Thorn Tree travel forum

1

Sounds like you have something to hide.

2

it pays to have your papers in order and kinda look vaguely like a bum. A cheerful manner helps. Like Dick Diver in Tender is the Night, you should have burnt all the books on the fire before you started the journey. You should be a digest of them. They can't scan your brain. Don't be afraid. Good luck.

3

The TSA can't find, or lost or had stolen, a harddrive which had extensive personnel information on it. They must provide credit watch for personnel because social security numbers were included. I wouldn't trust any government agency with any information from a laptop. Most would lose their ass if it was not attached.

People who have nothing to live for
Always find something to die for
and then they want you to die for it, too.--Kenneth Patchen

4

#1

Me, not much to hide except the info on banks, brokerage firms, credit cards, travel rewards programs, software product keys, etc.

But clients are entitled to privacy.

What if you came to an attorney about the murder of your wife's paramour and your conversation was a .wav file and the attorney's and his inestigator's notes were Word files? Do you think if I go to Montreal to interview the paramour's wife (who might have a motive for his demise herself) and I want the notes and maybe the .wav file to listen to his story and hers, your otherwise protected attorney-client priviledge should go away?

When I was a much younger lawyer, I fought off the attepts of bank regulators to go through every file a lawyer had stored in a locked cage in the basement of a bank his office was in, a bank the government had closed and put into receivership.

The judge held that the lawyer and the clients had a reasonable expectation of privacy in those files and that the government had no right to look through divorce files, probate files, real estate files, criminal files, etc.

The only files the government could look through were those where he had done work for the bank. The bank was in receivership and the government as receiver could see what were by then the government as receiver's own files.

I can't decide which is worse, the idea that one has no expectation of privavcy at US Customs and the government can use something like EnCase to copy your whole computer, or that the government's own systems are so sloppy that whatever they have copied may go who knows where.

I am kind of waiting for the case where an investment banker comes thru SFO, gets his laptop fully EnCased at random, someone sees that China Mobile is about to make a tender offer for Verizon, and that someone or someone else with access to the EnCasing machine uses that knowledge to buy every share and option they can. The investment banker's firm could potentially be on the hook for billions.

5

Has anyone "actually" had their laptop imaged? I have gone in and out the states with my laptop and they have never done anything except ask me to turn it on. That's it over maybe 14 international trips.

6

Apparently, see the older thread.

What bothers me is that first this starts as random at some entry points, the the whole Homeland Security contractor lobby starts pushing for it everywhere.

Maybe Pointsec will work: maybe the US government made them build a back door into it.

Even if it does work, what can Customs do to make you reveal a password. Can they detain you for days, weeks?

7

Why would you keep all the sensitive stuff available on your laptop while travelling? It could be stolen. Much better to put the important stuff on one or more of those small memory sticks, then you can laugh at them when they troll through your laptop.

8

:) That just transfers the problem from your laptop to a memory stick.. Or are you counting on them not finding the memory stick, or not knowing what it is? :)

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9

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Or are you counting on them not finding the memory stick, or not knowing what it is? :)

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I'd put it in my checked baggage, tucked away in the zipped lining. If they're that thorough in the States that they search everyone's bag to the extent of tipping everything out and unzipping the linings it would take longer to get through customs than the flight took.

10

I suspect it took a lot longer to EnCase this man's laptop than it would to pour out your luggage. (You get to repack it.)

There are both password protected and biometric protected USB drives. How secure they are I do not know.

I believe you would have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in you finger or toe prints so they could hook up a long extension cable and wipe the USB drive against all of them.

Passwords have all the usual password problems and how long can they detain you to get you to reveal it?

My problem and my hypothetical investment banker's is that we have too much data probably to fit on a 4GB or so USB drive.