August 26, 2008 • 14 mins
Federal agents have the right to confiscate and examine electronic devices belonging to anyone entering the United States -- and these agents aren't required to have probable cause. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about US policy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there,
welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm
an editor here at how Stuff Works, and today I
have next to me writer extraordinariy Jonathan Strifland. Oh you're
(00:22):
just trying to butter me up before we get into this. Yes, Uh,
you know, I wanted to go at this little different.
We have sort of a sensitive topic to uh to
discuss today. But you know, you do a lot more
traveling than I do. I do a lot of traveling,
and uh, you know, there was one other thing I
was thinking about, and that's how the government is changing
(00:45):
the way we travel with our electronic devices. For for example,
for example, one of the things that I saw not
too long ago was that the government is now allowing
special kinds of laptop bags, which, of though, is really
cool because you know, I'm like before, if you don't
travel that much, what they make you do is if
you're flying, you have to take your laptop out of
your laptop bag. And the reason for that is if
(01:07):
you've got I guess they assume that you have handheld
pd A, you've got cell phone, you've got an iPod,
you've got you know, all these other things, and they're
your game boy, your PS three or a D that
you have. You know that you're gonna and uh, you know,
they can't really see if the laptop itself is what
(01:29):
you say it is, So you take it out of
your bag. And you know, if you're like me when
Jonathan traveled to c E S with me this past year,
you had to watch me as all the junk fell
out of my bag and you know I had to
struggle to put everything back in. Well, now you don't
have to do that. You don't have to take your
laptop out of the bag. You can buy especially made
bag and it basically, I guess, zips in half so
(01:52):
that you have one section that has the laptop in,
but you you open it like a clamshell so that
they can the the t s A agents can scan
it without you having to remove it, and then you
can just put it back together and zip it back up.
You're gone. You have to worry about all this stuff.
It doesn't Yeah, it's designed so that things like your
power chord and other things that might be in the
bag don't obstruct their view of the laptop. That was
(02:14):
the main problem with with regular bags was that there
could be other stuff there and when you're looking at
the X ray, you don't have a real clear view
of the laptop. That's why you had to take it out. Well,
these bags are designed so that it gives you a
really clear view of that laptop. You want the security
people to get a good look at the laptop, right,
I mean, you don't want to arouse any suspicions. Oh,
they'll get a good look at your laptop before I
(02:37):
get into this, um, before before I before I go
off here. Yeah, you might wanna might want to put
up the fireproofing. UM. First of all, we should go
ahead and say that what we're gonna talk about here
is international travel. This does not uh, this does not
cover interstate travel. UM. You can travel anywhere within the
(02:58):
United States and you're going to be you're not gonna
have a problem with what we're about to talk about.
But if you are going out of the country are
coming back into it, there could be some issues. That's
because the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco has essentially
made a ruling that states that border patrol officials federal
agents can confiscate and withhold any and all electronic devices
(03:23):
that you may have with you and search them for
any and all evidence of a crime. Now that and
without probable cause. There needs to that you don't have
to look like you or shifty. You don't have to
you know, fit a profile. In fact, profiling is specifically
one of the things they're trying to avoid doing, although
(03:46):
there's arguments over whether or not that's still happening. Yeah,
well they'll probably stop you anyway then, um yeah, whether
you're a United States citizen or not a citizen. Uh,
they can the government official can take your electronics, um
and search them for evidence of a crime. Now, one
of the big issues here is that it's not easy
(04:08):
to find evidence on electronic devices, especially if you know
what you're doing. If you know what you're doing, you
can hide evidence. So it takes time. You know, you
can't just boot up and say, well, let me look
at the file directory and see if there's something on
there like blow up the world dot com or you know.
It's not that simple, right, So that means that often
(04:29):
that will have to take it to an off site facility,
and they can hold it for as long as they
need to, until they're satisfied that they have completely and
thoroughly searched your devices. And you don't get them back
until they're done, and you may never get them back.
And and it's any crime, it's not even a specific crime.
So theoretically they're looking for something that might clue them
(04:53):
into two terrorist activity area in the in the Washington
Post that Secretary Michael Churdoff said that UM terrorists materials
are often found on laptop computers are often electronic materials,
which is I guess what prompted them to make this
this ruling, you'd think, except that the case where this
ruling came from, which was Arnold versus the United States
(05:16):
of America. By the way, Arnold lost um to a
three nothing decision, no less, a unanimous decision by the
Ninth Circuit Court. Um. It was actually a child pornography case.
And child pornography is horrible. It's terrible, it's a blight,
but it also serves as a great way to champion
(05:41):
this kind of approach of taking devices away without any
probable cause. Now, in that case, Arnold was coming in
from the Philippines UM and officials saw some stuff that
looked kind of suspicious to them, so they decided to
look at his lap top and see if there was
any evidence of child pornography on there. And that's what
(06:05):
kind of precipitated this whole discussion. So we are talking
any crime now. Granted, the spin on this is yes,
you know, we're looking for for signs of terrorist activity
or or plans to try and head it off. And
and that's a very noble thing. You don't you know,
you don't want terrorists to act within your country, obviously,
(06:26):
but it's it's a blanket that covers everything. So let's
say they take your your iPod and they think, hey,
there's no way that this bald headed, tattooed guy has
Britney Spears album on his iPod. He there's no way
he bought this. He must have downloaded it from a site.
And they can look through everything and if they think
that you have violated but stolen material on your laptop,
(06:51):
you could be prosecuted for that. You know, I don't
know where. You know, you're gonna have to get rid
of the illegal Britney Spears on your iPod. Yeah, Christina
Aguilar's next. But you know it's not even limited. You know.
Under further reading, I realized it's not just your iPod,
your flash drive, your computer. They can actually take paper
materials from you and do the same things. Anything paper,
(07:13):
even your pocket where they're calling pocket trash, you know,
post it note with something written on there that might
give them a clue that you're up to something. Um,
you know the part where it says download a legal
copy of Christina Aguilera. They can take your digital camera. Um, yeah,
they can take your cell phone. They take your cell
(07:33):
phone and and search it, get all the contacts off
of it. I mean this, this extends far beyond just
the individual who's under surveillance at this point. I mean,
it's everyone that that person has come into contact with
electronically essentially. It's it's it's mind blowing. Let me ask
you this. Yes, I've read some articles that suggested that
(07:57):
people in other countries. Um, the side I founded on
was I think actually the CBC, the Canadian broadcasting company.
They were talking about how, um, people who are you know,
people in Canada and United States along the border. They
a lot of times work closely employees of multinational corporations
do a lot of travel, um, and in this particular case,
(08:18):
they were saying that the corporations were starting to warn people,
you know, look, be careful what you take with you,
because if they take it and you don't get it back,
then you know, you're stuck. And you know, if they
don't happen to have if they don't have any probable cause,
if there's nothing on it, but they still take it
because they have some suspicion that there's something going on.
All of a sudden, your business computers gone. Um. You know,
(08:41):
do you think this will hold up under pressure from
international organizations uh, you know, international corporate entities or governments
that pressure and say, look, you know, of the people
that you're going to to uh to investigate are probably
to be okay, right. I don't know the exact numbers, obviously,
(09:02):
but you know most the majority of people are all right.
So do you think that they'll soften it somewhat or
or something like that? You know, I hope, so, I really,
I really and truly hope. So. But I know that
a lot of a lot of businesses are already taking
the approach of this is going to happen so let's
try and plan for it, which is is a terrible
(09:24):
thing in my mind because essentially it means that you're
resigned to the fact that this is going to happen. Um.
But uh yeah, I hope that pressure from both inside
and outside the United States will will cause people to
rethink this decision and revisit it. Um. It was the
Ninth Circuit, so it could go higher. But this was
(09:46):
the second court in a row to to make this
particular decision, which second appeals court, which does not bode well.
Usually if there's two appeals courts that that make the
same decision, it's not going to go higher than at
It rarely gets to the Supreme Court in that case. Okay,
So I'm let's say I'm traveling internationally and I'm not
(10:07):
up to something, but I have something that I might
want to keep private, like I don't know, like a
patent that I'm I'm considering applying for a secret invention
that i've you know, hope they'll make me millions of
dollars or is just not gonna work. I'm telling you, dude,
it's gonna be fine. Or maybe it's a screenplay or
a book that you know, or love letters or anything,
(10:31):
or love letters to your freezer. Ay, sure you know
that I just would rather not everybody have a chance
to look at But you know that's not anything bad
or or that I'm really worried that we'll get me
convicted of some kind of crime. What would I do?
All right, Well, there are a few things you can
do now we had health stuff works. Of course, don't
(10:52):
condone any criminal activity. This is really just talking about
a concern for privacy. But at home kids, right, let's
let's leave it to the professionals. Something like that. Okay, Well,
there are a few things you can do, okay, such
as Oh, the easy one would be, I don't know,
leave it at home. Yeah, leaving it at home would
be a good choice. Um, leaving it at home if
(11:15):
you if you if you absolutely don't need it, uh,
and you don't you know, if you're worried about losing it,
then I guess you can leave it at home. Now. Granted,
that's a bad choice for anyone who's traveling for business
or really does need their equipment. There are other choices.
One of them is to partition your hard drive UM
and put in a dual level of encryption. This is
(11:36):
essentially hiding information on your computer. The first level of
encryption is meant to allow someone the opportunity to say, hey,
there's some stuff on this computer, and then they can
you know, you can give them the log in or
password or make them figure it out if you are
really mean. But once they get into that level, they
look around see that there's nothing really bad there, and
(11:59):
then they don't even see the partitioned second encrypted level.
That's where you keep all your secret stuff, so false
bottom in your hard drive, right, you know, and and
you know, I know this sounds really sneaky. Um, but
one of the points a lot of the critics of
this policy make is that the bad guys are already
(12:19):
doing this stuff. This is really hitting the people who
just don't know how this works. So, I mean, it's
kind of a tricky situation. But there are other things
you can do. You could you could wipe your computer
absolutely clean. You could save everything to the cloud. Uh
we've talked about cloud computing several times in this podcast.
But save it to the cloud, wipe your computer clean.
(12:40):
You go through the border, and when you get to
where you're going, you can go reconnect to the cloud
and get your information again, and same thing. When you're
coming back, you'd have to wipe it, you know, save
it to the cloud, wipe your computer again, and travel.
It's sort of like the digital equivalent of an offshore
account where you store all your you know, see create
funds or whatever. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, And I mean
(13:03):
it's it's it's tough to say that you have to
go through these sort of precautions, but if if it's
a real concern of yours, if you're worried about losing
your electronic devices for an indeterminate length of time, it
might be worth pursuing. Yeah, and uh, you know something
else to think about too. Not only would we not
recommend that you try it, but if you think about it,
(13:23):
if you try something like that, especially if you're not
guilty of something, it's gonna make you look guilty. Yeah,
that's true. Um So, yeah, you have to balance out
that that privacy versus the risk of bringing more suspicion
on yourself. And that's a tough situation. So if you
want to read more about this subject, check out our
(13:44):
article Can the Government take my laptop away? At how
stuff Works dot com and we'll talk to you soon.
Give me that. Okay. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, how stuff works dot com Let us
know what you think. Send an email to podcast at
how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the
(14:07):
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there,
welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm
an editor here at how Stuff Works, and today I
have next to me writer extraordinariy Jonathan Strifland. Oh you're
(00:22):
just trying to butter me up before we get into this. Yes, Uh,
you know, I wanted to go at this little different.
We have sort of a sensitive topic to uh to
discuss today. But you know, you do a lot more
traveling than I do. I do a lot of traveling,
and uh, you know, there was one other thing I
was thinking about, and that's how the government is changing
(00:45):
the way we travel with our electronic devices. For for example,
for example, one of the things that I saw not
too long ago was that the government is now allowing
special kinds of laptop bags, which, of though, is really
cool because you know, I'm like before, if you don't
travel that much, what they make you do is if
you're flying, you have to take your laptop out of
your laptop bag. And the reason for that is if
(01:07):
you've got I guess they assume that you have handheld
pd A, you've got cell phone, you've got an iPod,
you've got you know, all these other things, and they're
your game boy, your PS three or a D that
you have. You know that you're gonna and uh, you know,
they can't really see if the laptop itself is what
(01:29):
you say it is, So you take it out of
your bag. And you know, if you're like me when
Jonathan traveled to c E S with me this past year,
you had to watch me as all the junk fell
out of my bag and you know I had to
struggle to put everything back in. Well, now you don't
have to do that. You don't have to take your
laptop out of the bag. You can buy especially made
bag and it basically, I guess, zips in half so
(01:52):
that you have one section that has the laptop in,
but you you open it like a clamshell so that
they can the the t s A agents can scan
it without you having to remove it, and then you
can just put it back together and zip it back up.
You're gone. You have to worry about all this stuff.
It doesn't Yeah, it's designed so that things like your
power chord and other things that might be in the
bag don't obstruct their view of the laptop. That was
(02:14):
the main problem with with regular bags was that there
could be other stuff there and when you're looking at
the X ray, you don't have a real clear view
of the laptop. That's why you had to take it out. Well,
these bags are designed so that it gives you a
really clear view of that laptop. You want the security
people to get a good look at the laptop, right,
I mean, you don't want to arouse any suspicions. Oh,
they'll get a good look at your laptop before I
(02:37):
get into this, um, before before I before I go
off here. Yeah, you might wanna might want to put
up the fireproofing. UM. First of all, we should go
ahead and say that what we're gonna talk about here
is international travel. This does not uh, this does not
cover interstate travel. UM. You can travel anywhere within the
(02:58):
United States and you're going to be you're not gonna
have a problem with what we're about to talk about.
But if you are going out of the country are
coming back into it, there could be some issues. That's
because the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco has essentially
made a ruling that states that border patrol officials federal
agents can confiscate and withhold any and all electronic devices
(03:23):
that you may have with you and search them for
any and all evidence of a crime. Now that and
without probable cause. There needs to that you don't have
to look like you or shifty. You don't have to
you know, fit a profile. In fact, profiling is specifically
one of the things they're trying to avoid doing, although
(03:46):
there's arguments over whether or not that's still happening. Yeah,
well they'll probably stop you anyway then, um yeah, whether
you're a United States citizen or not a citizen. Uh,
they can the government official can take your electronics, um
and search them for evidence of a crime. Now, one
of the big issues here is that it's not easy
(04:08):
to find evidence on electronic devices, especially if you know
what you're doing. If you know what you're doing, you
can hide evidence. So it takes time. You know, you
can't just boot up and say, well, let me look
at the file directory and see if there's something on
there like blow up the world dot com or you know.
It's not that simple, right, So that means that often
(04:29):
that will have to take it to an off site facility,
and they can hold it for as long as they
need to, until they're satisfied that they have completely and
thoroughly searched your devices. And you don't get them back
until they're done, and you may never get them back.
And and it's any crime, it's not even a specific crime.
So theoretically they're looking for something that might clue them
(04:53):
into two terrorist activity area in the in the Washington
Post that Secretary Michael Churdoff said that UM terrorists materials
are often found on laptop computers are often electronic materials,
which is I guess what prompted them to make this
this ruling, you'd think, except that the case where this
ruling came from, which was Arnold versus the United States
(05:16):
of America. By the way, Arnold lost um to a
three nothing decision, no less, a unanimous decision by the
Ninth Circuit Court. Um. It was actually a child pornography case.
And child pornography is horrible. It's terrible, it's a blight,
but it also serves as a great way to champion
(05:41):
this kind of approach of taking devices away without any
probable cause. Now, in that case, Arnold was coming in
from the Philippines UM and officials saw some stuff that
looked kind of suspicious to them, so they decided to
look at his lap top and see if there was
any evidence of child pornography on there. And that's what
(06:05):
kind of precipitated this whole discussion. So we are talking
any crime now. Granted, the spin on this is yes,
you know, we're looking for for signs of terrorist activity
or or plans to try and head it off. And
and that's a very noble thing. You don't you know,
you don't want terrorists to act within your country, obviously,
(06:26):
but it's it's a blanket that covers everything. So let's
say they take your your iPod and they think, hey,
there's no way that this bald headed, tattooed guy has
Britney Spears album on his iPod. He there's no way
he bought this. He must have downloaded it from a site.
And they can look through everything and if they think
that you have violated but stolen material on your laptop,
(06:51):
you could be prosecuted for that. You know, I don't
know where. You know, you're gonna have to get rid
of the illegal Britney Spears on your iPod. Yeah, Christina
Aguilar's next. But you know it's not even limited. You know.
Under further reading, I realized it's not just your iPod,
your flash drive, your computer. They can actually take paper
materials from you and do the same things. Anything paper,
(07:13):
even your pocket where they're calling pocket trash, you know,
post it note with something written on there that might
give them a clue that you're up to something. Um,
you know the part where it says download a legal
copy of Christina Aguilera. They can take your digital camera. Um, yeah,
they can take your cell phone. They take your cell
(07:33):
phone and and search it, get all the contacts off
of it. I mean this, this extends far beyond just
the individual who's under surveillance at this point. I mean,
it's everyone that that person has come into contact with
electronically essentially. It's it's it's mind blowing. Let me ask
you this. Yes, I've read some articles that suggested that
(07:57):
people in other countries. Um, the side I founded on
was I think actually the CBC, the Canadian broadcasting company.
They were talking about how, um, people who are you know,
people in Canada and United States along the border. They
a lot of times work closely employees of multinational corporations
do a lot of travel, um, and in this particular case,
(08:18):
they were saying that the corporations were starting to warn people,
you know, look, be careful what you take with you,
because if they take it and you don't get it back,
then you know, you're stuck. And you know, if they
don't happen to have if they don't have any probable cause,
if there's nothing on it, but they still take it
because they have some suspicion that there's something going on.
All of a sudden, your business computers gone. Um. You know,
(08:41):
do you think this will hold up under pressure from
international organizations uh, you know, international corporate entities or governments
that pressure and say, look, you know, of the people
that you're going to to uh to investigate are probably
to be okay, right. I don't know the exact numbers, obviously,
(09:02):
but you know most the majority of people are all right.
So do you think that they'll soften it somewhat or
or something like that? You know, I hope, so, I really,
I really and truly hope. So. But I know that
a lot of a lot of businesses are already taking
the approach of this is going to happen so let's
try and plan for it, which is is a terrible
(09:24):
thing in my mind because essentially it means that you're
resigned to the fact that this is going to happen. Um.
But uh yeah, I hope that pressure from both inside
and outside the United States will will cause people to
rethink this decision and revisit it. Um. It was the
Ninth Circuit, so it could go higher. But this was
(09:46):
the second court in a row to to make this
particular decision, which second appeals court, which does not bode well.
Usually if there's two appeals courts that that make the
same decision, it's not going to go higher than at
It rarely gets to the Supreme Court in that case. Okay,
So I'm let's say I'm traveling internationally and I'm not
(10:07):
up to something, but I have something that I might
want to keep private, like I don't know, like a
patent that I'm I'm considering applying for a secret invention
that i've you know, hope they'll make me millions of
dollars or is just not gonna work. I'm telling you, dude,
it's gonna be fine. Or maybe it's a screenplay or
a book that you know, or love letters or anything,
(10:31):
or love letters to your freezer. Ay, sure you know
that I just would rather not everybody have a chance
to look at But you know that's not anything bad
or or that I'm really worried that we'll get me
convicted of some kind of crime. What would I do?
All right, Well, there are a few things you can
do now we had health stuff works. Of course, don't
(10:52):
condone any criminal activity. This is really just talking about
a concern for privacy. But at home kids, right, let's
let's leave it to the professionals. Something like that. Okay, Well,
there are a few things you can do, okay, such
as Oh, the easy one would be, I don't know,
leave it at home. Yeah, leaving it at home would
be a good choice. Um, leaving it at home if
(11:15):
you if you if you absolutely don't need it, uh,
and you don't you know, if you're worried about losing it,
then I guess you can leave it at home. Now. Granted,
that's a bad choice for anyone who's traveling for business
or really does need their equipment. There are other choices.
One of them is to partition your hard drive UM
and put in a dual level of encryption. This is
(11:36):
essentially hiding information on your computer. The first level of
encryption is meant to allow someone the opportunity to say, hey,
there's some stuff on this computer, and then they can
you know, you can give them the log in or
password or make them figure it out if you are
really mean. But once they get into that level, they
look around see that there's nothing really bad there, and
(11:59):
then they don't even see the partitioned second encrypted level.
That's where you keep all your secret stuff, so false
bottom in your hard drive, right, you know, and and
you know, I know this sounds really sneaky. Um, but
one of the points a lot of the critics of
this policy make is that the bad guys are already
(12:19):
doing this stuff. This is really hitting the people who
just don't know how this works. So, I mean, it's
kind of a tricky situation. But there are other things
you can do. You could you could wipe your computer
absolutely clean. You could save everything to the cloud. Uh
we've talked about cloud computing several times in this podcast.
But save it to the cloud, wipe your computer clean.
(12:40):
You go through the border, and when you get to
where you're going, you can go reconnect to the cloud
and get your information again, and same thing. When you're
coming back, you'd have to wipe it, you know, save
it to the cloud, wipe your computer again, and travel.
It's sort of like the digital equivalent of an offshore
account where you store all your you know, see create
funds or whatever. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, And I mean
(13:03):
it's it's it's tough to say that you have to
go through these sort of precautions, but if if it's
a real concern of yours, if you're worried about losing
your electronic devices for an indeterminate length of time, it
might be worth pursuing. Yeah, and uh, you know something
else to think about too. Not only would we not
recommend that you try it, but if you think about it,
(13:23):
if you try something like that, especially if you're not
guilty of something, it's gonna make you look guilty. Yeah,
that's true. Um So, yeah, you have to balance out
that that privacy versus the risk of bringing more suspicion
on yourself. And that's a tough situation. So if you
want to read more about this subject, check out our
(13:44):
article Can the Government take my laptop away? At how
stuff Works dot com and we'll talk to you soon.
Give me that. Okay. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, how stuff works dot com Let us
know what you think. Send an email to podcast at
how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the
(14:07):
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.