U.S. border agents copying contents of travelers' laptops

[Road Dawg]

U.S. border agents copying contents of travelers' laptops
Federica Narancio
Posted on Wed, Jun. 25, 2008

WASHINGTON - U.S. border agents are copying and seizing the contents of
laptops, cell phones and digital cameras from U.S. and foreign travelers
entering the United States, witnesses told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday.

The extent of this practice is unknown despite requests to the Department of
Homeland Security from the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution and
several nonprofit agencies.

The department also declined to send a representative to the hearing.
Subcommittee Chairman Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said Homeland Security had told
him that its "preferred" witness was unavailable Wednesday.

Feingold added that he'd submitted written questions about the seizures of
electronic data - and of some devices - to Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff in April. To date, Feingold said, he's gotten no reply.

Chertoff's department provided a written statement that said it wasn't its
intention to infringe on Americans' privacy but to protect the country from
terrorists and criminals, whose electronic devices can reveal incriminating
materials.

During border searches of laptops, according to the statement, the
department's Customs and Border Protection officers have found "jihadist
material, information about cyanide and nuclear material, video clips of
improvised explosive devices being exploded, pictures of various high-level
al Qaida officials and other material associated with people seeking to do
harm to U.S. and its citizens."

Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection,
signed the statement.

Some witnesses noted that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco had ruled in a recent child-pornography case that federal agents
could seize a laptop computer at the border without reasonable suspicion
that its owner was engaged in unlawful activities.

However, several witnesses said that the ruling, by the most liberal of U.S.
appeals courts, didn't end their concerns about Homeland Security's refusal
to explain the standards for its searches, how it protects privacy, how the
seized material is used and who can see or use it.

Three nonprofits - the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Asian Law Caucus
and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives - filed a Freedom of
Information Act request last year seeking Homeland Security's answers to
those questions. They've gotten none thus far.

They and other groups consider seizures made without probable cause to be an
invasion of privacy that leaves the door open to ethnic and racial
profiling.

Farhana Khera, the president of Muslim Advocates, a San Francisco nonprofit,
said they'd received complaints from Muslim, Arab and South Asian Americans.
She said they also had been questioned about their political, religious and
personal views.

Retaining confidential computer files also worries business travelers and
companies, said Susan Gurley, the executive director of the Association of
Corporate Travel Executives, an international group based in Alexandria,
Va..

Her organization surveyed its 2,500 members in February, Gurley said. Of 100
respondents, seven said border agents had seized their laptops or their
files. Four out of five, she said, were unaware that border agents could
seize their electronic data and devices.

http://www.mcclatch ydc.com/251/ story/42186. html

 

[4625]

Re: U.S. border agents copying contents of travelers' laptops

Schneier on Security
Bruce Schneier
A blog covering security and security technology.

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<!-- /robots --> May 16, 2008

<!-- robots content="noindex" --> Crossing Borders with Laptops and PDAs

<!-- /robots --> Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.
But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it's a fact. So how do you protect yourself?
Encrypting your entire hard drive, something you should certainly do for security in case your computer is lost or stolen, won't work here. The border agent is likely to start this whole process with a "please type in your password". Of course you can refuse, but the agent can search you further, detain you longer, refuse you entry into the country and otherwise ruin your day.
You're going to have to hide your data. Set a portion of your hard drive to be encrypted with a different key - even if you also encrypt your entire hard drive - and keep your sensitive data there. Lots of programs allow you to do this. I use PGP Disk . TrueCrypt is also good, and free.
While customs agents might poke around on your laptop, they're unlikely to find the encrypted partition. (You can make the icon invisible, for some added protection.) And if they download the contents of your hard drive to examine later, you won't care.
Be sure to choose a strong encryption password. Details are too complicated for a quick tip, but basically anything easy to remember is easy to guess. (My advice is here.) Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect solution. Your computer might have left a copy of the password on the disk somewhere, and (as I also describe at the above link) smart forensic software will find it.
So your best defence is to clean up your laptop. A customs agent can't read what you don't have. You don't need five years' worth of email and client data. You don't need your old love letters and those photos (you know the ones I'm talking about). Delete everything you don't absolutely need. And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you're at it, delete your browser's cookies, cache and browsing history. It's nobody's business what websites you've visited. And turn your computer off - don't just put it to sleep - before you go through customs; that deletes other things. Think of all this as the last thing to do before you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they've entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good idea if you can do it.
If you can't, consider putting your sensitive data on a USB drive or even a camera memory card: even 16GB cards are reasonably priced these days. Encrypt it, of course, because it's easy to lose something that small. Slip it in your pocket, and it's likely to remain unnoticed even if the customs agent pokes through your laptop. If someone does discover it, you can try saying: "I don't know what's on there. My boss told me to give it to the head of the New York office." If you've chosen a strong encryption password, you won't care if he confiscates it.
Lastly, don't forget your phone and PDA. Customs agents can search those too: emails, your phone book, your calendar. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do here except delete things.
I know this all sounds like work, and that it's easier to just ignore everything here and hope you don't get searched. Today, the odds are in your favour. But new forensic tools are making automatic searches easier and easier, and the recent US court ruling is likely to embolden other countries. It's better to be safe than sorry.
This essay originally appeared in The Guardian.
Some other advice here.


EDITED TO ADD (5/18): Many people have pointed out to me that I advise people to lie to a government agent. That is, of course, illegal in the U.S. and probably most other countries -- and probably not the best advice for me to be on record as giving. So be sure you clear your story first with both your boss and the New York office.

 

[Spytheweb]

Re: U.S. border agents copying contents of travelers' laptops

America, home of the free?

 

[4625]

Re: U.S. border agents copying contents of travelers' laptops

I foresee a more free America on January 20, 2009. . .

 

[Wise Guy]

Re: U.S. border agents copying contents of travelers' laptops

. . . .And turn your computer off - don't just put it to sleep - before you go through customs; that deletes other things. . . .

Turn the computer off at least fifteen minutes before you to through Customs to make sure that all the chips have a chance to lose their memory. The Customs is getting pretty good at this and they have ways to recall your password "from the dead" if you just turned your computer off a minute ago.

 

[Wise Guy]

Re: U.S. border agents copying contents of travelers' laptops

It certainly is not just the US Customs doing this. I recently spent the entire day at the Canadian border (from early in the morning until after dark), attempting to go through Customs.

To say the Canadian agents were belligerent would be be an understatement.

At one point, they DEMANDED (and I mean demanded) to know why I was not carrying a laptop. They had looked through my papers (no, actually, they read everything at length) and noticed my list of internet cafes in Calgary. They demanded to know what I was hiding and why I needed to go to an internet cafe.

Frankly, at this point, I couldn't help it and I started laughing in their faces with great gusto. I had already been there for hours and these clowns did not get it.

What set them off was the large (in their opinion) amount of cash I was carrying, but they were so stupid, they failed to see that my initial explanation was the actual truth. I just cashed a large sports wager and I put it in my pocket. They simply could not believe that and were searching for some other reason. Actually, I told them that it was not a large amount of cash (wow, you should have heard the argument I got when I said that), just a normal amount of cash for someone who does what I do. It does not indicate illegal activity, because what I do is perfectly legal in Nevada.

But even a moron could have figured out that I was telling the truth, because I was carrying my Nevada gaming license and my employee ID -- both of which clearly identify me as an employee of a licensed sports book.

Anyway, it was clear from what they said that they wanted to copy my laptop so they could find something to charge me with and they were frustrated because I did not have a laptop. They wanted to dream up a charge, they just couldn't think of one.

You would be wise to heed the warning in this thread.