Posts Tagged ‘borders’

The US Constitution and centuries of case law provide strong protection from government searches and seizures. As basic of a right as any in this country is the necesity for reasonable suspicion before a search is allowed by agents of the government. However, recent court rulings have carved out a niche which makes warrantless searches of laptops at borders legal even without reasonable suspicion. That means border agents can now confiscate and search laptops or other computers crossing the border without justification.

Under the ruse of the war of terror, this federal policy of searching laptops for security has been used to broadly investigate lesser crimes without the judicial oversight which is fundamental to this country.

Executives have been told that they must hand over their laptop to be analyzed by border police–or be barred from boarding their flight. A report from a U.S.-based marijuana activist says U.S. border guards browsed through her laptop’s contents; British customs agents scan laptops for sexual material; so do their U.S. counterparts.

Not only does this pose problems for business executives with trade secrets stored on their devices, attorneys with privileged information or political activists, it takes advantage of the way in which digital memory is used. Increasingly, digital storage serves as an extension of our brains – the last bastion of privacy. Why bother remembering the details of your client’s case when you can store all of it digitally?

In face of this dramatic change in privacy protection, a number of infotech advisors have suggested ways to protect your privacy at the border.

• The EFF, who is pushing for Congressional oversight of the issue, discusses the imperfection of encryption and the move towards using blank devices for international travel.
• Declan McCullagh explains how to encrypt sensitive data on your machine.
• Chris Soghoian uses web storage or FedEx to cross borders without any data on his computer.

So, next time you are traveling internationally and want to protect the privacy which is enshrined in our Constitution, do so with the techniques listed above.

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