DHS Introduces Rules for Airport Laptop Checks

[croc]

As some on one of your TV shows was known to say 'Just the facts, Ma'am.'

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I don't like taking my trouser belt off during airport security checks because my pants fall down.

 

[croc]

[citation][nom]JohnnyLucky[/nom]I don't like taking my trouser belt off during airport security checks because my pants fall down.[/citation]

Maybe if you used a rope instead? Oh, wait... Could be used as a garrotte.

Just as useless as not allowing water bottles taken onboard, then finding out that the acft crew will sell you one...

 

[caskachan]

improtant data? handle it online with a secured program, site etc


gona fly? get a used/new second hdd and install for the trip, keep yours at home

 

[jsc]

I am an American ex-pat working in Saudi Arabia. Door-to-door to my mother's house in Maine is about 30 hours if everything goes well.

And Saudi Customs instituted the same type of rules - all electronic media is subject to search at the airport whether coming or going.

Fortunately, I fly in and out through Bahrain and so far they are not checking on the ground routes, just the airports.

 

[cjtsparhawk]

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

Personally I consider privacy an "essential liberty".

 

[nachowarrior]

I'm just going to load up portable media with some wicked \/irii and when they pop it in to inspect it, it'll fry the system they're working on and the entire network it's on. I'll warn them that it's my job to study and learn how to dismantle them, then they can jam it in their machine anyway. oh and i will go ahead and include a blank encrypted optical media too. I bet they want something like conflicker floating around the airport. E\/en if it's not on there, that's what I will tell them.

 

[poisonpanik]

This is where 2 things come to mind... one is back up any data you need immediately online. (i.e. the guy who needs forensic data) and two is use something like TRUECRYPT to encrypt the drive and create a hidden encrypted partition for stuff you want to keep safe from prying eyes. If you own a laptop the latter is a good idea just in case it gets stolen anyway.

 

[hemelskonijn]

poisonpanik:

By your logic it might even be better to use an encrypted partition filled with porn and write your important files in plain text and safe them as KBxxxx.log

Any one inspecting the system would go for the encrypted files hardly any one would check the microsoft update logs!

 

[razor512]

I wonder, how many articles have there been of people taking luggage to airports and the workers there digging through the stuff and helping them self to any expensive goods that may be in them.

imagine of one of those workers notices design info for a new device that will be worth millions if some to a different company, would they really pass up that chance?

or imagine this

you have a expensive laptop and you have to hand it to someone who hates you, hates their job, probably hates the planet, probably hates them self because they have hate you at a level that they would like to hate you. what do you think may happen to your expensive laptop or any other devices you are forced to give them to inspect?

now imagine thousands of people having to go through this and when each passing day, the workers hate for you grows just anticipating the next time they get a hold of your equipment

 

[Montezuma]

The last time I checked the United States Constitution, my first amendment rights are not forfeited if I decide to return to this country after visiting another country. I fucking dare a government official to attempt to touch my property without a warrant.

 

[Montezuma]

Sorry, I meant to say my fourth amendment and fifth amendment rights. I was reading an article on the first amendment for class and had it stuck in my head.

 

[Montezuma]

[citation][nom]otacon[/nom]If you travelled domestically they did NOT confiscate ANY of equipment. "The Obama administration this week unveiled new rules for searching computers and other electronic devices when people enter the United States."The rules are for people ENTERING this country not people travelling domestically. So if you're claiming the TSA took your drives while you were travelling within the USA you are lying. How do I know that? I used to work for the TSA. 1,000 out of 221,000,000 coming into the USA....what are the odds you're going to get picked? Sheesh some people are idiots... give me a thumbs down I don't care... some of you people are nuts.[/citation]


I did not read anywhere in the post your quoted where that poster said he was traveling domestically. You seriously need to comprehend what you are reading before you break off into some tangent.

 

[Guest]

Well, the US economy is in ruins, and more and more people loose their jobs and homes. And the turning point will not come anywhere soon, if it comes at all in the next 5 years (the trade balance between US and e.g. China is still extreme. US simply put sells way to little and buys way too much).

In this situation it will not help US by scaring away tourists and business people planning traveling to the US. The tourist will pick another destination, and the business will pick another company in another country.

This law giving the rights to confiscate visiting peoples equipment on a haphazard basis is already infamous in the business community world wide.

The law will not do US any good.

And is there really anyone that still believe that those terrorist will travel with their plans in their laptops? They do NOT of course...

What I'm saying is that the law is extremely useless, and only hurting the US economy.

But, of course, it's all up to the US.

 

[zamkam]

[citation][nom]JohnnyLucky[/nom]I don't like taking my trouser belt off during airport security checks because my pants fall down.[/citation]

Actually, I've been waiting for someone to play a joke on all the TSA fools by actually stripping naked at a security checkpoint.

 

[zamkam]

[citation][nom]Honis[/nom]Actually, they'll just raise your taxes or make encrypting information illegal. Welcome to the Change.[/citation]

Don't be so pessimistic. The government has been trying to control (even ban!) encryption technologies for more than 30 years, and so far they've FAILED. Completely. Think about that the next time you feel overwhelmed by the seemingly unlimited power of the crooks in Washington.

 

[Shadow703793]

[citation][nom]SAL-e[/nom]I have been detained for more the 1h after the custom agent found a box of floppy disks. I was searched and the plane was delayed more then 30 min because of me. The big question is when and where this happen? It happened on the fly to Moscow from formal socialist country in 1988. I was sure that I will never going to experience police state when I move to USA, but congratulations every one USA now is no better then USSR just 20 years ago.There is absolutely no difference if they seize you computer for 30 days or for ever. They need only few minutes to copy entire drive and unlimited time to break the encryption sooner or later. And until I see the source code of Windows I am going to believe that there is backdoor put for them. The only encryption program I trust is TrueCrypt, but it is limited by the under lying OS. [/citation]
That is why my friend, we run Linux for our security related work (banking, new product designs,emails,etc). Windows is for playing games and Photoshop 😛

 

[vectorm12]

I'm just happy to be living in europe and thus far haven't needed to travel to the US for work purposes. In between seethrough clothes scanners and taking data as they please I'm starting to think I'll look for somewhere else to spend my holidays.

 

[starlionblue0]

Just one more reason I'm glad we moved to the Far East two years ago. The irony of living in HK, which is part of China, and having less restrictions on my data than when I was living in the US should not be lost on people.

 

[okibrian]

[citation][nom]otacon[/nom]If you travelled domestically they did NOT confiscate ANY of equipment. "The Obama administration this week unveiled new rules for searching computers and other electronic devices when people enter the United States."The rules are for people ENTERING this country not people travelling domestically. So if you're claiming the TSA took your drives while you were travelling within the USA you are lying. How do I know that? I used to work for the TSA. 1,000 out of 221,000,000 coming into the USA....what are the odds you're going to get picked? Sheesh some people are idiots... give me a thumbs down I don't care... some of you people are nuts.[/citation]
He never said he was talking about domestic flights. You did. It's funny to me that many believe that since this is for international fights American should have nothing to worry about because you all seem to forget about American's living overseas in support of our nation. I've been living in Japan for over 17 years now working for the Marine Corps and have to put up with the bull shit each time I go home to visit family. I would not mind if I had an 'agent' with an IQ of over 12 looking at my stuff, but more often than not they are just dumb asses that are wasting my time and don't even know what they are looking at. We also hire organizations to come here and give us classes on new technologies, so we would have people like 'ravenware' come here with all the equipment he named and much more to give us a class. I know of many of times when they would come here missing items, but most of the time it was baggage handlers that stole it.

 

[cancer2]

ok... this is strange.
You ppl can encrypt anything you want, it won't help, they have the means to decrypt. How do i know that? well, because the technology is pretty advanced now, and the military always had the good stuff(28 bit processors before the 8 bit ones were hitting the market). And they would not bother to copy something if they would not have the means to read it.
If i were a "terrifying terrorist" i wouldn't carry sensitive data on me(except if i was pretty stupid and having a death wish in which case i would also carry a bomb.. just in case that i will be discovered). So i think that this law is for mentally impaired "terrorists", and ruling that out what leaves us with? a huge amount of porn and pirated software. Hmm... is really this what are they looking for? i don't know, but i think that there is a lot of wasted resources to achieve one goal.
Of course there is occasionally a small amount of ppl that could carry sensitive data, but how can you tell the bad guy from the good guy? why search only some? on what presumption? could it be random checks?
Some of them may be random, some may not, and the target is not the person but the data. Who is controlling the DHS? senator jay rockefeller the guy that wants to put the on/off switch on the private networks?
Bah... it is not my business, i am not an American, you guys should question your leader's decisions more often. Where is the American freedom? I think this is yet another restraint that can be abused, for the benefit of a few(persons/organizations).

 

[branson]

why not just take out the harddrive and don't put it with the laptop bag at all....i'm sure their not going to bring in the national guard to find the missing harddrive.

 

[Guest]

The keys to success here are: Linux, Truecrypt, then decoy Truecrypt volumes, all with hidden partitions with EXTREMELY long passwords, then random keyfiles laying everywhere that don't actually open anything(periodically doing something/anything to update the "modified" date in the file system). TSA goons aren't exactly cyberforensics experts(even the ones hired to be cyberforensics experts, obviously if they were good, they'd be corporate espionage or CIA folks). If you just have one truecrypt volume with no hidden volumes and short password, they could crack it if they used their acres of supercomputers under Langley AFB, but if they have to figure out which of 10 suspected Truecrypt volumes with 40+ character passwords and multiple hidden volumes is actually the right one, then it's going to be very difficult. You can also use some type of document as a keyfile, but only if it requires some kind of editing first, like a big text file contained in a separate volume where you must edit the beginning of the file by adding specific words, etc(maybe even random unicode characters from a character map)... Truecrypt will use the first 1024 bytes of the file as the passphrase, it's extremely difficult to bruteforce crack that no matter how much computational power you throw at it.

 

[crom]

Encrypt the hard drive is an absolute must. Also, dual boot your system and use an OS that DHS won't be able to access like linux as the primary boot partition. If its a Mac, set OSX to be the default boot, encrypt it, and lock it down. DHS is Windows only.

 

[eyemaster]

I fail to see how checking the data on a laptop or anything electronic, improves security.

Anything that is on a laptop is software. All software can be copied over the internet. Anything you bring can be copied once you're at destination to do whatever the heck you want to do. How is intercepting a data store, being any more secure?

If you have any brains at all, you'll copy the data at destination, not carry something like that with you.