[privacy] Warrentless Border Laptop Searches Upheld by U.S Court

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

> From the "For-What-Its-Worth" Dept:

Declan McCullagh has a weekly "Police Blotter" series that runs on
C|Net News -- and this week is one of the more interesting, and
perhaps controversial, stories that I've seen.

Note: While I support locking up child porn offenders, it certainly
rubs me the wrong way that "... American citizens effectively enjoy
no right to privacy when stopped at the border..." by Homeland
Security.

While I may think that this decision is rife with potential for
abuse (in my opinion), I encourage you to read this article (and
the court's decision) and decide for yourself.

[snip]

In January 2004, Stuart Romm traveled to Las Vegas to attend a training
seminar for his new employer. Then, on Feb. 1, Romm continued the
business trip by boarding a flight to Kelowna, British Columbia.

Romm was denied entry by the Canadian authorities because of his
criminal history. When he returned to the Seattle-Tacoma airport, he
was interviewed by two agents of Homeland Security's Immigration and
Customs Enforcement division.

They asked to search his laptop, and Romm agreed. Agent Camille Sugrue
would later testify that she used the "EnCase" software to do a
forensic analysis of Romm's hard drive.

That analysis and a subsequent one found some 42 child pornography
images, which had been present in the cache used by Romm's Web browser
and then deleted. But because in most operating systems, only the
directory entry is removed when a file is "deleted," the forensic
analysis was able to recover the actual files.

During the trial, Romm's attorney asked that the evidence from the
border search be suppressed. The trial judge disagreed. Romm was
eventually sentenced to two concurrent terms of 10 and 15 years for
knowingly receiving and knowingly possessing child pornography.

The 9th Circuit refused to overturn his conviction, ruling that
American citizens effectively enjoy no right to privacy when stopped at
the border.

[snip]

More here:
http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6098939.html

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

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