Attention Anyone Who Flies: Homeland Security Can Search Your Electronics

Back on September 15, I got the latest edition of the privacy newsletter from EPIC.org in my inbox. In it, they talked about a BUNCH of things, including a new-ish policy on searching personal electronics. You can probably see the screencap of the news update from their website in this post, but just in case, here it is in text form:

Homeland Security Privacy Office Okays Suspicionless Seizure of Personal Information Stored on Digital Devices of US Citizens: The Department of Homeland Security released a Privacy Impact Assessment for searching electronic devices possessed by travelers, including US citizens, at US borders. The agency determined that laptops and cell phones are equivalent to briefcases and backpacks and granted itself broad authority to seize these devices from travelers and to copy stored data whether or not wrongdoing is suspected. The DHS policy fails to comply with the intent of the federal Privacy Act and leaves US citizens returning to the United States subject to surveillance by government and an enhanced risk of identity theft.

This is just LOVELY.

It's one thing to assume we might have something that could actually harm the specific flight we're about to board without any reason for suspicion and have our bags searched, but to assume we might have illegal data that would somehow be used to harm the plane or other passengers?

This is big brother big time.

Damn, and I'm flying to my dad's in California for Christmas this year. Great. Gotta remember to delete all my child porn.

JOKE.

IT'S A JOKE.

Ironically, this whole move will just encourage sales of netbooks and the use of TheCloud for file storage. Why carry your data around on you and risk having some DHS guy come across it and steal your business idea or otherwise peak into your private life?

I know we literally don't have a "right to privacy" in the Constitution, or anything, but I do believe there's an amendment that promises something about not being subject to "unlawful search and seizure."

Then again, I guess this is technically legal, huh?

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