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Ellis Dee
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Homeland security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It
#17783734 - 02/11/13 02:49 PM (11 years, 3 months ago) |
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Computers and electronic devices are now subject to search if within 100 miles of US borders without warrant. What this article fails to mention is that they are not searching the device for contraband hidden in it but are looking at the contents of your data stored in it. Full disk encryption is the only defense against invasion of your electronic privacy. It is getting to the point now that having an anarchist cookbook or political documents makes you a person of suspicion. Full disk encryption is the only way to go. They may have the power to examine your electronic equipment but there is no power to let them see your data. This goes for flash drives and such as well.
I advise you all to install and use truecrypt full disk encryption, if you don't already.
www.truecrypt.org
Quote:
Homeland Security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It from the interesting-4th-amendment-interpretation dept
We've written many times over the years concerning the legality of Homeland Security searching your laptop at the border without reasonable suspicion. Many courts have held that, effectively, the 4th Amendment does not apply at the border, so they don't need a warrant to search your laptop. However, they've been continually pushing this ability further and further. For example, they got a court to say that this applies not just while you're at the border -- they can take your laptop off site to search it and hang onto it for a while. However, that time, they at least needed to have a "reasonable suspicion." DHS has taken a pretty firm stand that it must be able to keep doing this. While the ACLU and the EFF and others keep challenging these rules, to date the only possible crack was in a case where there's evidence that the search was politically motivated.
Late last week, a bizarre finding popped up. Back in 2009, when DHS announced its new rules for laptop searches at the border, it also promised that it would do its own "Civil Liberties Impact Assessment" within 120 days. Three years later, Homeland Security's Orwellian "Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties" has finally released a two page executive summary of the findings, which more or less says "there are no civil liberties issues" with laptop searches. What else would you expect them to say? The ACLU has filed a FOIA request for the full report, but let's just focus on the most horrifying statement in the executive summary:
We conclude that CBP's and ICE's current border search policies comply with the Fourth Amendment. 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.
That statement is so bizarre I read it half a dozen times before I was sure it really said what it appears to say. It appears to be a somewhat stunning redefinition of how one reviews whether or not something violates the 4th Amendment. Rather than recognizing the rather explicit restrictions under the 4th Amendment, they merely say that it is okay to do these searches because not doing them would not have civil rights/civil liberties "benefits." That is incredible. The double negative logic there is truly amazing. In other words, we can violate the Constitution, so long as not doing so would not have civil liberties benefits. Wow.
Meanwhile, since Homeland Security has similarly argued (as part of these cases) that its Constitution Free zone for searches applies to any place 100 miles from the United States border, some are pointing out that this means that every electronic device -- computers, cell phones, you name it -- in Detroit can be searched with absolutely no reasonable suspicion under DHS's interpretation (since Detroit is less than 100 miles from Canada). But don't worry, since there is little civil liberties or civil rights benefits to not searching your stuff, DHS says it's okay.
Oh, and in case you're wondering on what basis DHS makes this assessment, it appears to be based on their own directives rather than on any "laws."
So, if you're playing along at home, DHS has decided, based on its own review of its own directives, that it can search any electronic device within 100 miles of the border without requiring a warrant, probable cause, reasonable suspicion or anything like that -- because actually respecting the Constitution "would be operationally harmful" and wouldn't really create any "civil rights/civil liberties benefits" for you.
-------------------- "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do."-King Solomon And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
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Alan Rockefeller
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Re: Homeland security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It [Re: Ellis Dee]
#17784939 - 02/11/13 06:22 PM (11 years, 3 months ago) |
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As far as I can tell, they are only looking for child porn.
I have heard of a lot of cases where people got busted for child porn after one of these searches, I haven't heard of any cases where anyone got busted for anything else.
I think arresting people for child porn is an awful waste of time and money. But if you don't have any child porn then you probably don't need to too far out of your way to keep them out.
I use full drive encryption and an online backup. If they try to search my computer I'll tell them I forgot my password, and let them seize it. Then get a new computer and download my data back.
Paranoid people remove their hard drive before traveling, and just run off of a live cd. That way there is no data to find.
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Anonymous #1
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Re: Homeland security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It [Re: Alan Rockefeller]
#17785001 - 02/11/13 06:35 PM (11 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Alan Rockefeller said: I think arresting people for child porn is an awful waste of time and money.
I think it's a waste of time and money, but not when it shuts down a child sex ring where multiple children are being harmed multiple times daily.
A friend's relative was busted and freely gave over his data for a lesser sentence, they busted a big fucking ring and saved a lot of kids.
If there's anything I'm pro-gov't on it's taking down people who are harming innocent children who have no escape. For some it's only the world they grew up in and the only thing they know. If there's "domestic terrorism" in any inflated sense that it gets tossed around, it's people doing shit like this to other people.
I'll put a few civil liberties aside to save kids but it stops there.
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Ellis Dee
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Re: Homeland security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It [Re: Alan Rockefeller]
#17786106 - 02/11/13 09:32 PM (11 years, 3 months ago) |
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I recall a case I read about some time ago on the politically incorrect forum of 4chan in which a man was detained and eventually charged for some questionable items in his luggage (gas masks and survival gear) which would have been a non issue if not for the ebooks in his laptop which included one titled Mantrapping and another on improvised bombs of some sort. The allegation being some weird kind of conspiracy charge. It is only a matter of time imo before this kind of information is fully illegal in north America. As it stands now having such in your laptop will make you a person of suspicion and probably get you harassed and permanently flagged as a suspicious person by the internal security forces. Child porn might be an excuse, but is only an excuse for the further erosion of civil liberties and first Amendment freedoms. I view the child pornographers as our "canaries in the coalmine" so to speak. Then they start busting the pedos, we with our drug knowledge literature or freedom literature will not be far behind.
-------------------- "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do."-King Solomon And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
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Alan Rockefeller
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Re: Homeland security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It [Re: Ellis Dee]
#17786132 - 02/11/13 09:38 PM (11 years, 3 months ago) |
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You can't have a one man conspiracy.
Information will never be illegal due to the first amendment.
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Ellis Dee
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Re: Homeland security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It [Re: Alan Rockefeller]
#17786190 - 02/11/13 09:49 PM (11 years, 3 months ago) |
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You are more idealistic than I.
There is right now in the United States a majority determined to trade their freedom for perceived (false) safety.
Excluding issues covered buy by the National Security Act, Court Ordered silence, and libelous literature there is a strong interest in further censoring what is available for public disclosure. It has become a consensus opinion already that some information is too dangerous for the public to handle. In once free Australia you can be imprisoned for possession of certain environmentalist literature which the state has labeled "ecoterrorist". USA has more hurdles to implementing these kinds of measures due to the existence of the first Amendment, but they are being implemented, slowly but surely.
-------------------- "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do."-King Solomon And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
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Ellis Dee
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Re: Homeland security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It [Re: Ellis Dee]
#17788473 - 02/12/13 10:30 AM (11 years, 3 months ago) |
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Warrantless Border Searches Extend to Mobile Devices: DHS http://www.activistpost.com/2013/02/warrantless-border-searches-extend-to.html
 Constitution-free Zone
-------------------- "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do."-King Solomon And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
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makingmoney
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Re: Homeland security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It [Re: Ellis Dee]
#17797884 - 02/13/13 09:17 PM (11 years, 3 months ago) |
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Somebody needs to challenge this law that is obviously against the constitution and/or bill of rights.
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