U.S. federal agents have been granted the power to seize travelers notebook computers and other personal electronics, move them to an offsite location for an unspecified period of time, and hang on to them for as long as they like—and no suspicion of wrongdoing is required.
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article...seize-notebooks

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8080103030.html

This is a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures , shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue , but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The law is clearly not being followed in the USA, it should now be considered a police state.

I was thinking of going to NY for a second time in February, but seeing this, Amerika can go kiss my fury little butt. I'm really starting to think that that entire bloody country is going bonkers >_>
I wonder, if they were to seize my iPod or my MBP, in what condition it would be returned to me...

Dude, I live in New York. Apparently you haven't seen two buildings fall down and almost kill you or an army soldier standing outside popular places with an automatic weapon strapped to his back. Not fun.

Solution: Strap your desktop to your back when traveling in the US

It's only for border agents, no the TSA at normal airports. This isn't news, it's been going on for a while.

As for you foreigners coming in here: you're not US citizens, the 4th doesn't apply. We'll do whatever we want to you. Don't like it, stay over there.

No wonder there is a growing trend for despising America, with such an attitude >_> I do fully intend to stay over here though.
@-MoC-: damn, the way you describe NY is the way I remember Istanbul. What is going on over there >_>

As for you foreigners coming in here: you're not US citizens, the 4th doesn't apply. We'll do whatever we want to you. Don't like it, stay over there.

You ignorant {censored}. By this logic, you have no protections under the law when you travel to any country outside of the United States. The law does not apply only to citizens. The law applies to everyone within a nation. Since foreigners are expected to follow our laws, they should also be entitled to full protection under those laws. Valid documentation such as a visa should entitle one to exactly the same protections as a citizen while one is visiting another nation.

How do they check your notebook? Do they just take it and look through your documents? If that's the case, use GParted to switch all your partitions not to boot, and tell them it doesnt work. Black missing OS error will come up ;D

Yeah I'll be so psyched going to the airport because I have to 0 format my drive because of its content.

Awesome!

</sarcasm>

Key words highlighted. Should. But they don't. This is the hard reality of the post-9/11 world. Deal with it.

The constitution explicitly uses the term "citizen" when it means citizen and "people" when it means people.

A common sense interpretation means that foreigners are granted constitutional protections when in the United States.

I hope you're trolling, because your position is indefensible and frankly you should be ashamed of yourself if you're comfortable holding it.

Of course it is Bofors and the Washington Post to disclose this information. Quick, anyone have any kool-aid?

I am sure that not everyone with a notebook will have it taken from them but yes, this is a post 9-11 world. Where are the stories out of the loving, peaceful, understanding islamic lands where they don't ask you for your notebook, they just cut off your head. But heaven forbid anything negative ever comes out of the muslim world.

Hey, I like where you're going with this. We can justify anything we do as long as someone else has done something worse at some point. It's a post-911 world! The sky is the limit!

...what is wrong with you people?

LOL,LOL,LOL

Hmmm!

Yes, and that is just the attitude the islamo-fascists have too.

America sucks.

WOW CLiDE FTW!!1 So witty, such a deep thought. Did it take you a long time to think of something so clever?

Although an interesting article, the discussion has gone off topic.
Please stick to the main discussion "US Agents Cleared to Seize Notebooks", otherwise I will be forced to close this topic.

Remember, this is NOT the Real Life category!

No time at all; its a natural response for 99% of the world's population.

Majority rules.


So, essentially, this article is demonstrating the paranoia and lack of intelligence from the American government -- what a poor way to handle things.

I tell you what I can see us brits following suit to something like this soon, I wonder what they'd do if they found an OSx86'er.

I am amused about your postings in this thread.
Anyway, what this is about. It is not a new law, right or regulation. It is however a guideline for cbp personnel. The text is here:

http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/travel...h_authority.pdf

What is the problem is that U.S. court have in a case given the go to do the searches on any property for indefinite time without any need of suspicion. The guideline, states reasonable time... but if you read further you will see timelines of up to 15 days, with possibilty of extension. And it doesn´t matter if you are U.S. Citizen or foreigner.

I´ll pick some quotes that is noteworthy for you lazy people that don´t bother to read the full text. :

"CBP is responsible for ensuring compliance with customs, immigration, and other Federal laws at the border. To that end, officers may examine documents, books, pamphlets, and other printed material, as well as computers, disks, hard drives, and other electronic or digital storage devices."

"In the course of a border search, and absent individualized suspicion, officers can review and analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, reenter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States, subject to the requirements and limitations provided herein."

"Officers may detain documents and electronic devices, or copies thereof, for a reasonable period of time to perform a thorough border search. The search may take place on-site or at an off-site location."

"Officers may encounter information in documents or electronic devices that is in a foreign language and/or encrypted. To assist CBP in determining the meaning of such information, CBP may seek translation and/or decryption assistance from other Federal agencies or entities."

"Unless otherwise approved by the principal field official such as the Director, Field Operations or Chief Patrol Agent, responses should be received within fifteen (15) days."

Sorry to be off the topic , but what's with you man!!!!!

So the whole Islamic lands are factories of monsters!? looking at the 9/11 I see only 19 Muslim guys there, while in IRAQ I see a whole country killing innocents in different names , the US marines admit the killing of more than 1.5 million civilion in that name of friendly fire or a mistactic strategy while i believe the reality is too much higher than the number stated , so I want to see how they'll react when some body murders their whole families invading their lands , then he won't even apologize and say only I need to be more careful next time so I won't kill a bigger number!!!!

What an ideology is this!? get a life man , thousands of Americans are living in Muslims' lands for years and never get hurt or humiliated for their citizenship or religion , you need to get out of your cave or box or whatever and see the real world (try to look at Muslims in Iraq , Afghanistan , Palestine , Chechnya , Somalia , Kashmir ...etc and the list so long and see who's suffering because of whom ) & if we behave with the same way of thought you have ,I believe that Japan needs to ban anything that has a relationship with the US because of Hiroshima & Nagasaki for the sake of the spirits of those thousands babies , kids and women murdered that day :/

____

Sorry to the admins and the other members but I hate arrogant and ignorant peoples who call a community of 1.6 billion human beings with names because of 10 or 1000 other guy!! everywhere we go !

I wanted to go to America. I've been there twice and I find it fun there, but with such laws... What if the border officer is in a bad mood and I'll just answer him/her in a rude manner (or he\she will find it so) because I would be in a bad mood too? 'Alright then, take your laptop out, hand it over to me and keep hoping it'll be returned to you within two weeks.' 'But sir, I'm staying in the US only for ten days' 'Well, I don't give a f***'. Yes, this was exaggerated a bit, but you get what I mean, don't you?

And what if I do have a massive picture of Lenin\Hitler\Bin Laden as my desktop background?

Also, I'm Russian. That kind of makes it even worse because some of you guys (not everyone, of course) still have something against us 'commies'. The border officer could just take it out on me.

Anyway, I hope your human right defenders will make your government realize how unrightful this new law is. It might even reduce the amount of tourists going to the US. As for me, I will now rethink my plans about going there.

P.S. Guys from the US, don't be so snobbish. 9\11 is 9\11 and no one says it's not a tragedy, but lots of countries have something like that to use as a cause of stupid laws.

Everything was just my opinion. Hope I didn't offend anyone.

I agree, it seems like the American government is using "terrorism" as a justification to pass any law they damn well please. I mean, seriously, what kind of bs is this? Like Vizzy said, a border officer in a bad mood, could potentially be enough for you to lose your laptop for a couple of week. And I seriously doubt they will handle your stuff with care in the meantime, it's more likely your stuff will be severely abused.
I think America should really start to wake up and smell the coffee. They are not the first nation that was struck by terrorists, nor will they be the last. But they do seem to be the first to introduce such draconian laws out of blatant fear and ignorance.
I wonder where they will get the manpower to actually check all those laptops within "a reasonable time". And since you can store anything on anything these days, by day 3 they will have an entire warehouse of memorycards, usb sticks, laptops, music players, cell phones, CD's, floppies, DVD's and so on and so on. And how do they know if something is illegal or not? Do Americans have a crystal ball that allows them to see which song came from a bought CD and which came from bittorent? Same with movies?
I suspect they didn't really think this through when this law was passed.

I just don't understand. It doesn't make sense why they would go through such trouble to protect average citizens when in doing this it is going to hurt the average citizen.

This has got diddly sh*t to do with protecting the average citizen, I'm afraid. I mean, let's face it, since when is piracy linked to mortal danger? This sounds like some clever lobbying to me.

You are right on the money. Piracy has never been linked to mortal danger but they seem to think that. What scares them into doing this is the fact that we have choice. We can watch what we want to watch, listen to what we want to listen to and we can still be free thinkers. They want to take that away from us so there is a demise of the free thinker but there is no way that it could possibly work.

So, now that US Agents can seize notebooks with any reason, therefore they can easily abuse this new found power. Say I walk in with my laptop and some US Agent needs a laptop for god knows what and therefore seizes mine so he can now have a laptop. I really think they will just take the laptops for their own use and never give it back to you.

This part of the official document is interesting too "information in violation of copyright or trademark laws" it might not be the main goal of the notebook and electronic device checking, but this also one of the objectives, enforcing copyright and trademark laws. The American government is also trying to have other countries join the fun party...

Now on the reality of things, I doubt that they will just seize your laptop for the fun of it if you act in a diligent way. You know they can do it, so just don't provoke them into doing it, they have the law with them.

I've been checked a few times in US airports (guess they don't like my Italian mafioso looks hahaha) and it wasn't a nice experience since this never happens to me anywhere else in the world. Heck one time in Chicago a Sheriff deputy even stopped me at the entrance of aircraft walkway and had me open my bags and he even went through my pockets.
All the other passengers were going by at staring at me, priceless...

In 2 weeks I'm going to USA, I have 2 month old passport with a Chinese Visa inside, that might get me into real trouble hahahaha.

So does this mean we need to write over our OsX86 drives 35 times so there isn't any trace of it, if the agents decide to check?