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"DHS lawyers claimed that international travel provides, in and of itself, sufficient Constitutional basis for detention and search of international travellers
by sbarre 13y ago
"DHS lawyers claimed that international travel provides, in and of itself, sufficient Constitutional basis for detention and search of international travellers and the search, seizure and copying of the digital contents of their belongings."
Really? Fucking hell.. With every month that goes by, I am less and less inclined to travel to, or do business in, the US..
edit: I'm aware that later in the article they say the courts didn't really agree with this, but it doesn't seem to be preventing it from happening, especially when, after they got what they needed (I call bullshit on "destroy all copies"), they just back down and convince the victim to drop the case.
- maratd 13y ago> Really? Fucking hell.. With every month that goes by, I am less and less inclined to travel to, or do business in, the US.. The insinuation being that the US is the only country doing this? I hate this sort of thing as much as the next guy, but let's not pretend the US is the only country engaging in this behavior. We can certainly expect better, but don't blind yourself to the obvious. Based on recent events, maybe you shouldn't be traveling anywhere, period.
- greenyoda 13y agoIndeed. David Miranda was detained by British agents in London.
- carlob 13y agoIsrael is pretty bad in this department as well. I hear that visiting Israel with an Arabic last name, or, god forbid, trying to go visit Palestine from an Israeli airport will land you in all sorts of trouble. In fact I don't plan to visit Israel any time soon. I believe this is the sentiment of grandparent commenter, the fact that there might be other places where something like this happens is no excuse for a beacon of democracy such as the US.
- maratd 13y ago> I hear that visiting Israel with an Arabic last name, or, god forbid, trying to go visit Palestine from an Israeli airport will land you in all sorts of trouble. I hear that visiting Arab countries with a Jewish last name, or, god forbid, trying to go visit Israel from an Arabian airport will land you in all sorts of trouble. Any particular reason you're picking on one and not the other? A bit hypocritical, don't you think? That was the point of my comment. Let's stop now, ok? We're all in the same boat.
- umsm 13y agoI believe he was just giving an example. It didn't seem like he wanted to offend anyone.
- Amadou 13y agoIsrael, and the USA, make a big deal about being representative democracies and champions of human rights. Anytime their deeds don't match their words, criticism is warranted. The Saudis and other monarchy/dictatorships in the middle east don't make any such pretense.
- Shivetya 13y agoat least Israel has the excuse of having enemies on its borders if not within. Not sure what my country's excuse is other than, we're too big to be failed.
- carlob 13y agoFirst off both of what the sibling posters said is true. 1. Israel makes big claims of being an advanced democracy, unlike the Saudi monarchy 2. I wasn't singling Israel in particular. I wouldn't visit Saudi Arabia for the exact same reasons. But there is another point where your parallel breaks, there is no way to get to Palestine without going through Israel, so if you are a social worker involved with the welfare issues in West Bank or Gaza, or even a Christian pilgrim trying to go to Betlehem, you have no choice but to submit to the ordeal.
- BoppreH 13y agoThis doesn't lessen the severity of the issue. And we can only avoid the ones we know about, so until further evidence appears the USA gets the spotlight.
- sbarre 13y agoI wasn't insinuating anything. I said nothing more, or less, than what I said. Any insinuation or implication otherwise is of your own making, and is quite disingenuous I would add. I live in Canada, so I'm on the border with the US, and while I have certainly travelled worldwide (including to some less than democratic countries), I have overwhelmingly travelled to the US, both for business and personal. And over the last while, I have become increasingly uncomfortable crossing the border into the US, as compared to how it used to be, based on hearing more and more stories of detention and unreasonable search (both in the media and personal accounts from people I know). I have personally experienced at the very least a new level of hostility and aggressive questioning on a few occasions that I had not experienced before. So certainly there are other countries where this type of treatment is possible at the border, but I am expressing dismay at the fact that the US is now "one of those" countries, when it didn't used to be. And yes, "unreasonable" is in the eye of the beholder, but they're my eyes thank you very much, so I may eventually just opt out of visiting the US for any reason.
- bobf 13y agoFor a perspective from the other side of the border (I'm from the US): I've been to Canada a few times as a tourist and on business over the past decade, never staying more than a few days. Every time, without exception, I've been on the receiving end of "aggressive", extended questioning, ranging from such oddities as "You're here for our free health care, aren't you? Admit it! Just tell us you don't have insurance!" to lines of questioning that suggest involvement with a drug cartel. I've also been subjected to extensive physical searches of all my belongings. (And just to be clear, I'm a healthy, Caucasian, 20-something, US born-and-raised, male.) I often think of most Canadians as being friendlier than a lot of people around the US, but immigration and border control aren't one of those areas.
- brightsize 13y agoI currently live in eastern Washington state. Up until around 2003, I lived in Seattle. In 2003 and in prior years, entering Canada was as smooth as could be. The people at the Canadian border checkpoints were friendly and asked minimal questions. I always found my re-entry back into the U.S. to be a more rude, though not particularly arduous an ordeal as going the other way. My most recent entry into .ca was quite the opposite. Bear in mind these are very rural crossing points, nothing like the I5 transit. The most recent Canadian agent was somewhat gruff and unpleasant, asking quite a few questions. Come to think of it, in a prior .ca entry, with a female friend from the UK, the Canadian agent seemed to be convinced that we were entering Canada for the purpose of getting married and asked us repeatedly whether we had such plans. After multiple denials, he went on to advise us not to do so anyway. What??? My crossings back into the U.S. from Canada very recently have been fairly painless compared to going the other way.
- joering2 13y ago> The insinuation being that the US is the only country doing this? Can you please make up your mind? Either Americans are "exceptional" and this is "the best country in the world", or not. If not then I don't think its okay to hate on others when they are upset with things happening on this soil. As we all know things in US go downhill since a while. This issue would not suprise in Russia in 80s or on Cuba, but if US is exceptional then it will be judged by exceptional rules. In this case it shows US fails miserably on "land of the free, home of the brave".
- rhizome 13y agoI have long speculated that the US chooses Cuba, NK, Russia, China, et al, as "enemies" purely out of jealousy.
- rayiner 13y agoI bet you'd call Zuck "exceptional" but I'd bet he's dead average athletically.
- fsck--off 13y agoBy "Zuck" do you mean Mark Zuckerberg? Mark Zuckerberg was the captain of the fencing team at Phillip Exeter, which requires much more than average athletic skills.
- ThomPete 13y agoIts not the only one but it shouldn't be one of those who do. Go to the scandinavian countries and experience how effective, friendly and welcoming airport terminals can be.
- lflux 13y agoThe only thing welcoming of landing at Arlanda is that my 3G data starts working again, and I have access to Eduroam. Arriving from ex-Schengen, especially at the non F-pier gates (due to the small passport control where you have to go up 3 flights of stairs and then down), isn't very welcoming at all.
- ThomPete 13y agoWe are not talking inconvenience here. We are talking the process of getting into the country or through security.
- United857 13y agoYes, and I think people forget this in singling out the US. Remember that the Five Eyes (US/UK/CA/AU/NZ) essentially operate as one security mechanism.
- jlgaddis 13y agoSince I first heard about FVEY, I have assumed that each of the member countries has total unrestricted access to 100% of the data that any of the other member countries have collected. The more that we find out, the more I believe that that is an accurate assumption.
- coldtea 13y agoThere's no way that the other 4 eyes have "100% unrestricted access to the data" of the big one...
- g8oz 13y agoThats true, only Israel has that, as per recent revelations.
- einhverfr 13y agoIsrael doesn't have unrestricted access. The access is contingent on Israel promising not to use it to spy on us ;-)
- einhverfr 13y agoYou are probably right. Given the MOU with Israel, there are restrictions certainly for other governments. Those restrictions include, presumably, that they agree that among eachother they promise not to read achothers' emails, and furthermore if they do this and use the information to spy on our government, they promise to do so discretely....
- rhizome 13y agoBased on recent events, maybe you shouldn't be traveling anywhere, period. So, one should give up their freedom of movement because "recent events" have caused institutions to implement policies to eliminate it? Also, "everybody's doing it" is a pretty distasteful rationale.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoIt seems to me that US is one of a select few countries who actually employ a lot of people full-time parting travelers with their electronics and harassing them. A lot more countries reserve rights to do so; US actually do it on a grand scale. That makes all the difference.
- monksy 13y agoI'm not sure that this is really the case. I believe that it has gotten worse over the years, mostly due to politics and the fact that most people in the US do not have to deal with this. [We have a rather passport-holding-population]
- AJ007 13y agoYou should never cross any border, US or otherwise, with a mobile phone, laptop, or any sensitive documents. Neither should your employees, if their device are user for work. This is not a new revelation. Industrial espionage by spy services has been ongoing for a very long time.
- mmagin 13y agoHow would you put this into action if you're a typical business traveler? It doesn't seem very practical.
- eru 13y agoEncrypt your stuff, and put it online.
- malandrew 13y agoThe typical business traveler doesn't need gigabytes and gigabytes of documents. If you are traveling and need sensitive documents, buy a new laptop at your destination and load the data you need on it. When leaving, wipe it and leave it in a place where you or another employee can pick it up next time they are in that country. It's unfortunate that business people (as opposed to programmers) typically don't have something as compact and transferrable as dotfiles for getting up and running on a branch new machine. The question is how to travel with a new set of private keys securely so you don't give them up on exit. Coming back isn't a problem because you can just revoke access for that temporary public-private key pair before you log off during your last ssh session before returning to the country. I don't think this is practical now. But it is a known problem and solutions for quickly getting a machine up and running are getting better and better. I imagine that a chef or puppet script could be used on the new machine to get everything up and running. You just need to ssh in once to fetch the script that would set up the machine at your destination.
- jlgaddis 13y agoThe organization should have a number of laptops designated solely for international use. They should be restored to the org's "gold image" and kept "in stock" and available. Prior to leaving on an international trip, the traveler "checks out" a laptop from I.T. for the duration of his trip. No personal or business data should exist on the data at this point. Once destinated, the needed business data can be downloaded to the laptop over a secure VPN back to company HQ. Prior to returning, the traveler will run a "clean up" script that I.T. has developed. This script will upload any business documents that have been created or obtained while outside of the U.S. back to company servers (over that VPN) and then wipe the data from the laptop. Alternately, the laptop could have a partition set up that, when booted to, starts the reimaging process (sorta like how consumer PCs have a "restore partition"). This would be done, obviously, before returning to the U.S. When the traveler has arrived back in the U.S., s/he returns the laptop to I.T. who again image it with their gold image and store it for the next user who needs it. It wouldn't be that difficult or that much of a PITA, IMO -- it all depends on how important the data is to the company. It would likely require a change in policy and some users would almost certainly complain about it. Oh well.
- ISL 13y agoI often wonder what the founders would think of the modern interpretation of the fourth amendment at our borders. How would they have chosen to balance privacy against security in our age?
- rayiner 13y agoConsidering the border search exception dates back to legislation by the First Congress in 1789, I don't think they'd have much of a problem with the current interpretation.
- gohrt 13y ago"border search" was extremely more narrow in scope bath then, across all dimensions.
- rayiner 13y agoIf a customs official thought you had contraband in 1789, he could search your person, open boxes on your ship, etc, without a warrant and without probable cause. See U.S. v. Ramsey: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6107136132398268257 http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6107136132398268... (616-617). The difference is that this "plenary power" to search at the border has different implications today now that people carry their whole lives around with them on their phones. But that seems to me to be a fault of the people rather than a fault of the law.
- jessaustin 13y ago...a fault of the people rather than a fault of the law. An entire philosophy of government, in a nutshell! You know, it's actually OK to change laws that are bad for the people. For example, three of the four Alien & Sedition Acts were allowed to expire within three years (the fourth is only in force during declared wars), since no one actually liked them.
- 13y ago
- anigbrowl 13y agoShow me a country that does not reserve to itself the right to carry out border inspections (and if you're going to mention the EU, that change is only recent and by treaty, effectively making Europe into a single country of multiple states). As long as there have been borders there have been smugglers, and as long as there have been smugglers there have been customs agents. This is especially true of the US, because before the 16th amendment and the creation of income tax, import duties were a primary source of government revenue.
- karambahh 13y agoEU being "a single country of multiple states" is purely a myth. First, you are refering to Schengen Area, which is a subset of the EU. Second, and more importantly, several countries, such as France, keep "special cases" for border control within a 20KM buffer zone to the frontier. (and I believe a similar smaller range is applied to any train station receiving non-domestic trains). Look at a map of EU, look at France, and you'll quickly see that, with its central position, France is a basically a big "border control area"...
- straight_talk_2 13y agoTravel to US? Oh man, you don't value your freedom and privacy enough.