Electronic Search and Seziure at the Border

Ironkey secure flashdrive.

What is this Fourth Amendment You Keep Talking About?

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April, all your electronics belong to us.

Seriously.

Your laptop, your flash drive, your PDA, your iPod. Fourth Amendment? We don't need no stinking Fourth Amendment. We're the United States Customs. This is no-man's land, buddy-boy. We own your ass.

We can search you without reasonable cause or warrant. Strip-search you, x-ray you, and make you poop into a bowl.

As of April, Customs can take every electronic device you have.

Newsweek

Returning from a vacation to Germany in February, freelance journalist Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. Agents searched his luggage, he said, "then they told me that they were impounding my laptop."

Shaken by the encounter, Hogan examined his bags and found the agents had also inspected the memory card from his camera. "It was fortunate that I didn't use [the laptop] for work," he said, "or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information." When customs offered to return the computer nearly two weeks later, Hogan had it shipped to his lawyer.

How common Hogan's experience is remains unclear. But an April ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection, does have full authority to search any electronic devices without suspicion in the same way that it can inspect briefcases.

But congressional investigators say that copies of drives are sometimes made, meaning customs could be duplicating corporate secrets, legal and financial data, personal E-mails and photographs, along with stored passwords for accounts with companies ranging from Netflix to Bank of America.

The practice of storing and duplicating material might be something that both opponents and supporters of seizure could agree to regulate, says Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, an otherwise staunch supporter of customs' authority. Larry Cunningham, an assistant district attorney from New York, told the hearing: "I am aware of no authority that would permit the government, without probable cause to believe it contains contraband, to keep a person's laptop or to copy the contents of its files."

Customs insists that terrorism and child pornography are sufficient justification for electronics searches. And even civil libertarians agree it makes sense for customs to search luggage, which could pose immediate dangers to aircraft and passengers. But, says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, "customs officials do not go through briefcases to review and copy paper business records or personal diaries, which is apparently what they are now doing in digital form. These pda's don't have bombs in them."

Customs doesn't make copies of the files in your briefcase. For them to copy the files on your computer is to turn over one's life to the government.

“Stop! In the Name of Law” -- All crimes against the Constitution can be justified by The Four Horsemen of the Internet:

• Terrorism
• Drugs
• Child Porn
• Racism & Hatred

Rip the Bill of Rights up. We're making a safer world for the Children.

What can you do?

Take only a clean laptop and an encrypted flash drive through Customs. Be prepared to lose them forever. Send any data you care about over an encrypted channel before you cross the border.

Until the Judges currently on the Bench are replaced with ones who respect the Constitution -- a thirty year project, which will only come to pass once we have a progressive President elected, and guess what kids, Obama ain't him -- there isn't much we can ultimately do. A netroots caucus in Congress would help. Specific laws about this would help.

Ultimately what is needed is to shift the country back to a deep respect for the Constitution. Searching every electronic device, keeping them and rifling through them... obvious bullshit. Yet here it is, real as $140 oil and climbing (before we're formally at war with Iran.)

Obviously the Bush administration came up with this steaming crock of cow dung. What amazes me is the Ninth Circuit went along.

h/t Crooks and Liars.

There's more...

SCI FI Author Larry Niven Wants to Kill Hispanics?

Over at SadlyNo I read the sad tale of how Fatherland Homeland Security Undersecretary Jay Cohen, (Science and Technology Directorate, or Операции и технологии Директорат in the original Russian.) is putting people on a panel discussion who belong to a group called SMEGMA SIGMA. Which is a group of mentally deranged people like author Larry Niven, "Ringworld", presumably they arrived at the discussion on a itty bitty bus. Here is what our fellow American Niven had to suggest to DHS.

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.

“Do you know how politically incorrect you are?” Pournelle asked.

“I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work,” Niven replied.

Politically incorrect? Jerry Pournelle thinks he was being PC. Jer... He is advocated letting people die, sick people. In order to strengthen the fatherland, sound familiar?

SIGMA is the brainchild of Arlan Andrews Sr., who noted that many of the writers have advanced degrees, have jobs with the government or have been hired to advise the government in the past.

Wait, backup... Somebody took these lunatics advice in the past? You have to be kidding, oh wait, I forgot for a second, it's the Bush administration.

Makes me think of Nivens' law: There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it. Too true Larry, too true.

There's more...

Number 5!

No dissassemble!

The government is scrapping a $20 million prototype of its highly touted "virtual fence" on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings, officials said.

The move comes just two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced his approval of the fence built by The Boeing Co. The fence consists of nine electronic surveillance towers along a 28-mile section of border southwest of Tucson.

Boeing is to replace the so-called Project 28 prototype with a series of towers equipped with communications systems, new cameras and new radar capability, officials said.

Less than a week after Chertoff accepted Project 28 on Feb. 22, the Government Accountability Office told Congress it "did not fully meet user needs and the project's design will not be used as the basis for future" developments.

A glaring shortcoming of the project was the time lag between the electronic detection of movement along the border and the transmission of a camera image to agents patrolling the area, the GAO reported. --AP

Uhm, yeah, cuz thats hard... typical. Not that I am pro fence, it's just that #5 was alive!

There's more...

Fatherland Security Lashes Out At IBM

IBM is restricted from bidding on any new contracts with the Federal Government. This was done at the behest of DHS.

IBM and several of its employees have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury on interactions between Environmental Protection Agency and IBM employees, a company spokesman said today.

The subpoenas, which were issued March 28 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, stem from an EPA investigation into allegations IBM improperly obtained information about a contract it was bidding on from EPA employees, said Fred McNeese, an IBM spokesman.

Earlier in the day Federal Times learned the EPA indefinitely suspended IBM from doing business with federal agencies. The suspension was posted on March 27 on a GSA Web site that lists companies barred from receiving federal contracts — Excluded Parties List System. --FederalTimes.com

Wow, it seems not a new day dawns that doesn't bring some new complete load of crap out of the Bush administration. So, if you are Halliburton, or KBR, or Blackwater, you can drive away with billions of the public coffers but cross some lickspittle sycophant at Homeland Security and watch your blue-chip stock plummet. Just goes to show you, make sure you bow to the Steroid-SS at the airport, if you refuse to OBEY, you do so at your own peril.

There's more...

Terrorist Watch List

917,000

Number of names currently on "Terrorist Watch List".

Because that's effective. Jeeebus, what a bunch of dumbasses. Practically 1 million people. Just how stupid are these fucking people? "Security" has to be the Dumb Magnet of the 21st century. How many steroid addled nincompoops are carving out hives in DHS? How long will it take us to dig them out of their holes? Best just delete the whole infrastructure.

There's more...

Montana to DHS: “Take Real ID & Shove It”

logo U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Even though Real ID won't be ready for years, can be easily forged, and even then won't stop ID theft for many reasons...

Real ID is crony capitalism through which the Bush Administration continues to loot the Treasury. The administration gives the money to big Republican-owned companies. The companies contribute heavily to the RNC and 527s, resulting in more Bush/Cheney Republicans. The results of the Real IDs along with the data itself will all be privatized and thus not accountable to Congress as it is "corporate proprietary data."

Once the databases are built, there will be a few carefully selected "oops, we're so incompetent, sorry about the HUGE mistake" errors which accidentally fuck over the enemies of the Bush/Cheney wing of the Republicans. The ID will ultimately be required for every transaction, making it easy to reconstruct where you've been, what you've done, even whom you were with.

Hello police-state in all but name.

The worst part is...

Real ID is a brutally obvious failure up-front to anyone with experience in security. It will not accomplish ANY of its goals towards preventing terrorism. Damn near any committed terrorist who wanted a "Real ID" could get one. Nothing can bring adequate signal out of the noise of trillions of transactions.

Real ID is SECURITY THEATER at maximum volume. It is a joke... against what it is claimed to prevent. It will be brutally effective for controlling the citizens of the State politically, and for transferring billions to trillions of tax dollars into companies controlled by fanatical Republicans, who will then receive contracts to privately control the security records of everyone in the United States.

Gee Gidge... having fun yet?

THIS is what Montana and other States have rejected.

Homeland Security like any group of bureaucrats whose turf is threatened, is fighting back against the impudent States who have told DHS to take Real ID and shove it.

DHS threatens that starting this May, they won't let anyone pass through airline security using a driver's license, if your State hasn't legislatively vowed to fund this steaming crock of dog-dung.

Montana refuses.

May is the cut-off.

Show-down...

Listen to this wonderful NPR interview (4:21) with Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer (D) as he dismantles DHS's bullshit.

Delightful.

Why doesn't Congress have balls like they do in Montana?

Everyone from Montana... drinks are on me. (Hyperbole. Look it up.)

h/t Boing Boing.

There's more...

Unusual is not the word I would use...

Joppatowne High School in Maryland has formed an unusual partnership with the federal government to build a curriculum to train students for careers in homeland security.

Heard this report on NPR about making a curriculum around Homeland Security with the help of the federal government. After I recovered from the chill that went down my spine, I started thinking what a very bad idea this is. It smacks of recruiters on school grounds. They bring around fancy equipment, and make the world sound all scary and dire. They attract the bullies right from the school grounds... great. I wonder when they will add in the "HOW TO TAZE 101" course.

The woman interview scared me when she made some comment about how this was good because many of their students couldn't go to college so homeland security work would be a good alternative for them. I mean, there is NOTHING wrong with not going to college but I don't exactly think we should be drafting kids who don't like school to get all jazzed up about confiscating my toothpaste at the airport.

And then there is the politics, as the gentleman said in the interview- who's view of security is being taught here????

WTF

Keep an eye on this one folks, I am sure this is just the beginning. If it rears its ugly head in your school district make a fuss! It is not enough that they are running things in our time, but they are so determined to create long term damage. This is why we need progressives running for school board and other important local posts. God help us.

UPDATE
link to the scary school curriculum page.
and a take on the topic over at Mother Jones and this upbeat view on the "growth opportunities" of this new career segment over at USA Today

There's more...