the San Fransisco Chronicles reports a potentially dangerous ruling that would allow the custom to search any personal computer without the need to find any previous wrong doing .... scary stuff if they were to start checking for other stuff than child pornography. Personal stuff should remain personal, imho.

Tam

So when you say "search", you mean that they can turn on the computer and search the files on the drive. whoa.

this ruling also applies to cell phones.

Lets keep in mind that this is US law and not a reflection of any other nations laws.

With that being said this looks to be another way around the individual privacy rights which has been abused so often.

Cheers



edited on Apr. 22, 2008 03:11 pm by Foxhound

This may be a dumb question, but what if you have password locks on your computer and cell phone, can they demand you unlock the system/phone and possibly take you in if you refuse to?

hmm good question.

Sparks. writes...

Yes.

But questioning you for the password or even asking, wouldn't that be as Foyleman quoted up above, "implicate the same dignity and privacy concerns as highly intrusive searches of the person".
Especially if you don't give the password at first and they start making threats.

Sparks. writes...

Obstructing their search is a whole new crime and you're just digging a deeper hole for yourself. If they want to search your locked suitcase for drugs, are they going to stop when you say you won't give them the key?

From a practical standpoint, you're never going to get anywhere arguing with a customs agent. The time to argue your case and the legality of what they are doing is later in court, not then and there. Same principle applies to cops.

Arresting pedophiles doesn't trouble me so much but it is a little sad that our personal liberties are essentially zero at airports and borders. It wouldn't bother me so much if they were actually doing a good job keeping us safe with these searches, but that's not really the case.

hopefully someone angry enough will put the case forward and have that stupid rule broken.... before they start to look for illegitime software and the like.

Thanks for the clarifications.


Tam

at the end of the day its not illegal software that would worry me..You get bad apples in all walks of life what would worry me more is ID fraud..and theft... Foxhound says this is just US law mabe so but if you got a bad person looking through peoples personal pcs the net is world wide would this stop a person stealing from a russian ip uk ip spanish ip i think not when the fruad is commited from another country its just harder to catch the person that done it..