Tourists' Laptops Subject To Content Search

Today's assignment: Write your own outraged comment. I'm pretty sure I'll agree.

Tourists visiting the US face even tougher security checks now airport officials can search through mobile phones and laptops. Guards can download any details contained in the items and keep them indefinitely, following a new court ruling. The latest legislation could mean lengthier queues as security copy photos, emails and phone records. Visitors already face hour-long waits while armed officers take fingerprints and photos.

Travel agents' group Abta stormed: "It's another ratcheting up of Fortress America. It's certainly not a good thing for passengers —€” it is rather Big Brother." There are also fears immigration staff may mistakenly corrupt or erase vital computer details. Abta added: "We'd like to know if they're going to be properly trained to check computers and conduct many spot checks they plan to carry out."

Dr Guy Bunker, of UK-based IT security experts Symantec, said: "Hopefully, they won't search everybody's data —€” or we may wait in line for weeks. There's also the chance of data being compromised." He added that some business travellers particularly were now so alarmed they may fly to America with blank laptops. It comes after a US Appeal Court ruled Los Angeles airport officials acted lawfully when a random search found child porn on a passenger's computer. Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain said: "Reasonable suspicion is not needed for customs officials to search a laptop or other personal electronic storage devices."

But Shami Chakrabarti, of civil rights group Liberty, insisted: "It's one thing to look for drugs and explosives, another to conduct data trawls without suspicion."

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Comments

[Hermes Ten]

It's a test. How much shit will you eat and still cough up the bucks to visit the US? I have a very low tolerance for eating shit myself, so I stay away from airports.

It's sort of a simple equation. In this case, what's more important, my visit or my laptop? It's like paying a visit to the old USSR. Would you have taken your laptop for the commissars to search? Would you bitch about it and still go? If it's the visit then I'd leave the laptop at home. If it's the laptop then I'd stay out of America.

This is not a "free" country but it does worship money. If people stop flying and coming to this country in large enough numbers, the rules will change. If they keep coughing up their money to eat shit, they won't.

[Paul]

Don't actual police officers need a warrant to search through one's hard drive? And as far as I was aware, airport security guards don't go through nearly as much training as cops, so why should they have more power than cops? Seriously, whoever is demanding this type of security is a little bitch. Our security is pretty decent already, note the lack of any terrorist attacks in the last 7 years. We should instead inspire more tourism here, since we could clearly use the money.

[Hermes Ten]

"Our security is pretty decent already, note the lack of any terrorist attacks in the last 7 years."

No terrorists had crashed any planes into a building in the US since the beginning of commercial aviation. And before 2001 when was the last hijack of an aircraft on US soil --the 1980's? (excluding the 1994 hijack of a Fedex plane, since it was hijacked by an employee, not a passenger who has to go through security).

So, by your logic, airport security was better BEFORE 2001, since we had gone years without a hijacking; and the 9/11 attacks possibly represent the worst security failure in US history.

The reason we haven't had another terrorist attack isn't because of the airport security charade --it's because we're hard to get to and the terrorists have yet to overcome the logistical hurdle for another attack. NOTHING real has been done to prevent hijacking, like making the airlines install armored bulkheads to prevent access to the flight crew.

And you don't need to go through airport security to bring down a plane --apart from acquiring shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, there are any number of ways to sabotage a plane that don't include going through an airport metal detector. It's the logistic hurdle that prevents such attacks, not the "good security."

Furthermore, even if airplane security was 100% perfect it wouldn't prevent a "terrorist attack;" it would just divert the attack to a different target.