http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060727-7367.html Stuart Romm boarded a plane in Las Vegas on February 1, 2004. When he got off the plane in British Columbia, Canada's Border Services Agency stopped Romm for questioning. After learning that Romm had a criminal background, Agent Keith Brown searched his laptop and discovered child porn sites in Romm's Internet history list. Canada then bundled Romm back onto a plane to Seattle, where US Customs agents had a chance to question him further.
Ok let's all agree that child pornography is bad and get past the emotionality (is that a word?) of the charge. What I'm concerned about, as I hope others are, is the idea that border agents can search through data. I have no problem with physical searches at the boarder btw. This goes far beyond porn. What about proprietary data? What about MP3 players? Will the boarder patrol start turing iPod owners with "questionable" content over to the RIAA lawyer corps? What about a chain of custody in the case of a corporate laptop operated by multiple employees? This is off the f'ing hook
Are we a police state yet?
NOTE TO MODS: This story is just over 24hours old but I haven't been able to find any mention of it here. Do what you must. :)
Jay