

US Government recommends weighing laptop before and after each visit to China - dimas
http://www.crn.com.au/News/155836,safety-first-for-it-executives-in-china.aspx

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aw3c2
Traveling to the USA is not fun either:

 __ _Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or
any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can take
your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days._
__

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/15/computing.s...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/15/computing.security)

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GiraffeNecktie
Why would you weigh the laptop? For malicious devices? The article doesn't
make that clear and it doesn't seem to make that much sense.

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DanielBMarkham
Yes.

There are all sorts of nifty pieces of electronics that can be put inside of
laptops.

You don't have to break a RSA key if you can just read the password off the
keyboard.

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hughprime
Of course, now the warning is out, the spies can just remove enough
unnecessary components to keep the weight constant. Still, I guess it at least
makes their lives more difficult.

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MaysonL
This seems to me insane: if somebody has the access to your laptop to install
malicious hardware, they also have access to install much more difficult to
detect malicious software.

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RK
Finally a market for "(hardware) honeypot" laptops.

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ams6110
With most laptops being assembled in China to begin with, does it really
matter?

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ShabbyDoo
It does matter because the assembler doesn't know that Laptop #14838 will
become the CIO's. For the same reason that the White House procures food by
going to a random store on a random day -- to have a chance at poisoning the
president, you'd have to poison a bunch of people. If 100K new laptops were
bugged, you'd bet at least one hacker would notice.

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jrockway
Very low on details.

Solution to malicious code being inserted into code by terrorists? Free
Software.

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potatolicious
How does that help? If a foreign government spy agency had access to your
laptop, and replaced a binary with their own custom build - how would free
software save you?

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RK
I don't think jrockway is referring to the software on the laptop, but rather
software that the US government is buying. If the source code is available
(especially as open source), malicious code should theoretically be less
likely to make it in.

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scscsc
I do not understand why weighting would be of any good. Does the laptop ever
leave your hands?

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potatolicious
Sure. Leave it in your hotel room when you go down for breakfast - service is
pretty slow today for some reason...

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jpwagner
is "weighing" a metaphor?

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L1quid
My laptop has 8 pounds worth of pirated movies in it.

