So as I was waiting for my flight, I was griping to a guy next to me that I got questioned and searched at customs going both ways, telling him details about it.
A guy behind us overheard us and mentioned how he had his laptop taken and inspected on the way out there. Now, the story sounds like BS to me, but I have a fairly decent BS detector and this guy didn’t trip it, he seemed genuine, so I thought I’d ask if anyone has ever heard anything of the sort.
He tells me they randomly pulled him out of line and asked to see his computer. They took him to a waiting area, turned the computer on, and entered some sort of cryptic alphanumeric code as a password and got into his system (windows 2000), as if the government had been issued backdoor access passwords for windows.
He claims to have been treated rather rudely. He asked what they were looking for. They said “some sort of plans… or pornography. every computer has pornography, and I’m going to find it.” … that sounds like BS there, because what the hell would airport security care about pornography assuming it was legal?
He told me that they’d kept entering strange alphanumeric sequences as he watched, but he didn’t explain exactly how they did it… into a command prompt or a console or what. It was a almost brand new laptop so it was clean of everything and eventually they let him go, but he says that a bunch of files that were on there (pdf files) were missing afterwards.
Sounds like quite the horror story, really, as I was thinking of travelling with my computer internationally and I wouldn’t want anyone violating my privacy like that. Sounds like BS, but the guy seemed legit. So is there any credibility to claims of this type of search?
Security is going to run your laptop through a scanner. Maybe a bunch of times. I don’t know what they saw in mine but it went back and forth about half a dozen times before they finally let it pass (might have been the removable floppy/CD drives in the case, I dunno…). They will probably make you take the laptop out of the case. They will probably swipe the inside and outside of the laptop with a little round clothy thing which they’ll put in a machine that detects stuff like bomb residue and drugs. They might ask you to turn it on and demonstrate that it is a working laptop, but they aren’t going to snoop around your hard drive, enter any double secret special password or any such silly nonsense, or delete files.
Yep, BS, as per engineer_comp_geek. And if they did want to know what was on there, they wouldn’t need to strongarm a password out of Microsoft - they could just boot from a CD and snoop to their heart’s content.
Quite a while ago, over 8 years, they would ask you to turn on your laptop to make sure it wasn’t a shell for a bomb. This was before they had X rays that could tell. So perhaps that was the origin of the story. I once brought a Sun workstation, without a monitor (it was fairly big) which caused them fits. I told them I could turn it on, with a place to plug it into, but all they’d see was a light coming on.
IIRC there was some talk about the government getting keys to provide a backdoor to encryption algorithms, but it never happened. A security guy looking for porn is pure BS.
It’s complete and total bullshit on several levels. But not unexpected; in the hundreds of flights I’ve been stuck next to people I’ve heard some huge whoppers - probably half of what’s on Snopes referred to as “true” from “firsthand experience”. :rolleyes:
That’s what I figured, BS… I’m just usually good at picking up BS body language and this guy seemed pretty genuine. Since I’d also just been interrogated and searched for no real reason, I guess I was more sympathetic to the idea too.
I’m probably taking my whole desktop system with me at some point… I was worried about how throwing the bags around would be in regards to the hard drive… so I was considering putting the tower in a regular checked bag, and keeping the hard drives in my carry on, just so I could keep an eye on them, make sure they weren’t lost, and keep the rough handling down. Do you think I’d raise a lot of suspicion doing that?
My laptop’s been through a bunch of domestic US airports lately, and so far, all they do is tell people to take laptops and camcorders out of their cases. And generally, take off their shoes. So the drill is:
While in line, start unlacing shoes
Get to the table, take off shoes and put them in a bin
Take laptop out of case and put laptop in a bin
Put case in a bin
Push it all onto the rollers
Walk through arch and re-claim my stuff
Find a chair and put shoes on and skedaddle to the gate.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them swab a laptop or have the passenger turn it on.
One word of advice - put your name on your laptop! One memorable flight, there were no fewer than four plain, flat black IBM Thinkpads coming out of the xrays at the same time. I secretly giggled at the confusion as I plucked mine off the belt and watched the other guys examining their laptops looking for “their” scratches or whatever.
One check I’ve heard of (directly), but not seen myself, is the “show the CD player works”. Given that the Lockerbie bomb was in the battery compartment of a tapr player, the CD drive is a logical place to put something.
It is not bullshit. Customs officials have the right and power to be complete assholes. UK customs officers have been known to search laptops for pornography and other contraband. They can image the disk on your laptop, scan it and and any CD-ROMs, and require you to decrypt any encrypted data. You have no rights when confronted with a customs inspection.
Makes sense, too. After all, if you wanted to smuggle computer data to another country, you would have no other choice than to put it on a laptop’s harddrive and hop on a plane, right? I mean, it’s not as if there’s a worldwide computer network you could use to transport the data. Or storage media not much larger than a fingernail and available in any store.
That is bullshit. Yes, of course, they can scan it. Asking for passwords needs a warrant, unless you’re arrested under terrorism legislation, in which case forget catching your flight.
And the comment “pornography and other contrband” implies you don’t know what you’re talking about - hardcore porn is actually legal in Britain (just as long as you don’t sell it in a shop without a license). And what is this other ‘contraband’ you speak of?
Oh, I don’t know. Judging from the continuing stream of passengers claiming to have been sexually molested by a security guard during alleged searches, I wouldn’t be surprised by this.
But he’d be looking for porn for his own purposes, not as part of the security job. Is that considered an extra benefit in the job?
Unless I’m mistaken, the search for information (such as “porn”) on a computer without immediate probable cause or a warrant is highly illegal under Amendment IV of the U.S. Constitution. I mean, what if the guy opened up a document with proprietary information to your company, and beat you guys to the punch by putting a patent on your new widget tomorrow? And hell, what if he came across porn? Who cares? It doesn’t make you a terrorist [sub]Hell, it gives 'em proof positive you aren’t Taliban[/sub].
It’s also counterproductive for the TSA as well: they’re just there for a ‘function check’ to make sure the damned thing isn’t a bomb. They have a line of passengers they need to get moving, and don’t have time to search through your files when the Windows 2000 boot screen shows them the thing is legitimate.
My BS meter is pegged.
Tripler
And what moron would put porn on a laptop? You have to put it on easily-destroyable CD-ROMs!!
Yeah. I said looking for porn, not generating porn.
Actually, I read the OP as security, not customs. Customs I can see. Importation of child porn is illegal, if the person was on some sort of suspect list I can see a customs agent searching. (I can’t see the other part of the story.) Exported software must be declared, but the value is the value of the media is on, not its sales value. I brought a tape of a program we sold for > $100K - the declared value is $50.
So if it was just a search I’d be more likely to believe it - the backdoor password and stuff sounds a lot less plausible.
Customs inspectors do cavity searches too, the wrong inspector can try to do anything. The OP talked about customs inspectors typing a magic master key to get access to a Win2K system. The OP also didn’t give any details, such as what country it was in, etc. I’d love to see a cite that shows that there’s a secret backdoor into Win2k, or any other Windows machine.
When I traveled with a laptop about a month ago, I had to take it out of my bag to run it through the Xray machine. On the other end, after I put my shoes back on and such, one of the agents said he was going to inspect my computer. He then took it to a nearby table, opened the screen, and basically made sure it was a real computer, not a bomb made to look like a computer. They didn’t log into the computer or anything, but they did power it on (it was in sleep mode). The whole thing took about 2 minutes and I watched them do the whole thing. Then they gave it back to me and I was on my way. This was in Seattle’s seatac airport.
