CelticBear’s Musings

More justification as to why foreign travel agents are advertising as a feature trips that don’t touch U.S. soil:

• Welcome back to the United States. Now let’s see what’s on your laptop

U.S. Courts have ruled, as recently as this spring in a case stemming from a search at LAX, that there’s no need for warrants or suspicions when a person is seeking to enter the country because any “routine search” is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. In effect, it’s like luggage: anything and everything in your laptop, cellphone, BlackBerry or digital camera can be examined and copied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

So far, the agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has been vague about when and why it conducts those digital searches, how long it keeps the information and what is done with it.

Hope you don’t keep passwords and information about your children on your laptop or have taken any “interesting” vacation photos on your digital camera. Once you hand your devices over to security to be copied and viewd by who knows who, it’s out of your control.

But it’s OK, the government can be trusted with your data!

• Lost IRS laptop stored employee fingerprints Hundreds notified they are at risk of ID theft, including some applicants
• VA data theft affects most soldiers
• FTC Laptop Theft Exposes Consumer Data
• National Nuclear Security Agency breach put 1,500 at risk of identity theft
• Medicare and Medicaid patient records at risk Auditors find 47 security weaknesses in system that shares medical info
• Navy Finds Data on Thousands of Sailors on Web Site
• U.S. Dept. of Agriculture hacked — thousands of personal records stolen
• Local councils in the UK use CCTVs to spy on dog owners’ cute butts
• British tax authority lost 25 million households records

So, feel safe and secure! Big brother government is without error. Turn over all your private information to their trusting and loving hands.

See previous: On the issue of privacy and protecting civil liberties. and Trusting those with power; police state.