ACLU Sues for Records on Border Laptop Searches

ACLU Sues for Records on Border Laptop Searches(techpolitik.com)

37 points by eoswald 16 years ago | 3 comments

uhjnybt 16 years ago |

Searching the laptops isn't the point - we can all protect the contents of the laptops.

What would be more interesting is to know whose laptops they are taking:

Is it just shiny new Macbooks because the agents fancy a nice toy?

Is it from anyone with a certain skin color just to discourage them?

Or anyone who has made a contribution to the ACLU?

Is it people working for certain companies? Anyone landing in Seattle from Airbus, Houston and working for Shell, Detroit and work for any competent car company?

CWuestefeld 16 years ago |

Schneier has written about this before, and provided a protocol for a way to prevent search without having to lie to security agents.

Companies and individuals have dealt with this problem in several ways, from keeping sensitive data off laptops traveling internationally, to storing the data -- encrypted, of course -- on websites and then downloading it at the destination. I have never liked either solution. I do a lot of work on the road, and need to carry all sorts of data with me all the time. It's a lot of data, and downloading it can take a long time. Also, I like to work on long international flights.

There's another solution, one that works with whole-disk encryption products like PGP Disk (I'm on PGP's advisory board), TrueCrypt, and BitLocker: Encrypt the data to a key you don't know.

(the article goes on to describe exactly how you can use a key that you don't know) http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/laptop_securit...

gradschool 16 years ago | |

The idea proposed in Schneier's article lacks plausible deniability. If it's not self evidently clear to the customs official that you can't decrypt it, you're in a sticky situation regardless.