Be Aware-Feds Will Snoop Through Your Files

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled that customs officers can take whatever it wants from your laptop, digital camera and cell phone when you come across the border into the U.S. Courts have also ruled that an international airport is the equivalent of a border.

The unanimous decision of three appellate judges compares electronic equipment to luggage and states that a "piece of property simply does not implicate the same dignity and privacy concerns as highly intrusive searches of the person," therefore whatever customs agents find during their search, ostensibly for the purpose of finding evidence of possible terrorist ties and illegal contraband, can be used to build a criminal case against the owner.

What brought the issue to the attention of the courts was the discovery of apparent child pornography images on Michael Timothy Arnold’s laptop as he attempted to pass through customs at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2005 from the Philippines. Customs officials contend that the search was routine and therefore not subject to Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. He was later arrested for possession of the images which were brought up in the resulting court case. Defense lawyers said the images were inadmissible citing probable cause issues and the ruling was later appealed and overturned.

In the original court case, U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson of the Central District of California, ruled that government officials must have reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment to search someone's laptop at U.S. borders and denied suit against the defendant. This case was the first within the area of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to address whether searching a person's laptop is more than routine and therefore subject to the search and seizure protections of the Fourth Amendment. U.S. v. Arnold, No. 2:05-cr-00772 (C.D. Calif.).

Common sense should tell you that if you have anything you don’t want the feds to see, such as sensitive or confidential company related data, that you should probably store it one of the many online storage services available, search: online storage.

The bottom line here is that every federal inspector is just itching to be the one to ‘catch’ the next terrorist mastermind. They perform their job suspecting everyone and the courts say they don’t need probable cause. If they can weed out the perverts in the process so much the better. There isn’t much hope for the stupid ones anyway.

Sure, you don’t have to give up your password but the feds will not be denied.

The case was brought to the attention of Electronic Frontier Foundation a ‘civil liberties group who defends your rights in the digital world’.