Another Scary Government Program: the Government Gets to Seize Your Electronic Gear at the Border

Here's the scenario: You're entering a country after a business trip (or a holiday) and while you're going through customs customs agents take your laptop. Or your digital camera. Or both.

For no particular reason other than you were randomly selected and because they can.

You get a receipt and a promise that you'll get your gear back eventually. It might take a few weeks or even months. What's the government doing with the info? Sorry -- that's none of your business. It looks like they're copying the data, though.

This is the stuff of the Cold War Soviet Union, right? Or maybe a third world dictatorship?

Try these United States. My colleague Alex Kingsbury has a great article up now focusing on this little-noticed but really quite scary program.

Read the whole thing through. It's apparently -- unbelievably -- legal. They get to rifle through your briefcase or backpack right? Apparently there's no legal difference between that and seizing your electronic data (though of course they don't make photocopies of the papers in your briefcase).

Comments

[slg]

Imagine doing the work of prying into peoples lives day after day, of having the power to pick who to administer special treatment on. Imagine what kind of person picks this as a career and ask yourself why tyrants have so little trouble finding hundreds of thousands of people to do this work.

[mergina]

Having the power to pick who you screw today. I met someone working at O'Hare airport who said she singled out people who looked like Hillary supporters in the primary season. To think that none of this has made anyone any safer. There is an illusion of safety, and a delusion that we have stopped terror in our airports. Every time they single out an 82 year old great grandmother for a strip search because she fits some idiot profile, or they pass up someone who is really wishing everyone around them harm, it is proof of a failed, annoying, and senseless set of guidelines, with too much power given to too few that harms too many.

[lisakaz2]

Wow. No recourse? I have wondered frankly why my bag was chosen for search on a recent trip both going to and coming from the destination. And it was a work-related trip, set up months ago by a travel group contracted for this. You'd think the govt has a better use of its time than to rifle thru my suitcase.

I'm guessing a small pyrex container of white powder got their attention and/or my tiny swiss army knife. The powder is creatine (someone told me it's helpful for ppl with MS, though I prefer to think I have mercury poisoning). But who knows.

Thanks for the notification. I'll have to make sure I delete anything racy from my camera before I travel. The govt might like naughty pics.

[mergina]

Come fly with me, come fly, come fly away.......!!! Ah, a jingle from an era when you could fly everyday of the week and never use the same name. The age on innocence is over. This is the age of terror, an excuse for you to have no rights at all. A strong message needs to be sent to those who prey on the innocent traveler, since it happens in every American Airport, on every flight, every day.