US Customs seizes Electronics at borders

Posted on February 10, 2008 by bsmith86

The title says it all. According to the article linked below, Customs has been seizing electronics like cell phones and laptops on grounds of “suspected criminal activity.”  Some travelers complained that their devices were taken for more than a week and copied by the agency during that time.  This calls into question the jurisdiction of Customs, who said that it was similar to searching a briefcase and finding hard-copy evidence.  While I understand the necessity of surprise, random searches like this, I think if notifying travelers would have been a better idea to mitigate travel stress.  Many people subjected to this kind of search have complained already, and some have already gone to court in outrage. To help relieve concern and stress, I would suggest to Customs to submit a press release detailing the search procedure, as well as how the data is handled.

The article.

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One Response to US Customs seizes Electronics at borders

  1. davidjsh says:
    February 17, 2008 at 10:54 pm

    It will be really interesting to see how the legal debates surrounding this issue pan out. In my opinion, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman’s assurance that customs officers “are trained to protect confidential information” is not very reassuring. If the data is being copied for analysis then it will most likely need to be transfered and stored somewhere. Even if the government were to destroy this data after analysis, there is still a large period of time where trade secrets and other very valuable information is in an unknown state of security against outside threats, unless the government is willing to disclose how it handles the information and how long it keeps it. (Perhaps this unknown state is better than the known one.)

    Also, I would have to say that the case where a woman was asked to pull up her e-mail appears to be a step beyond the “a laptop is a suitcase” analogy. (She was unable to do so because a lack of internet connection.) Being required to give information and passwords for data that is not local to the laptop cannot be contained with the government’s suitcase analogy. This would be similar to the government requiring that if you travel with any of your keys, that the government should be able to make copies of them and force you to give the location of every lock that the key opens or requiring that you provide access to your web cams at home or work.

    Though I guess on a positive note, if the data is kept and linked to you in governmental databases, then you may be able to affect future analyses of you by selectively setting up your laptop before going through customs.

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