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ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content
- tomflack 15y agoForce? Hardly. Read it for yourself: http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jsct/21november2011/treaties/anti_counterfeiting_text.pdf http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jsct/21november2011/tr... In particular, Article 14. ARTICLE 14: SMALL CONSIGNMENTS AND PERSONAL LUGGAGE 1. Each Party shall include in the application of this Section goods of a commercial nature sent in small consignments. 2. A Party may exclude from the application of this Section small quantities of goods of a non-commercial nature contained in travellers’ personal luggage. Note it is may exclude and as such it's up to the individual countries on how they implement this. I've contacted my government representatives (Australia) to find out their position on this section. Edit: More information in this fact sheet http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/factsheet.html http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/factsheet.html
- cynest 15y agoHow does one determine whether something is pirated in these cases? All the music I've bought in the past few months has been distributed to me DRM-free so there exists no difference between it and a pirated copy other than a receipt. To make a long story short, having to proved that I have licenses for everything on my computer is utter crap.
- scotty79 15y agoIf you run a company that's the rules. If you can't prove that you are licensed to use every single piece of software that you have on your computer then you can have your whole computer (or just the hard drive) confiscated and held for indefinite amount of time by the police probably long enough to technology become obsolete and your withheld data to become meaningless. At least that's how it looks in Poland. Using any non opensource software is so scary that I wonder why would anyone pay and take the risk. There was even one case when polish company purchased software directly from the US but polish distributor of this software insisted that it was pirated because they didn't sell it. Police went in. Confiscated computers and media for investigation. Software was essential for operation of this company so the company died.
- Iv 15y agoTo be fair, the goal of that law is to allow arbitrary detention of computers without any kind of justification. I wonder however how they would confiscate my laptop running only free software. Well, they could always pretend it is stolen : I usually don't have the receipt of it while travelling.
- spindritf 15y ago> I wonder however how they would confiscate my laptop running only free software. No one knows a priori what software you have on your laptop. They either have to take your word for it or analyse the contents of the disk -- and that's a reason to withhold your equipment. I'm sure it would be returned. Eventually.
- vladd 15y ago> Using any non opensource software is so scary that I wonder why would anyone pay and take the risk. In Romania, businesses must fill each month online statements, but such fillings can only be done with Microsoft Internet Explorer, and there's no option to fill them in person. So you're forced to use non opensource software.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- eliasmacpherson 15y agoI know you may be aware of this already and could have tried it, but in case not: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ie-view-lite/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ie-view-lite/ It's a firefox plugin that can run iexplorer through wine under linux.
- onemoreact 15y agoiexplorer is not open source.
- mvzink 15y agoFear wins out over laziness: finally downloading TrueCrypt.
- tomflack 15y agoI haven't read the whole thing yet, but a quick glance through shows Article 11: ARTICLE 11: INFORMATION RELATED TO INFRINGEMENT Without prejudice to its law governing privilege, the protection of confidentiality of information sources, or the processing of personal data, each Party shall provide that, in civil judicial proceedings concerning the enforcement of intellectual property rights, its judicial authorities have the authority, upon a justified request of the right holder, to order the infringer or, in the alternative, the alleged infringer, to provide to the right holder or to the judicial authorities, at least for the purpose of collecting evidence, relevant information as provided for in its applicable laws and regulations that the infringer or alleged infringer possesses or controls. Such information may include information regarding any person involved in any aspect of the infringement or alleged infringement and regarding the means of production or the channels of distribution of the infringing or allegedly infringing goods or services, including the identification of third persons alleged to be involved in the production and distribution of such goods or services and of their channels of distribution. It seems like this might cover a court ordering you to provide the password to determine infringement. However the first sentence might get you off the hook if you're a doctor or lawyer or other similarly privileged professional who has information about your clients on your laptop. I'll update this when I finish reading it tomorrow if I find anything more specific.
- spdy 15y agoCan the US Custom force someone to unlock an encrypted drive or deny entry if you dont comply ? Im fine with the search but they have no right to scan my notebook etc.
- tnuc 15y agoThey can't really deny you entry if you have a US passport. Yes they can charge you/confiscate if you don't cooperate/unlock your data. You might be better off hiding it in plain view, it's not like they're going to do much more than a cursory glance.
- felixfurtak 15y agoIf you're that worried about your data, tar, gpg and then dd it to an unused portion of your hd.
- dbuxton 15y agoThe tone of this entire thread is very paranoid and it's not helped by slightly rash comments like this. The EFF says that you can't be required to unlock encrypted files without a court order. https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-travelers-carrying-digital-devices https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-gui... Whether or not that's a good idea is up to you and certainly (as a non-US citizen) I'd be very reluctant to start making a fuss - if I had anything sufficiently sensitive that a long flight home seemed the less-bad option, I would have just sent it in parallel. FWIW I'm a Canadian citizen and when returning to that country I refuse, politely, to answer any questions whatsoever (which have become really quite intrusive) on the grounds that there is no legal requirement to answer. It often leads to a customs screen (which is a ten minute delay/irritation) but there, and I assume in the US, there is no right to deny entry to someone holding valid travel documents.
- bwooce 15y agoYes. They can also take your property away to search it, returning it months later. The final decision of entry to a country(at that point) lies with the immigration officer. I imagine you can ask nicely for a review after you've been flown back to your point of origin. I'll dig up some links, but seizure of non-citizen's computers at US borders is possible and scary. I treat the US border like a hackers conference - take a freshly imaged device, and refresh it on your return.
- yason 15y agoRegardless of ACTA, I have already established a personal policy to: 1) encrypt my partitions (other than root, to make upgrades and reinstalls easier; I use LUKS) 2) copy the essential first megabytes of each LUKS partition to my server or shell account somewhere, encrypted with GPG 3) fill that space with random data 4) travel and go through customs 5) access the GPG encrypted LUKS blocks over internet, decrypt and copy them over 6) boot back into my system If at 4) "they" require me to decrypt the partitions, I can honestly say I can't: for security reasons I don't have the decryption keys with me. If my equipment gets confiscated when they hear I won't and can't decrypt the partitions, I will have to clean the physical laptop to remove any keyloggers, or just replace it before proceeding to restore my encrypted setup. If "they" find out about my encrypted LUKS blocks, I can also ask my friend to provide half of the GPG passphrase, so that I can honestly claim I don't have the passphrase to unlock the blocks.
- coryl 15y agoNot a lawyer here, but I've heard some BS laws about encryption. In some cases if you refuse to decrypt or are unable, you can be at fault and still be detained. Needs citation though.
- tsotha 15y agoAre you talking about In re Boucher? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Boucher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Boucher In that case the government could only compel the defendant to produce his keys because they already knew what was on the drive in question.
- arto 15y agoIn the UK, they already claim the power to jail you if you don't hand over the password: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/06/jail_password_ripa/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/06/jail_password_ripa/
- cookiecaper 15y agoThey are definitely going after full-disk encryption hard, claiming it makes it impossible to prosecute child pornographers and should therefore be illegal.
- newhouseb 15y agoIf true, this has to be one of the more bizarre ways to counteract piracy I have ever seen. I don't know what percentage of piracy is enabled by people carrying hard drives full of pirated movies across borders, but I'm sure it is vanishingly small - that is, after all, what pirates use the _internet_ for.
- scotty79 15y agoIt is not to stop piracy. It is to detect and punish people who have pirated content in their possession. You can't invade people's homes but you can search them thoroughly while crossing the border. People are used to having their privacy invaded while crossing the border.
- molmalo 15y agoYep, They may think "let's just punish a few thousands and will make an example of them, showing that we are serious about this now." Can somebody tell me if this is expected to be enforced only to citizens from countries that actually signed ACTA, or also to everyone else?
- Iv 15y agoThe problem is that I have signed a contract with my company that says I must keep the data on my company laptop private and encrypted. There are trade secrets in there. What should I do ? Only have blank laptops to cross the border and download everything through ssh once on the other side ? Talk about a waste of time.
- robocat 15y agoIf from overseas, would it help to have a business own the laptop, and its data? You can then legitimately say the business owns the illegal data, or deny knowledge of a hidden partition, or say you have no access to a key? [Posted using my own account... not a US citizen and not hoping to travel there. If I were extradited i guess i wouldnt take any equipment or data!]
- newhouseb 15y ago
- manmal 15y agoThis is no news, I heard about this years ago from friends going to the US as exchange students. There were random laptop harddisk searches, luckily they were spared.
- iamandrus 15y agoAll my drives are already TrueCrypted. I have nothing to hide, but I do not want to be treated like a criminal for doing something as simple as crossing the US border.
- nickik 15y agoPlease stop saying "I have nothing to hide" after talking about crypto. You imply that most people who use crypto have somthing to hide, witch is not the case.
- koke 15y agoThe reality is, pretty much every time I land in the US by laptop is out of battery :)
- kellyreid 15y agoI KNOW! If we can't attack these PIRATES online, in their magical pirate cloud, we'll hit them where it already hurts...AIRPORTS! what better way to stop piracy than to harass travelers? i can think of none.
- raphman 15y agoEFF on countermeasures: 'Defending Privacy at the U.S. Border: A Guide for Travelers Carrying Digital Devices' (December 2011) https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-travelers-carrying-digital-devices https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-gui...
- raphman 15y agoOh, what a coincidence ;) http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3496475 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3496475
- Zancarius 15y agoHaha! That is a strange coincidence indeed but not altogether surprising given the subject matter. It's possible someone read your post and submitted it. Just to clarify, raphman did post his link before it was submitted as a story should anyone be wondering once this moves out of the resolution of a day. raphman 7 hours ago [link] Defending Privacy at the U.S. Border... 144 points by llambda 5 hours ago
- tzs 15y agoThere is a lot of FUD about ACTA (such as this submission). There was a very good post on Reddit a few hours ago that goes into great detail about what it ACTUALLY does: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/or8ag/ive_read_the_final_version_of_acta_heres_what_you/ http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/or8ag/ive_read_the...
- guard-of-terra 15y agoThat's why nobody wants to come to USA any more. You might have to, but the experience is questionable due to American customs having no respect whatsoever for privacy or personal belongings. All your luggage are belongs to them, in other words. Compare with Europe/Schengen where that simply is not a problem. And that clumsiness and ignorance gets copied into international treaties.
- mbesto 15y agoThat's why nobody wants to come to USA any more. I have to respectfully disagree. The amount of people (mainly Europeans) I meet who tell me they want to move to the US is still very substantial. In my experience, the perception of the American dream is still very real in a large portion of the world's eyes. As long as America continues to present it's theater politics through it's media outlets, people won't know what actually happens.
- guard-of-terra 15y agoThey want to move into USA for whatever reason, but the process is getting there isn't very fun, so I've heard. Also, sometimes people have to move into USA, instead of "want". Also, if we're talking about software developers and startup founders, you can't bullshit this kind of people for a long period of time. They'd figure it out. Well, they did.
- tatsuke95 15y agoYou're American, I presume? I will also assume that, being on Hacker News, you're in the computer field? If that's the case, of course most Europeans you talk to want to move to the US. California (possibly New York) is kind of appealing like that. But as a non-American, I can tell you that very few people I meet believe America is where it's at, mainly because of social policies like this one.
- rue 15y agoAs a counterpoint I'll offer that I'm from Europe, lived in the States, came back home, and have no wish to return stateside (not really even for a visit). I can work remotely.
- ig1 15y agoHave a second laptop you use for travelling and treat it as unsecure. Any time a laptop is out of your control, especially when it's held by (any)government, you might as well assume it has had spyware installed on it. Plus you're at a much higher risk of theft while travelling abroad so you definitely should avoid having confidential business documents, etc. on it. I use a netbook for travelling which gets a blanket format & reinstall before and after it goes travelling. Even then there's a risk that it might have had a hardware keylogger installed on it (this has happened to business people travelling to China in the past).
- a_a_r_o_n 15y agoYou use the netbook (or cheap laptop) because it's cheap to replace/lose if confiscated. Your business or other legal data is encrypted in the cloud. If your business or other operation would not be harmed by customs having the data, have it also on the netbook for you convenience. Your encrypted data in the cloud isn't there to keep it sekrit from the government, it's there so you can get it at the other end. If your netbook is not confiscated, or out of your sight for a suspicious period, then great. If it's gone for a suspicious time, don't use it on the plane and get rid of it on the other end after wiping it. If the netbook is confiscated or otherwise compromised, get a cheap netbook on the other end, download your clouded data, and biz on. Repeat as necessary. This doesn't protect your illegal (or impossible to prove legal) data, it just allows you to continue to operate after traveling through a bad neighborhood (the airport).
- prawn 15y agoNot sure how thorough their searches are, but could you leave a fairly boring drive in your laptop, and carry the real one externally, perhaps partly disguised (phone maybe)? "Oh, this old thing? Stopped working the other week. Seeing if my friend can fix it for me - I think the battery has failed."
- brador 15y agoI do believe Micro SD are up to 32gb so you could just leave that external at home...or cloud it all/home server.
- kaybe 15y agoNot working is no good. The only kind of inspection of electronics I've had so far is firing them up to see whether they actually are what they look like (of course it would be easy to circumvent that, but hey).
- quadhome 15y agoIf detained at the border, and all your storage is encrypted, many countries have laws that require you to reveal your passphrase. OK. But, what about key escrow? What if I gave the keys to my attorney? Can I be compelled to lie to my attorney about whether I'm under arrest? Or Jacob Appelbaum, who carries USB drives with the Bill of Rights encoded on them. If the remaining blocks were noise, would he have to somehow prove they weren't encrypted data? This all seems very unsustainable.
- tatsuke95 15y agoEncryption or no encryption, or any of these other little games won't do anything. Look, if border patrol is in the wrong mood and you try to pull a "well, I'd let you see it but it's encrypted and I don't have the key!" they're going to detain you until they have the information they want. So what's the point? That's the real issue here: we've given more authority to uneducated, power-hungry citizens to mistreat others at will.
- ThomPete 15y agoIn other words. This means cloud storage services will be one of the businesses who will se a huge increase in sales next coming years. Anyone want to partner up :)
- nxn 15y agoI tend to think otherwise with the recent Megauploads situation; plenty of people lost their personal data with no warning and through no fault of their own. The "no fault of their own" part is obviously being challenged by those who claim that the data should have been saved in multiple places. Though I think this just avoids the real issue of the bust having negatively affected users that had legitimate use cases for the service.
- freejack 15y agoThis particular wikipedia article focuses more on the development of ACTA, and public comment and rumour during its development, than it does on the actual text of ACTA, a public document. I haven't read the actual text, and I imagine that the issue of whether or not ACTA will force border searches is definitively answered by the treaty itself. The Wikipedia passage in question appears to have been written in response to rumours and leaks dating back to 2009.
- freejack 15y agoI've done some more reading since, and my arm-chair legal review seems to indicate that most, if not all, search and seizure happening in this area is due to U.S. policy and legislation and not ACTA. i.e. DHS, etc. have their own policies rooted in US law that seems to permit this type of search and seizure. I didn't do a thorough analysis, nor am I am lawyer, nor am I an ACTA supporter, and I think that the wikipedia article referenced is poorly written and not thoroughly representative of the current status of ACTA, its powers and effect. (edit: it looks like some of the other commenters have picked up on this as well - definitely worth a thorough read of all the comments for a more current view of what we're actually getting with ACTA, I found this post especially helpful [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496277 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496277)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Apreche 15y agoNever store anything important on a laptop hard drive, ever. Erase all hard discs with dban before going through customs. Upload to a safe place before you leave, download when you get back.
- ojilles 15y agoAnd your mobile. And... And...
- uptown 15y agoWhat's the general consensus on services like iTunes Match, and Google Music where you're essentially exposing your audio collection to a 3rd party? Couldn't this library be subjected to the same type of review?
- Void_ 15y agoBuy small "travel" HDD, replace before traveling.
- danenania 15y agoWhat strikes me most strongly about all this is how utterly weird it is. Border guards give 'enhanced pat downs' to a middle class suburban family and find no weapons or contraband, but then open the family computer to find an unlicensed Finding Nemo avi, and haul them all off to jail. It's just such a bizarre mix of nanny-state and fascism. I know it's a pointless rhetorical question, but... how on earth has it come to this??
- pwg 15y ago> how on earth has it come to this?? First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. Martin Niemöller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came%E2%80%A6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came%E2%80%A6) It has come to this one small step at a time. That is how politicians work. They know that the "whole" is to scary for voters to accept all at once. So they find just what they can get away with this year, then grab a tiny bit more next year, and so on. Eventually, everyone looks back and thinks "how on earth has it come to this??"
- tjoff 15y agoThe scary part is that I don't imagine any politician actually wanting this. Or am I just too naive?
- omgsean 15y agoThey're not scrutinized at the border.
- batista 15y agoI'll go with the too naive. What they want is maximum power/profit. And it's not politicians --those are mostly puppets. America is/is becoming a corporate state, and corporatism was the very essence of Mussolini's fascism. The very notion of lobbyist groups is fascistic (Mussolini himself partitioned the power system in Italy to consist of various group interests in a great extend). Power and law become then an exchange between groups (lobbying), experts (often paid lackeys of said groups), and politicians, and democracy goes out of the window. The democratic alternative would have been several opposed political parties, so that the play for power is open to the general masses --the population that supports them-- directly, and is carried out as a public struggle for the vote. But the differences between Republicans and Democrats in most matters are mostly marginal or a joke, and mainly in issues that don't matter to the actual power play --- like playing pro or against "gay marriage" to appeal to conservative or progressive voters, the same voters that both parties pass laws to make them poorer and more controlled in every possible way.
- easy_rider 15y agoIssn't this what they do in North Korea ?
- Craiggybear 15y agoHow can they tell it is pirated? I mean, the audio files may have been ripped from a legit CD. They can't tell for sure. Similarly, I may have ripped an AVI from a legit DVD. For my own convenience while traveling. I sometimes do.
- nickik 15y ago"ripping" what are you taling about? Making up words want help you, go to jail you terrorist-socialist-facist-pirate.
- arethuza 15y ago"I may have ripped an AVI from a legit DVD" Ripping a DVD is, I believe, a criminal act in the US and a number of other countries (including the UK). http://www.audiostream.com/content/ripping-crime http://www.audiostream.com/content/ripping-crime
- Craiggybear 15y agoIs it? I thought it was fair use. Like cassette recording an album in ye olden analogue days. To stop vinyl wear-and-tear. That was certainly perfectly legal as long as it wasn't distributed. Sigh. I'm a criminal and don't even know it. I'm fucking sick of paying taxes and yet still being labelled a criminal by people who don't even know me. I'm sure I'm not alone.
- arethuza 15y agoI believe it's because DVDs do have a trivial copyright protection scheme on them - ripping the DVD involves breaking this and it's this part that causes the real trouble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Circumvention_of_DVD_copy_protection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Circumvention_of_DVD_co...
- greiskul 15y agoFrom the article you linked: "This case made clear that manufacturing and distribution of circumvention tools was illegal, but use of those tools for non-infringing purposes, including fair use purposes, was not." So it is legal to rip a DVD, it is illegal to make or distribute a tool that allows DVD ripping. Yes, the law is insane like that.
- bane 15y agoWow, this won't slow things down at the border. On another note. How long before tools come out that "fidget" with media files on your computer so you can defeat CRC match scans of media on your computer? "Well the file is Finding Nemo.avi, but it doesn't match any of the known pirated copies of that movie." Finally, how is this not a gross violation of the right to privacy? This has about as much chance of standing up in SCOTUS as a new law reinstating slavery IMHO.
- napierzaza 15y agoThis is annoying, especially since I might very well want to rip the DVDs I own to my laptop so I can watch them on the plane without fumbling with shitty disks. Also, are TSA agents now capable of understanding what is fair use now since they have trouble with the volume of liquid I am able to bring? What if someone has a bunch of legally licensed AVIs ? You get side-lined for a 3-4 hours. They should open a little MPAA lawyer's office in the airport. He'll help you negotiate a settlement before you get on the next leg of your flight to Houston.
- damoncali 15y agoThis is, of course, ridiculous. But I think SOPA has some missing the broader point. It looks to me like the target of this is drug smugglers and other "organized criminals", not some family on vacation in Canada or your linux laptop. It gives law enforcement an easy excuse to dig into the laptops of suspected smugglers and thugs. And that kind of thinking is very, very dangerous. Much worse than SOPA - which, to be frank, was going to be used much like patents are - as a corporate bludgeon in a war for profits (in my opinon- obviously this is speculation). This idea is a direct violation individual freedoms with no greater goal than to exert control over the populace. It's also a signal that the concept of trade restriction is deeply and dangerously flawed.
- rglover 15y agoReally? Are politicians and the entertainment industry this dependent on each other? It seems like the battle cry of both parties is "we're too lazy to come up with our own safe guards, so let's just do the most unnecessary thing that comes to mind. Wait, why are we doing this? Oh right, money." It's downright pathetic to see those in control having panic attacks in the form of legislation. Next google search: the finer points of being an expatriate.
- mrdingle 15y agoLets take this seriously for a second. Say we're actually trying to catch cyber criminals and child pornographers and we're discussing enacting this law. Someone speaks up and says, "For all the discomfort and trouble we're putting innocent people through, the real criminals will just store their data online and travel with cleaned computers." How do you continue enacting this legislation? I'm trying to be as serious as possible. How does any legislator look at the people they represent and come to the conclusion that this is a good idea?
- ivanbernat 15y agoIn my opinion this is exactly like SOPA, a corporation-sponsored bill. Why would any government care if you "pirate" a movie? There is no tax on cinemas, but you pay an tax + extra fees if you're buying blank CD/DVDs -- because they presume you're going to write ("burn") illegal content.
- mrdingle 15y agoPut copyright aside for a sec and lets try to actually frame it in the case of child porn or drug trafficking. How can any legislator conclude that disrupting the public like this is acceptable after having a reasonable discussion about how easy it would be for criminals to circumvent? The hugely ironic part of all of this is that laws like this don't make moving data harder for criminals. It just forces them to use better data-securing practices in their day to day lives which make it harder for local law enforcement to get their job done. The only impact I can see this legislation having is making law abiding citizens upset with their democracy.
- CamperBob 15y agoPut copyright aside for a sec and lets try to actually frame it in the case of child porn or drug trafficking. How can any legislator conclude that disrupting the public like this is acceptable after having a reasonable discussion about how easy it would be for criminals to circumvent? Did you see the excerpts from the SOPA hearings? The legislators can conclude that this degree of disruption is acceptable because they are morons.
- c16 15y agoSurely you'd be better off having an empty netbook and using RDP to connect to a home server? At least then nothing is encrypted, they are free to look at the hard drive and could happily confiscate it without you having any issues. Worst comes to the worst, if you use dynDNS, you could just change the URL you use to connect.
- runjake 15y agoTo me, the following passage from the link demonstrates the dire situation in the US: In July 2008, the United States Department of Homeland Security disclosed that its border search policies allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to conduct random searches of electronic devices for "information concerning terrorism, narcotics smuggling, and other national security matters; alien admissibility; contraband including child pornography, monetary instruments, and information in violation of copyright or trademark laws; and evidence of embargo violations or other import or export control laws."[61][62] US Senator Russell Feingold called the policies "truly alarming" and proposed to introduce legislation to require reasonable suspicion of illegality and to prohibit racial profiling.[61] The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has previously upheld the constitutionality of laptop searches without reasonable suspicion at border crossings.[61] Sure, Feingold could introduce new legislation already covered by the 4th amendment. But if the government isn't going to pay attention to a founding document of the US, what makes him think they're going to pay attention to his piddly law?
- mbreese 15y agoTwo things: 1) Feingold can't introduce anything anymore, since he is no longer a Senator. (This tells you how long it has been since this section of the wikipedia article has been edited). 2) Even for US citizens, there is no right for people to bring whatever they want into the country. Once you leave the country, you lose 4th amendment protections. So, if you don't want to be searched, don't bring anything with you. It has nothing to do with the Constitution since the Constitution stops at the border.
- runjake 15y agoOn #2, no it doesn't. Not for US citizens. Well, it DOES in practice, but not in terms of our constitutional rights, imho.
- mbreese 15y agoYou're right that US citizens still have rights when dealing with the government wherever we might be. However, the 4th amendment protects US citizens against unreasonable search and seizure. But crossing the border gives the gov't a reason to search...
- rll 15y agoHasn't this been in effect since 2008? I have probably entered the US 100 times since then and have never had anyone show any interest in searching any of my devices, nor have I noticed them looking at anybody else's devices. Or did I miss something that is going to make them start doing this actively now? It is still scary as hell that this is possible at all, of course.
- rayiner 15y agoStop buying BigContent. If they don't find Finding Nemo on your disk, there is nothing they can do.
- daintynews 15y agoSupposedly, if your hard drive is encrypted, customs agents can hold your computer indefinitely if you refuse to provide the password. The irony is that gigabytes of encrypted data cross national borders every second -- over the internet. So dump your important data in an encrypted file and put it on a file sharing web site, or a VPS, or whatever, and download it again when you get across the border. Nobody with "interesting" data (and half a brain) will be physically bringing it across a border. The searches are useless.
- mbreese 15y agoWhile I appreciate the concern over ACTA, this is a wikipedia article. The particular section cites: a) a Vancouver Sun article from 2008; b) a blog post from 2009; c) a Globe and Mail article from 2008; and d) a Washington Post article from 2008. All of these are somewhat speculative. It also cites a Customs and Border Patrol policy paper which affirms that customs has the right to search people as they enter the country. Also part of the wikipedia entry is a quote from a European Commission fact sheet that directly counters the notion that ACTA will lead to the wide-spread searching of iPods of consumers. If you want to argue that something is draconian and will force (not merely allow) searches, then at least come up with something more substantial than wikipedia.
- batista 15y agoI find it amusing about how this comment thread turned all about technical solutions (from hidden partitions, to encryption, to steganography, to dual booting, etc). Now, I understand that as "hackers" we are likely to go on about technical measures to avert this kind of search. But, that's not the point. The point is they should not violate your privacy in the first place. And that is a political problem. It would be nice if most of the comments were about how to avert ACTA in the first place. You, know, like SOPA, but even better.
- derleth 15y ago> I find it amusing about how this comment thread turned all about technical solutions And people using 'fascism' as a general-purpose pejorative with no understanding of the history of the world. http://www.anesi.com/Fascism-TheUltimateDefinition.htm http://www.anesi.com/Fascism-TheUltimateDefinition.htm
- batista 15y agoIf you're talking about me regarding other comments in this thread, I'm not from parts of the world that need to be pointed to some online article for the history of fascism. On top of this, I have read extensively on the subject, from Adorno to Isaiah Berlin, including fringe cases like dr. Wilhelm Reich and his "Mass Psychology of Fascism". I'm not using it as a "general-purpose pejorative" (as in: "oh, the cop hit me in the demonstration, fascism!", or "TSA cupped my privates, oh, the fascism!"). I'm making an exact analogy to the actual historical form fascism, which you may agree or disagree with.
- venusaur 15y agoI'm travelling to the states next week. I have a lot of pirated content (books and music) on my hidden encrypted partition on my laptop and external HD. Should I be worried, and what are my options if I do get stopped? (I'm actually a regular user - this is a throwaway account for obvious reasons).
- ctchocula 15y agoI'm not an expert on this, but judging from the discussion above based on the EFF guide, it sounds like hidden partitions aren't recommended. The consensus seems to be that they may have ways of detecting hidden partitions and may ask you if you have any, placing you in a situation where you have to decide whether or not to lie to them. If you do, you could get busted for lying. If you don't lie, then it's the same as having full-disk encryption except it's slightly more suspicious and you'll be in the situation where you're not obliged to tell them the password, but they will take it into consideration in deciding whether or not to let you into the US. I don't know how long you're planning to stay in the States, but it might be wise to bring an empty laptop and certainly not an external HD if it's for a short visit.
- keeperofdakeys 15y agoI really do wonder what they would do if they saw a linux laptop, especially if you are using a simple window manager, and only had a terminal available. Would they flag you for being 'suspicious'? Dual booting handles most of it though, changing it to boot instantly while going through the airport.
- spyder 15y agoJust upload your pirated content to Megaupload before travelling and download on arriving. This is what they want, isn't ? :)