This is an interesting article...

[Quantos]

I found this on Wired.  It's interesting, but I don't know why Americans put up with these measures.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/electronics-border-seizures/

[BC_Programmer]

“We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,”

...

wut?

[Salmon Trout]

...

wut?

In most democracies (certainly in Britain) a police officer must have "reasonable suspicion" that there are grounds to conduct a search of a person, building, vehicle, device etc. There must be some basis for the officer’s belief, related to you personally, which can be considered and evaluated by an objective third person. Mere suspicion based on hunch or instinct might justify observation but cannot justify a search.

However, reasonable suspicion can sometimes exist without specific information or intelligence and on the basis of some level of generalisation stemming from the behaviour of a person. For example, if an officer encounters someone on the street at night obviously trying to hide something, this clearly constitutes conduct that might reasonably lead the officer to suspect that stolen or prohibited articles are being carried.

The power must be used fairly, responsibly, with respect for people being searched and without unlawful discrimination. This would include discrimination on grounds of race, colour, ethnic origin, nationality or national origin. Accordingly, reasonable grounds for suspicion cannot be based solely on attitudes or prejudices towards certain types of people, such as membership of a group within which offenders of a certain kind are relatively common - for example, young football fans. Nor can it be based solely on your skin colour, age, hairstyle, mode of dress.

Whoever the "we" is in that quote (The US Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog) has decided that to impose such a requirement on DHS officers would harm the operational effectiveness of the DHS without accompanying ("concomitant") benefits to the civil rights of potential searched people.

The European Court of Human Rights has held that such searches are in breach of Article 8 of the The European Convention on Human Rights. Article 8 of the ECHR says:

1  Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2  There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

[truenorth]

In my opinion this is about as big a barn door as one could envisage and pretty much eliminates the constraints on item 1.
"2  There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
truenorth

[Salmon Trout]

In my opinion this is about as big a barn door as one could envisage and pretty much eliminates the constraints on item 1.
"2  There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
truenorth

The interference must be: (1) in accordance with the law and (2) necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security (etc)

A court (the ECHR or a member nation court) can decide that a police or other government agency's action does not meet one of these and is therefore unlawful. Since Britain subscribed to the ECHR’s jurisdiction in 1966 a total of 357 cases have been taken to the EHCR. The number of judgments made against the UK government stands at 271, against only 86 that were successful. That is, in three quarters of British human rights cases taken to the European Court Of Human rights, the British Government has lost.

[truenorth]

Good on your judicial system not sure the same interpretation would occur in the U.S. or Canada for that matter. Would like to think so but given the paranoia on this side of the pond i doubt it. truenorth

[Salmon Trout]

Good on your judicial system

I don't think we in Europe are in a position to get on a high horse about this kind of thing. I think that it's bad that the British government needed to be taken to the European Court Of Human Rights all those times.

[DaveLembke]

Surprised by the fact that the border is considered 100 miles in land. Should be more like 10 miles. 100 miles is a bit much for the 4th amendment free zone!!! This means that anyone living within the 100 miles could potentially be targetted even though they are not crossing borders. "Knock-knock, hand us your computer(s) without search warrant!"

God forbid your system was encrypted to keep important private info from the wrong hands if a laptop was stolen etc. Encryption could be seen as hiding something when your only hiding your info from people with wrong intent for your data. Also depending on whereever you are going if your encryption level is set too complex you can get into trouble according to statements read online, however I haven't seen anyone charged with any violations in using say 1024-bit RSA traveling to Mexico or Canada yet.

Also who is to say that they are not planting anything on searched systems to spy on your data later, undetectable by modern antivirus and malware detection or making an exact copy of any data to keep the person for a shorter period of time and dig deeper into the gigs and potentially terabytes of data after released. One such way to hide its intent was if microsoft was working with DHS and this spy tool communicated with Microsofts domain. To anyone looking at packets etc if they are careful etc, it would look like the system is inquiring for MS Updates etc, when in actuality its leaking info by the military grade spyware. Data duplication can be a speedy process depending on how much data is to be gathered. And even faster if selective to harvest e-mail info and credentials so that they can access your e-mail etc by harvesting stored passwords. Although they likely have a LIVE-OS that can boot on any PC or intel based MAC etc that runs systems outside of its natural environment tamperless to avoid tampering with evidence and to disable data destruction booby traps by operating outside of its natural OS environment, in which the owner of the laptop etc could have the system trash the data on the drive after so many failed logon attempts or if its booted as admin and no password which would be the case if a password crack tool was used on it etc to gain control as admin of the system no matter what the password is. This LIVE OS Customized for DHS could quickly sweep a drive for detection of content that is Questionable or Plainly BAD as long as the content to be scanned is not coded in nature to where "Sally is ready for the appointment" and "Sally" could be codename for anything else of evil intent. Names like sally wouldnt raise a flag unless the subject matter raised a flag.

Interesting read and thanks for sharing!