Your hard drive won’t protect you from being a dirtbag!
According to this Forbes article, “The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week in a case of first impression that if you are carrying electronics like computers, hard drives, smart phones, digital cameras, USB sticks or anything else that may contain questionable data when you enter the United States, it may be analyzed by Border Protection agents, either at the point of entry, or at a forensic lab off-site.”
For the whole story, read the Forbes article by Marc Weber Tobias (The Travelgeek).
This court ruling does raise some questions. As Marc says in his post, “Potentially any data that you bring into the U.S. can be subject to inspection and analysis, either at the point of entry, or a remote location. If the material is found to violate any criminal statutes then you can be prosecuted for its possession.”
What impact will this have on corporate policies to password protect and/or encrypt all data on laptops?
Business travelers laptops are packed with sensitive corporate information and documents that companies don’t want exposed in the event of laptop theft or loss. Are they comfortable with law enforcement scanning the hard drives and looking at the information stored?
What about consumers increasing use of passwords and encryption on their personal laptops?
Heck, many consumers are thinking the same thing: bank accounts, credit card numbers, social security numbers, health records, etc are increasingly being stored on the their laptops or external hard drives, and increasingly password protected and encrypted.
What about the consumerization of IT?
As more consumers use personal devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc) for both personal and business use, the more on the loose corporate data is, and the more its susceptible to breach.
What about cloud storage?
Does information and content stored in the cloud susceptible to the same scrutiny by law enforcement? How would they possibly know by scanning a netbook or tablet that a would be criminal stores all of their content at Amazon, or some other cloud storage provider?
The questions are endless, as the lines at TSA and the border patrol might be in the future. I guess it boils down to one thing…be a law abiding citizen and you’ll be able travel across the boarder without increased scrutiny. Be a dirtbag trying to hide content and information on your hard drive, and be ready for a full hard drive body scan.
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Self-encrypting drives both most effective and ineffective – huh?
Image by: http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/download_lo_res.html?id=670023147
Your conclusion, if you meant it to be serious and not dark humour is incorrect.
“…be a law abiding citizen and you’ll be able travel across the boarder[sic] without increased scrutiny. Be a dirtbag trying to hide content and information on your hard drive, and be ready for a full hard drive body scan.”
That does not make any sense. The purpose of the increased intrusive security would be to determine whether or not you are a law abiding citizen or a ‘dirtbag’. Thus law abiding citizens would have to be subjected to it to confirm that they are law abiding citizens.
Here is a better conclusion paragraph for you:
“The questions are endless, as the lines at TSA and the border patrol might be in the future. I guess it boils down to one thing… if you’re a criminal just send your data over the internet before you travel. If you’re a law abiding citizen keep in mind that borders are now entirely constitution-free zones so be prepared to surrender your personal and corporate secrets to government agents.”
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