?

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pmjordan
They start asking for your gmail password? The criminals will just stop using
gmail.

The fact that you can just send any incriminating data over the internet
instead of carrying it into the country on a laptop/HDD/etc. shows how
pointless these searches are. Did I say pointless? Violating.

So basically the only people who get screwed by this are the people who
haven't actually done anything wrong but forgot to delete any
sensitive/embarrassing content from their drives. The criminals will just use
a normal internet connection. Just as with everything else these days: violate
the privacy of innocent people as much as possible so they won't notice that
they're incapable or too lazy to do any real law enforcement.

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hugh
Has anyone ever actually had this happen, or is this just plain ol' Guardian-
style anti-American paranoia? I've carried computers through US customs as a
noncitizen many times, and they've never shown any interest in searching 'em.
Of course they have the power to, in theory, just like the customs of just
about any other country you might enter. But are they actually exercising this
power routinely?

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anr
About this subject, checkout the latest cryptogram:

<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0805.html#3>

As usual, Bruce Schneier has solid advice.

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bigtoga
#$%# how many times do ppl/agencies have to post this article? I've seen it at
least 15x in other places already.

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paulgb
Go outside.

