Original story Land of the free, hmm? What pisses me off more than anything is that we're apprearntly perfectly willing to put up with this kind of crap.
I am definately not going to the US with my laptop. What about businesses? Their confidential files can be seized
What if you take the harddrive out of the laptop and send it using snailpost (the harddrive not laptop) and then put the harddrive in the laptop again (example) at a rented room? would they seize the data empty laptop then?
8gig micro sd card. Size of a thumbnail and can hold all the data you might need. For that matter, so does the internet. Whats the point of this again?
Yeah, i wonder what they would do if you brought a laptop that they decided to inspect that had no HDD.
wont be going to the USA very soon.... it is becoming a lighter version of Nazi Germany.... really, it is what it looks when you see it from this side. if i were a terrorist i would put all my secret bomb making instructions in several encrypted peaces of an archive spread around in several email accounts, assemble them inside the USA and then make the device. terrorists 1 <-> USA 0 (was owned and lost liberties so it should be -infinite) "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Geez this is stupid maybe I should just send my laptop in a shipping container, no one would check it then, to bad it would be radioctive and coverd in cocain when it got to me! And DXR the Nazi's where generally disliked for there facist and nationalsic views, also rampant racism and burning people in ovens, not for border controll. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." And as far as this quote goes, I tottally agree but I hope your not implying that the US is even close to the worst when it comes to such matters.
try having a physical appearance similar to an Arab (or have a name that is arab'ish (obama - osama) ) and try to get into the USA, they wont put you into an oven, but sure as hell you will be sent to a place were they will "ask you some questions". i wish to change Nazi Germany with fascist Portugal in my post above, it is more in tune with what is happening. when a country says it is superior to everyone when it comes to freedom (land of the free and all that crap) and then shows it is sacrificing its freedom and becoming worse than almost every Euro country.... i think it is time the USA started calling them selves as land of the safe instead of land of the free. i am already seeing things in the USA that are similar to what PIDE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIDE) used to do.... so that makes me apprehensive and afraid of what will happen next.
If you work for a government agency, you show them your credentials and the say move along. If the drive is encrypted, and you won't give them the key, you lose your laptop.
Encryption makes customs guys nervous & suspicious. An easier answer is to remove all sensitive data from your laptop (except maybe for a few legal ebooks from Project Guthenberg to read on the flight - I'm currently working my way through Edgar Rice Burrough's "Barsoom" saga), then once you've cleared customs, retrieve it from your home server via an ssh connection over Starbuck's or McDonald's free wifi.
That's ****ing ridiculous - suppose you work for a business that keeps it files encrypted as standard? OK you can give them the key and they can look through it etc I spose, but I'm sure there are situations where it's a bit dubious. What about people carrying USB keys? You can store 32+GB on one of those and all it does it sit on your keys in your pocket.
Yeah, that just doesn't seem very fair. Maybe you could play a sneaky game, and encrypt only a hidden partition on your hdd? I wonder if their search is thorough enough to find that.
Lol why not just encode it, and upload it onto t'internet? Or just use a Micro SD card or something? Surely nobody has over 8GB of bomb making instructions? lol, I think that would be and out and out lie. I know parts of downtown Baghdad which are safer than some parts of California I do see these alarming parallels with the PIDE at the moment... The policing is becoming soo intrusive and ridiculous at the moment. Having been in one of the airport security rooms, I can tell you that with the exception of one black man, the remaining 30-40 people in there were all from countries which are predominantly Muslim - Pakistanis, Arabs, Egyptians, Bangladeshis... This gestapo-esque policing really has to stop... it wastes everyones time and money. If you really want to stop terrorism, move your bloody troops out their countries, stop hanging their leaders, and close Guantanamo concentration camp. At least then, maybe ten years down the line, this will all be forgotten.
The U.S.-Canada border is the absolute worst for computer device searches. They claim they are searching for child pornography. It's an enormous hassle... I live in a Canadian city which probably has the highest concentration of immigrated East Indian population per capita in the world. Believe me, I've heard every side of the 'random search + interrogation' story.
It will stop when the people demand that it stops. unfortunatly the American people are still too F***ing stupid and too F***ing scared to stand up for their rights. They have decided, en mass, that security is better than freedom and that they are berrer off being sheeple than thinking for themselves because the big men with guns must know how to keep us safe. The United States is still at least party a democracy and these kind of security measures reflect the willingness of the people to be slaves as long as they can feel safe.
I'd be interested to know what they'd do if they started up your laptop and the name for the only user account was different to that upon your passport, but had your image as the account avatar. Suggestion: don't try it
