more on Can you be compelled to give a password? [was: Police Blotter: Laptop border searches OK'd]

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Peter Capek <capek () ieee org>
Date: July 31, 2006 5:23:49 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Can you be compelled to give a password?  
[was: Police Blotter: Laptop border searches OK'd]

Patrick Sinz wrote:

Why would the border police want to look at my PC's content anyway
(apart from proving that it really work and is not just a cleverly
disguised bomb, or drug stash).

If I would smuggle illegal "whatshamacallits" the only reason to do it
on my PC and travel through the border instead of using the internet
would be because the internet "borders" would be watched "better" than
the physical borders.

So it seems that either:
"Whatshamacallits" smuggler are better informed than I am and KNOW that
the <your favorite big brother> is reading ALL their encrypted
anonymised e-mail. (and of course mine and yours and everybodys, because
how would they know otherwise).

Or it is not an efficient way to stop "Whatshamacallits" smuggler and
then it seems it is just a way to hassle random people, since booting
your PC letting the officer sniff around to find "Whatshamacallits" will
take a significant amount of time, probably enough the make you miss
your plane, train connection or what ever.

Here's another theory: The law about what can be done at the border  
is different
from, and stronger than, the law about what can be legally or  
illegally done by
surveilling the Internet.  So, "law enforcement" is simply doing what  
it can do
in an effort to be effective by searching at the border.    
Specifically, the phrase
"probable cause" didn't seem to appear anywhere in the description of  
what's done.

We all know there are easy ways to hide the contents of our files,  
whether on a
laptop when coming home, or when mounting a remote disk.  Even the  
recently
announced effort using digital signatures of known child pornography  
images can
be easily thwarted, but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader  
to think about how.

It difficult to see how a 10 minute (if it was even that long -- if  
that happened often,
there'd be quite a queue...) inspection by a slightly trained customs  
agent, using
only the tools resident on your machine, can detect anything that the  
owner would
like to hide.   If one is really concerned, though, now might be an  
opportune moment
to read, or re-read, Ken Thompson's Turing Award talk.

One last point:  is it effectively illegal now to carry into the  
country a PC which is,
for technical reasons, non-bootable?   Or is it merely risking having  
to give A Lot of explanation?

               Peter Capek


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