
9 More Horror Stories from People Who Had Their Devices Searched at the Border - kushti
https://gizmodo.com/9-more-horror-stories-from-people-who-had-their-electro-1819328540
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bArray
* If these are checks in the name of terrorism, why are they looking for drugs? I saw one story where they were "searching for Bitcoin" \- these just seem to be checks for any agenda. How long until they are fingerprinting people's laptop hard-drives for "pirated" content (where that may even extend to just owning digital copies of your own media and "having the intent to distribute")?

* By taking possession of your items, do they then become responsible for them and their contents? What if they damage something by inspecting it (delete a picture, send a text message, drop a camera, etc) - are they even insured to that end?

* Why is there no complaints process? Who is taking internal responsibility? Where is the manager in all of these scenarios? How are they screening the quality of the searches, both from a customer's perspective and a security perspective?

* Can you opt to have someone present or the process recorded for your own personal safety? In the UK at least we are able to film the police (although they really don't like it), if they have semi-policing powers then surely the same rules apply?

* Why is the search process almost always completely different each time? Is this supposed to be a standardized procedure?

* Why are some of these people never told on what grounds they were being searched on? Not even "this is a random screening".

Traveling through Heathrow, the worst I've had is the inside of my bag swabbed
and my phone swabbed - but never searched through. I'm actually statistically
picked out more often than not due to my beard and the fact I always carry an
unhealthy number of electronics. Seems to be an entirely different kettle of
fish in the US.

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dkersten
> the fact I always carry an unhealthy number of electronics.

A few weeks ago, passing through Heathrow, the lady at the security check
commented something like _" wow, you really like technology"_ because I had a
laptop, tablet, phone, kindle and battery pack... I never really considered 5
electronic devices as excessive, but I guess its out of the ordinary.

I get swabbed occasionally, but it does seem a bit more random than you (but I
don't have a beard).

~~~
bArray
>because I had a laptop, tablet, phone, kindle and battery pack

Sometimes I'm also carrying another laptop, external hard drives (encrypted of
course) and extra batteries for both laptops. If my backpack isn't over the
weight limit, it's surely exceeding the LiPo limit!

>I get swabbed occasionally, but it does seem a bit more random than you (but
I don't have a beard).

Maybe 75% of the time for me and I definitely don't look like a minority. My
other friend maybe 25%. I must have a really "search-able" face :)

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GuiA
I travel with no devices or blank devices every time I take the plane. It’s a
pain when you get to destination and have to redownload/restore a bunch of
stuff/wait for the encrypted drive you mailed yourself to arrive, but that’s
the world we live in.

On the flip side I recently went on a 4 day trip where I needed to take a
plane, and decided to just leave all devices at home except for a kindle. It
made the trip very pleasant (obviously not always realistic).

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MrDosu
For leisure travel the US is just not a viable destination any more. There's
plenty of other beautiful places in the world. Why deal with all this
political insanity...

