Comments on: Federal Agents Can Seize Devices And Papers At Borders

By: GRTerrero

GRTerrero — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:09:33 +0000

Police State. Heil!

By: OAlexander

OAlexander — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:12:45 +0000

It has all gone way out of control. The spread of fascism in the so called “liberal democraacies” is the scourge of our time. Nostalgically I look back to the good old days when the Soviet Union still existed and the West had to maintain a core of civil and human rights to distinguish itself.

By: Anand Suresh

Anand Suresh — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:49:51 +0000

Its not about piracy concerns. Its more of privacy concerns. I would not like anyone going through my laptop contents, esp. without suspicion (read “probable cause”). I have a lot of personal stuff in there including, but not limited to personal communication, financial records, health records, patentable ideas/concepts, proprietary source code (ya… I’m a software guy) and more.

Rarst is correct… this is not about terrorism. Its about creating and using paranoia to seize power.

Ever since 9/11, asians and middle-eastern people have been facing a hell of a time with border security agents in the US (my last trip to the US, I observed 17 people being pulled out for “random” security checks at JFK… only all 17 were asian!!!).

After this, I don’t think I would ever want to travel to the US!!!

By: Roman ShaRP

Roman ShaRP — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:09:34 +0000

Like they say, if that is not police state – tell me what is police state.

By: Arp

Arp — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:45:50 +0000

The without suspicion paradox is bullsh*t. Shipping by Fedex would be worth not losing a $2k investment.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:32:36 +0000

>But that isnt effective.

Of course it isn’t. Such policies are about seizing power when they can get it, not about actually fighting terrorism or some other crap (whatever the current trend is).

>The without suspicious is a paradox, if they don’t have suspicion why would they take your laptop in the first place.

Because they don’t like your face. Very solid argument for lots of people (no matter what the country is btw).

On topic – data searches are one thing (if you really want to hide data they’d have to search every single byte and could still miss it) but seizing actual hardware sucks.

By: darkkosmos

darkkosmos — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:25:22 +0000

The without suspicious is a paradox, if they don’t have suspicion why would they take your laptop in the first place. I don’t mind because if I need to take a laptop I ship an harddrive to the US first. Most of the complainers are just worried the agents are going to find their CP and Pirate Software/Movie/Music.

By: Ashish Mohta

Ashish Mohta — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:19:56 +0000

@Rarst: But that isnt effective. Can they hold somebody outside US that way ?

This makes them catch everybody. I guess Indians will have a bad time . at least 70% of the software used in India are illegal

By: Ashish Mohta

Ashish Mohta — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:10:43 +0000

Looks like its time we need to put all our data on the cloud ;)

By: Rarst

Rarst — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:06:11 +0000

At least those who thought of something that stupid hadn’t heard about Internet yet.

Any TCP/IP packet passing US border can be sized without suspicion… :)

By: Yogi

Yogi — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:50:20 +0000

This is completely insane.

The U.S. has ceased to be a democracy. I guess its an Idiocracy now…