
DHS Watchdog OKs ‘Suspicionless’ Seizure of Electronic Devices Along Border - eplanit
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/electronics-border-seizures/?cid=co5746764
======
betterunix
So, remember a few months ago, when people like me were saying that the third
parties are the only hope in America's democracy? Then a bunch of people said
that Obama was worlds different from Romney, and that comparing Obama to Bush
was lunacy.

I have to wonder what happens when those Obama supporters with left-wing
sentiments read an article like this.

~~~
tptacek
An article like what?

I voted or and contibuted to Obama because I felt he would fight for public
schools and against nationwide voucher programs, and because he supported
meaningful health care reform.

I had absolutely zero expectation that Obama would waste political capital
revamping CBP.

The TSA is a far bigger problem for ordinary Americans than CBP is, and a more
constitutionally offensive one. I think we can all quickly agree that
electronic strip searches of all American citizens are an affront to the word
"reasonable".

And yet it never crossed my mind not to vote for Obama because his DHS
supported the TSA. Why? Because something like 70% of Americans support the
TSA, and, simultaneously, game theory more or less demands that any
administration support all counterterrorism measures. There was no possibility
that _any_ winning candidate was going to eliminate the TSA. The problem
wasn't Obama or Romney; it's the American people.

~~~
sneak
Sometimes, when faced with a terrible set of game theory circumstances, the
only winning move is not to play.

~~~
angersock
A wonderful quip, but what is its explanatory power here? What is it here "not
to play"?

I'm as much Fuck the Man as the next person, but let's try to dig a bit
deeper.

~~~
tedunangst
Obviously, you're supposed to not vote for anyone, then go online and tell
everybody about how you're fighting the system.

~~~
sneak
What I chose to do is a touch more difficult than simply doing nothing.

------
krrrh
Here are guidebooks from the EFF and BCCLA detailing your lack of rights at
the border and practical steps you can take.

[https://www.eff.org/wp/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-
tra...](https://www.eff.org/wp/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-travelers-
carrying-digital-devices)

<http://bccla.org/our_work/electronic-devices-pocket-guide/>

Organizations like these and the ACLU do incredibly important work protecting
your freedom on relatively small budgets. While a lot of people on the
comments here are shocked to read this report, remember that even getting it
released is the result of years of pressure from the ACLU. Those of us who
benefit most from a free society, and technological progress have a special
duty to make a donation and to get involved. It's a worthwhile investment in
your future.

------
nakedrobot2
Don't forget to put a zip bomb on all your devices. :-)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb>

------
white_devil
That "watchdog" doesn't seem to be doing its job all that well.

------
malandrew
Does the 100 miles apply to ocean borders too? If so, that puts entire cities
like NYC, SF, LA, etc. right within this exclusion zone.

~~~
jorgem
Yep: <http://www.aclu.org/constitution-free-zone-map>

~~~
tptacek
It is worth knowing that this map is intended to illustrate the absurdity of a
specific (old) statement from DHS. It is almost definitely not the case that
living in NYC puts you at risk of arbitrary border searches; among other
things, SCOTUS has specifically said it doesn't.

~~~
jorgem
I guess it just applies to folks in the south west, hundreds of miles from the
border.

------
spiritplumber
I wonder if this is a CYA for TSA employees who steal stuff out of luggage.
"It was a legitimate seizure!"

(Fortunately, my equipment can defend itself)

------
mtgx
Didn't DHS also declare that 100 mile range from the border is basically
Constitution-free? This is mighty convenient, as they can now search everyone
like this within that 100 mile range.

~~~
tptacek
DHS can say whatever it wants, but SCOTUS says that the search has to actually
take place at the border. See for instance _Almeida-Sanchez v. US_.

"Constitution free" is obviously hyperbolic.

~~~
throwaway2048
What good is what the Supreme Court said, if the DHS freely violates it?

Nothing personal, but you seem to pay more attention to what the law says then
what actually ends up happening. This is a common issue in American politics

~~~
tptacek
How does this mentality response to Japanese internment camps? Should we have
given up on the whole enterprise after WW2?

For whatever it's worth to you, when you take a detour from your argument to
point out what you think I believe, that is in fact a personal statement. I
take no offense, but don't kid yourself about what you're doing.

------
tptacek
Aren't they just going to lose this at court? The degree of suspicion required
for different kinds of border searches is something that has already been
tested before SCOTUS.

~~~
throwaway2048
and a challenge will take many years to go through, meanwhile they are
completely free to implement this abusive policy.

------
jenncom
Most people don't know that the USCG has never needed a reason to board and
search any boat within US waters, or any US flagged boat anywhere in the
world.

This doesn't seem much different.

------
spiritplumber
Dear DHS,

you are welcome to try and steal my stuff.

I will be sure to laugh at you when you fail. Further, I will be sure to put
it on youtube to share the mirth.

Pretty sure this won't damage your credibility any...

~~~
oftenwrong
Who needs credibility when you have unchecked power?

~~~
tomjen3
Ah, but they don't have unchecked power.

Only mostly unchecked. Bigger evils have falled (see Nazi Germany, Soviet
Union, Assyrian empire, Chile, Argentina, Spain, etc).

------
karka91
On this note, maybe someone want's to program an application that would select
random unused portions of hdd and write random data to them? Something like a
daemon/windows service that would take care of the data that hasn't been fully
purged by os delete. I would do it myself, but I lack knowledge in low level
api's

~~~
cheeseprocedure
This application fits your needs on the Windows platform:

"Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to
completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it
several times with carefully selected patterns. Eraser is currently supported
under Windows XP (with Service Pack 3), Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack
2), Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2."

<http://eraser.heidi.ie>

~~~
chmars
Overwriting data to safely delete it is usually enough, most of the
recommended additional overwriting is snake oil. Unfortunately, overwriting
data still takes a lot of time.

Using system encryption is therefore easier: You delete the key and your data
is as good as overwritten a million times … all modern operation systems offer
system encryption by default.

~~~
cheeseprocedure
Disk encryption wouldn't defeat an attacker that had access to your keys
(either by compromising a running system or through a cold-boot attack[1]). If
the keys are available, the contents of the disk are accessible. Overwriting
deleted files would still have value in these cases.

[1] <https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/coldboot-sec08.pdf>

------
jervisfm
I was just wondering: In the case that the confiscated electronic devices are
encrypted, are you obliged to decrypt them or do you have the right to
politely refuse ?

If not would claiming plausible deniability (I.e I don't know the password) be
a viable alternative?

~~~
ScottBurson
This is what TrueCrypt is for: giving you plausible deniability.

~~~
stfu
But it takes a lot of work and planning to let this look natural. i.e.
switching the systems back and forth so the plausible deniable partition looks
legit etc.

~~~
jlgreco
Use the decoy/plausible deniable system for your day to day mundane uses
(facebook, netflix, or whatever other computer usage won't be private
anyway.), and the 'real' system for your periodic private activities.

------
iuguy
It's things like this that mean that I won't go back to America. I love
Americans, and there's a great deal of the US I'd love to see but it's just
not going to happen while stuff like this goes on.

~~~
tptacek
My most vivid experience of traveling in Europe in 2000 was of having my bags
searched on a train midway between Zurich to Prague. Not as a condition of
getting on the train, but 30 minutes out from the last station we'd stopped
at. Not on any individualized suspicion, but as one of several passengers to
receive the same treatment. Not in order to protect the safety of passengers,
but (evidently) as part of a drug interdiction program.

Beware the grass-is-greener trap. You may be right: it may be that there are
fewer circumstances in which your electronics will be searched in Europe than
in the US. But by and large European law operates under a regime that values
communitarian values more highly than individual ones. You can certainly be
searched without a warrant all throughout Europe.

~~~
martinced
_"You can certainly be searched without a warrant all throughout Europe."_

Never happened to me but I do believe you. However what did happen though is
that a vehicle of mine equipped with a GPS got stolen in Europe and despite me
telling the cops exactly behind which garage door the vehicle was located,
they refused to open the garage without a warrant. Now so many days have
passed by that it's likely that the thieves have moved the vehicle and that
I'll never see it again.

 _"Police and thieves, in the street... Fighting the nation with their guns
and ammunition"_

I cannot say that I admire your 100% belief in the state that you've displayed
in this thread.

But you're probably right: Europe sucks and the U.S. is the greatest place to
live ever and certainly nothing is going wrong in the U.S. right now (zeppelin
over Washington DC, en masse murdering using drones, illegal detention,
justified torture, etc.).

I've got a bridge decorated with pink unicorn running in fairyland to sell
you.

~~~
rdouble
I'm not sure where you got that second quote. It's nowhere else in the thread,
the article, or any of tptacek's comments on any other recent threads.

~~~
m0nastic
It's lyrics from a Clash song (technically a reggae song they covered, but
most people associate it with them). It's about the police misusing their
power.

------
jasonjei
Just remember to leave important data in the cloud and if you need to access
them use a secure storage and protocol (e.g, Dropbox, VPN, etc).

~~~
cantos
If they can force you to login to your laptop could they not also force you to
login to your Dropbox account?

~~~
chmars
If they can force you to login to your laptop, they usually don't have to
force you to login to your Dropbox account: Most users are already logged in
to Dropbox and all Dropbox data is available in the Dropbox folder by default
anyway.

~~~
cantos
Yes that's true. I wonder about the case where the data is not present on the
device. I've seen lots of people assert that the government would be powerless
in that case. I think this assertion is often made on the basis that the
alternative is too horrible to imagine. I hope there are more compelling
reasons why this would not be legal but I am doubtful.

For example, I have heard of border agents taking phones and calling contacts
on them. This is a way of getting data about you from another location. From
there it seems like a small step for border agents having the right to get
access to your data at the border if it is available to you when you are
crossing the border regardless of its physical location.

------
miami-dade
What I find amazing is how people continue to push for political solutions
like "term limits" while ultimately taking no action. Even as we lurch towards
an obvious fiscal iceberg, undoubtedly responsible for the abrupt hike in
tyrannical measures we've seen as of late, there are plenty of otherwise
capable, intelligent people, and even hackers who are seemingly unable to
abandon ship.

Whatever. History has shown the rich are always the first to leave. I suspect
it's because they know more truths about human nature than some would like to
believe.

Political action towards positive change is absolutely pointless. There's
nothing any political party - not left, right nor libertarian - can do to stop
America's path to inevitable fiscal crisis and subsequent self-destruction.
Not with the political gridlock in Washington. Not with the bozo Ivy League
clowns and TBTF banks running the show. Not with more and more people waking
up every day to the corruption and lies spewing from the mouths of virtually
everyone in Washington DC and all of their supporters and cronies. In short
their shit just stinks too badly, and the average person has become too
educated and capable to sit there and take all the abuse.

America is $16.5 trillion in debt and rising, and there's nothing you can do
to make that debt disappear short of printing trillions more dollars to debase
it and insodoing completely wipe out the average individual's savings, not to
mention piss off other countries. All viable economic and political solutions
are too little, too late. You'd better pray for our continued military might
every night before you go to sleep, because that's the end game given the way
things are going.

The only viable move for the U.S. elite is to sink America like Enron, and
pray they can keep things under control. Thus the advent of tyrannical control
measures.

Let the elite continue to have their follies with the savings of average
Americans and others who are too blind to see the storm brewing, or too proud
to abandon ship. Let them have their gold, their silver, and their perceived
political capital aka giant circle jerk. Let them have their warplanes and
battleships. Let them continue to send our young to die in their places in
exchange for worthless paper green rectangles.

The only viable move for the individual is to evacuate the USD before their
savings are wiped out. Everyone on HN has the capacity and the short-lived
opportunity to move their economic and political activities into the
cryptographic realm, where any and all central planning efforts are rendered
irrelevant. Therein lies the only remaining true safe haven for economic
activity.

Love it or hate it, you have no other option but to embrace strong encryption
and Bitcoin before your nation, and perhaps the entire global economy descends
into a fiscal default scenario right out of your worst nightmares. If you fail
to see this risk and the danger it entails, I implore you to utilize public
transportation extensively.

"Truthfully I do not expect much to change. Practically speaking, history has
demonstrated the ability of sovereign nations to justify themselves, and
postpone the moment of crisis. This will be even more true for the United
States as the largest economy by far with the strongest central bank. As a
result, over the course of your lives, you will experience withering but
stealthy attacks on your quality of life, as government attempts to manage its
faltering finances. You will see declines in the quality of healthcare, the
quality of education, the quality of public safety, and the quality of our
currency. Of course this is a false prophecy. I am simply describing what is
already happening."

\- Dr. Michael J. Burry [1]

[1] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CLhqjOzoyE>

------
lhnn
>“We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable
suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be
operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties
benefits,”

Well frankly, in that case, I don't give a shit what you conclude, because
you're mentally incompetent.

"We also conclude that following the Constitution for Americans reentering the
country would put us in a bind for looking at whatever we want, so we're going
to say that you don't need that right to privacy."

~~~
tptacek
The Constitution does not forbid the government from conducting searches
without warrants at the border. The word "reasonable" is in the 4th Amendment
in order to defer judgement about what searches are and aren't constitutional
to the the courts. Unfortunately for your argument, SCOTUS has for many many
decades held that border searches are, subject to some limitations,
reasonable.

~~~
lhnn
I think that, aside from disagreeing with most of that principle, it is futile
to search the contents of electronic devices at the border. I could ship an
encrypted device through mail, I could use steganography and encryption to
upload a file to a personal server and have someone immediately unplug said
server... there are lots of ways to transport digital files that don't involve
the physical device at the border.

~~~
tptacek
My response to this is complicated (but I'll keep it short):

* I agree with you that anyone who wants to avoid being effectively searched at a border can and there's little the government can ever do about it.

* I think most of the people carrying (say) child pornography into the country aren't too bright to begin with, so maybe that doesn't matter.

* I remember being very upset about the border search exception when I learned about it 10 years ago. It still bugs me.

* If the principal you're disagreeing with is that the state's interests in a secure border outweigh the individual's right to be free from casual, minimally invasive searches, you should know that you're disagreeing with something like 10+ SCOTUS opinions going back to at least the early '70s.

* If the principal you're disagreeing with is that the 4th Amendment allows judges to fill in the blanks on what "reasonable" means, and that "reasonable" overrides "warrant", know that you're disagreeing with something like 175 years of jurisprudence.

* I definitely agree that electronic searches are nonminimal and highly invasive.

~~~
greenyoda
This event, described at the end of the article, does not sound like a
"casual, minimally invasive search" to me:

"At an Amtrak inspection point, Pascal Abidor showed his U.S. passport to a
federal agent. He was ordered to move to the cafe car, where they removed his
laptop from his luggage and “ordered Mr. Abidor to enter his password,”
according to the lawsuit.

Agents asked him about pictures they found on his laptop, which included Hamas
and Hezbollah rallies. He explained that he was earning a doctoral degree at a
Canadian university on the topic of the modern history of Shiites in Lebanon.

 _He was handcuffed and then jailed for three hours while the authorities
looked through his computer while numerous agents questioned him, according to
the suit, which is pending in New York federal court._ "

~~~
tptacek
_I definitely agree that electronic searches are nonminimal and highly
invasive._

------
largesse
In the anecdote in the article, the guy who had his laptop searched was asked
for a password. As far as I know, there is no legal basis for compelling a
password at the border. He could've just said no. The price would probably be
losing the laptop.

I've very curious about the legality of password compulsion in the US. With so
much moving to cloud storage, the feds are going to lose their picking rights
if that don't have that one.

~~~
chmars
_The price would probably be losing the laptop._

… probably after spending hours of uncertaintity in some DHS waiting areas,
interrupted only by DHS officers shouting at you from time to time – in case
of an American national. For a foreigner, the result could be even more
unpleasant.

The first part of my just-written paraphrah by the way is standard for the so-
called DHS secondary check if you enter the US and some system (or some
officer) does not like you for some reason.

Regarding cloud storage, most data in the cloud is not encrypted, and if
encrypted, only with a provider and not with a user key. Dropbox is a well-
known example, i.e., authorities can always ask such providers for data access
and they will usually get it.

~~~
largesse
..if they know the username of the account.

Beyond that, I don't think there is any legal basis to compel a password. Do
you know of one? I'm curious about it. In the UK, apparently, there is but
only for criminal investigations.

------
PavlovsCat
What's a watchdog? A lap dog you can wear like a watch? I suggest to call it
"watch dog" then, just so it doesn't get confused with
[http://www.google.com/search?q=watchdog&tbm=isch](http://www.google.com/search?q=watchdog&tbm=isch)

~~~
to3m
"watchdog" is slangy terminology for a consumer rights organization or an
industry regulator. It's, like, a metaphor, man.

I don't know about the US but the term is commonly used in the UK.

(I suppose "watch dog" would be a dog that watches, or something that watches
dogs, or, as you suggest, a dog that's somehow got something to do with wrist-
mounted timepieces.)

~~~
yareally
It's used in the US as well (quite a bit in the media for the purpose you
defined) so not sure what the OP is getting at really.

