I had my laptop searched at the border once. It was my work laptop. They told me the same thing, if I didn't share the password they would confiscate my computer.
It felt wrong that they should be able to search my computer, but I also felt bullied because I was going to need my computer the next day if I wanted to work and I think most people, including my boss at the time, would not see a problem with the search, so I let them search.
All they did was open up Windows Explorer and do a search for *.jpg. Then she looked up at me and said, "What kind of images am I going to find on your computer today?"
I don't remember what I said, but basically it took about 30 minutes for Windows to display all the results. She looked through them all and then I was free to go. I got the impression that they were looking for child pornography, but I don't know that for sure.
Either way, it was a pretty innocuous search, but this was also about 10 years ago. From what I understand, they now pull all the files off your computer and index the contents. They likely have a list of keywords that it searches against immediately and then it's indexed for when they add more keywords later.
When I was working for $Big$Corp, I was explicitly instructed to 1) always shut down the devices with full-disk encryption 2) never give up passwords 3) surrender devices without opposition or bargaining (cooperate) and 4) call company lawyers as soon as possible
Never have faced any search, but interesting stance there.
In particular, a perfectly reasonable answer to the question "what am I going to find on this computer?" might be "Naked pictures of me/my spouse" if it's a non-work laptop.
It's extremely invasive for some random civil servant to execute an unexpected search on a device that most reasonable people assume is private.
As far as searching my work laptop, it was not harmful or offensive to me. It was strictly used for work purposes and there was truly nothing on the computer that they could do any harm with (to me or the company).
That said, under nearly any other context, I agree that it would be harmful and offensive.
Why do you think they did this kind of invasive search? It's very weird to me that border patrol would randomly search all the images on someone's computer. This doesn't even seem like an efficient way to catch criminals. Power trip?
No joke, I was sent to secondary search because I was holding a piece of cake in a go box from my lunch that I hadn't eaten and I didn't declare the piece of cake (technically, they are correct, I should have declared the slice of cake). Once you go to secondary search, they search all your stuff, including your computer. They didn't search the cake for some reason though.
Maybe just "a randomized search". Sounds very inefficient.
I think they are just looking for crimes like drug mules, people coming to work with tourist visa etc. Everyone here talks about nuclear plans but I doubt.. probably bully too but against simple minded criminals it can work. Texts of arranging work or when is the package going to arrive etc.
Right, but parent comment said they just searched all images (or jpgs). Hard to think of any motivation beyond finding child pornography, no? But that doesn't seem like something you'd reasonably become suspicious of during a short interaction.
It saddens me that we think of federal governments as benign protectors of our rights. The States did not need and did not want a federal government. We feared they couldn't protect our interests. We had to be persuaded through the Bill of Rights to accept their "protection." The feds have some idealistic people within their organizations, but their stance is to utilize state-level resources for their own needs, such as international warfare wealth accumulation. This includes domination of individuals. We have only our states and the Bill of Rights to protects us from the feds.
Computers represent a very real threat to federal power. People could use them to rise up against federal governments and make their lives very uncomfortable, which is to say, much like our own. These dreams of small groups contacting one another and creating world peace beginning through networked communication were made explicit in the 90s and early 2000s. The maintain its dominion, international governments from around the world simply have to assert themselves in every aspect of our lives. With state protections, one of the key places feds can insert themselves is at borders, where reaching out to people from other nation-states happens.
Efficiency is for little people, like you and me. Federal governments print the paychecks for the border patrol, tax they money the pay them, then tax the people the border patrol buys all their worldly possessions. They care about efficiency less than google cares about disk space. I know I sound like a paranoid libertarian here, but I'm actually only a slightly-light-of-center person trying to bring a little reality and clarity to the situation. We are essentially pets.
You've got some interesting points here, but it definitely reads more like conspiratorial thinking. What realistic difference is there between "The States" and the federal government? In the end you're still going to have a government enforcing these things, unless you depart radically from our current societal structure.
It sounds like you're just skeptical of a powerful centralized state, and it's coming out through the lens of historical American federation/republicanism. That isn't wrong, but it's as much a history of competing factions as it is an strong intellectual basis.
You're not the only one skeptical of a powerful, centralized state. Try reading Kropotkin or Luxemburg. You might find the ideas resonate with you. Those authors have a coherent ideological basis, and suggest paths to decentralized democracy that has been realized in various forms in recent history, but is radically different to the current American government.
> What realistic difference is there between "The States" and the federal government?
It's huge! The power to drive international trade and warfare, for starters! Also, the ability to create laws that don't reflect people in your area/community.
Also wrt this thread, states don't (generally) enforce searches at their borders, because states aren't fighting for domination with nation-states. States are only trying to control their geographic area.
Thank you for the references, I'll check them out.
So basically, if I ever travel to the US or Canada, I should wipe my device first and then have about 20000 copies of gotse.jpg (but each with a unique name) on the device to force the agent to look at each picture.
This exact thing happened to my brother once. They took his laptop and did Windows Explorer searches for image extensions as well as the words "boy" and "girl", so your (and his) hunch that they were searching for child porn is probably correct. This was maybe 5 years ago.
That was literally it. I was standing there. They only searched for images. Again, this was about 10 years ago though. From what I understand, they now pull everything for future analysis.
Sounds like it might be fun to load one's devices with infinite zips labelled with tempting filenames, like "red light district itinerary.zip". https://research.swtch.com/zip
I had my laptop searched at the border once. It was my work laptop. They told me the same thing, if I didn't share the password they would confiscate my computer.
It felt wrong that they should be able to search my computer, but I also felt bullied because I was going to need my computer the next day if I wanted to work and I think most people, including my boss at the time, would not see a problem with the search, so I let them search.
All they did was open up Windows Explorer and do a search for *.jpg. Then she looked up at me and said, "What kind of images am I going to find on your computer today?"
I don't remember what I said, but basically it took about 30 minutes for Windows to display all the results. She looked through them all and then I was free to go. I got the impression that they were looking for child pornography, but I don't know that for sure.
Either way, it was a pretty innocuous search, but this was also about 10 years ago. From what I understand, they now pull all the files off your computer and index the contents. They likely have a list of keywords that it searches against immediately and then it's indexed for when they add more keywords later.