Can the government take away my laptop?

discuss today. But you know, you do a lot more traveling than I do. I do a lot of traveling, and uh, you know, there was one other thing I was thinking about, and that's how the government is changing

the way we travel with our electronic devices. For for example, for example, one of the things that I saw not too long ago was that the government is now allowing special kinds of laptop bags, which, of though, is really cool because you know, I'm like before, if you don't travel that much, what they make you do is if you're flying, you have to take your laptop out of

your laptop bag. And the reason for that is if you've got I guess they assume that you have handheld pd A, you've got cell phone, you've got an iPod, you've got you know, all these other things, and they're your game boy, your PS three or a D that you have. You know that you're gonna and uh, you know, they can't really see if the laptop itself is what you say it is, So you take it out of

your bag. And you know, if you're like me when Jonathan traveled to c E S with me this past year, you had to watch me as all the junk fell out of my bag and you know I had to struggle to put everything back in. Well, now you don't have to do that. You don't have to take your

laptop out of the bag. You can buy especially made bag and it basically, I guess, zips in half so that you have one section that has the laptop in, but you you open it like a clamshell so that they can the the t s A agents can scan it without you having to remove it, and then you can just put it back together and zip it back up. You're gone. You have to worry about all this stuff. It doesn't Yeah, it's designed so that things like your power chord and other things that might be in the

bag don't obstruct their view of the laptop. That was the main problem with with regular bags was that there could be other stuff there and when you're looking at the X ray, you don't have a real clear view of the laptop. That's why you had to take it out. Well, these bags are designed so that it gives you a really clear view of that laptop. You want the security people to get a good look at the laptop, right,

I mean, you don't want to arouse any suspicions. Oh, they'll get a good look at your laptop before I get into this, um, before before I before I go off here. Yeah, you might wanna might want to put up the fireproofing. UM. First of all, we should go ahead and say that what we're gonna talk about here is international travel. This does not uh, this does not

cover interstate travel. UM. You can travel anywhere within the United States and you're going to be you're not gonna have a problem with what we're about to talk about. But if you are going out of the country are

coming back into it, there could be some issues. That's because the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco has essentially made a ruling that states that border patrol officials federal agents can confiscate and withhold any and all electronic devices that you may have with you and search them for any and all evidence of a crime. Now that and without probable cause. There needs to that you don't have to look like you or shifty. You don't have to

you know, fit a profile. In fact, profiling is specifically one of the things they're trying to avoid doing, although there's arguments over whether or not that's still happening. Yeah, well they'll probably stop you anyway then, um yeah, whether you're a United States citizen or not a citizen. Uh, they can the government official can take your electronics, um

and search them for evidence of a crime. Now, one of the big issues here is that it's not easy to find evidence on electronic devices, especially if you know what you're doing. If you know what you're doing, you can hide evidence. So it takes time. You know, you can't just boot up and say, well, let me look at the file directory and see if there's something on there like blow up the world dot com or you know.

It's not that simple, right, So that means that often that will have to take it to an off site facility, and they can hold it for as long as they need to, until they're satisfied that they have completely and thoroughly searched your devices. And you don't get them back until they're done, and you may never get them back. And and it's any crime, it's not even a specific crime.

So theoretically they're looking for something that might clue them into two terrorist activity area in the in the Washington Post that Secretary Michael Churdoff said that UM terrorists materials are often found on laptop computers are often electronic materials, which is I guess what prompted them to make this this ruling, you'd think, except that the case where this ruling came from, which was Arnold versus the United States

of America. By the way, Arnold lost um to a three nothing decision, no less, a unanimous decision by the Ninth Circuit Court. Um. It was actually a child pornography case. And child pornography is horrible. It's terrible, it's a blight, but it also serves as a great way to champion this kind of approach of taking devices away without any

probable cause. Now, in that case, Arnold was coming in from the Philippines UM and officials saw some stuff that looked kind of suspicious to them, so they decided to look at his lap top and see if there was any evidence of child pornography on there. And that's what kind of precipitated this whole discussion. So we are talking any crime now. Granted, the spin on this is yes, you know, we're looking for for signs of terrorist activity or or plans to try and head it off. And

and that's a very noble thing. You don't you know, you don't want terrorists to act within your country, obviously, but it's it's a blanket that covers everything. So let's say they take your your iPod and they think, hey, there's no way that this bald headed, tattooed guy has Britney Spears album on his iPod. He there's no way he bought this. He must have downloaded it from a site. And they can look through everything and if they think that you have violated but stolen material on your laptop,

you could be prosecuted for that. You know, I don't know where. You know, you're gonna have to get rid of the illegal Britney Spears on your iPod. Yeah, Christina Aguilar's next. But you know it's not even limited. You know. Under further reading, I realized it's not just your iPod, your flash drive, your computer. They can actually take paper

materials from you and do the same things. Anything paper, even your pocket where they're calling pocket trash, you know, post it note with something written on there that might give them a clue that you're up to something. Um, you know the part where it says download a legal copy of Christina Aguilera. They can take your digital camera. Um, yeah, they can take your cell phone. They take your cell phone and and search it, get all the contacts off of it. I mean this, this extends far beyond just

the individual who's under surveillance at this point. I mean, it's everyone that that person has come into contact with electronically essentially. It's it's it's mind blowing. Let me ask you this. Yes, I've read some articles that suggested that people in other countries. Um, the side I founded on was I think actually the CBC, the Canadian broadcasting company. They were talking about how, um, people who are you know,

people in Canada and United States along the border. They a lot of times work closely employees of multinational corporations do a lot of travel, um, and in this particular case, they were saying that the corporations were starting to warn people, you know, look, be careful what you take with you, because if they take it and you don't get it back,

then you know, you're stuck. And you know, if they don't happen to have if they don't have any probable cause, if there's nothing on it, but they still take it because they have some suspicion that there's something going on.

All of a sudden, your business computers gone. Um. You know, do you think this will hold up under pressure from international organizations uh, you know, international corporate entities or governments that pressure and say, look, you know, of the people that you're going to to uh to investigate are probably to be okay, right. I don't know the exact numbers, obviously, but you know most the majority of people are all right. So do you think that they'll soften it somewhat or

or something like that? You know, I hope, so, I really, I really and truly hope. So. But I know that a lot of a lot of businesses are already taking the approach of this is going to happen so let's try and plan for it, which is is a terrible thing in my mind because essentially it means that you're resigned to the fact that this is going to happen. Um. But uh yeah, I hope that pressure from both inside and outside the United States will will cause people to

rethink this decision and revisit it. Um. It was the Ninth Circuit, so it could go higher. But this was the second court in a row to to make this particular decision, which second appeals court, which does not bode well. Usually if there's two appeals courts that that make the same decision, it's not going to go higher than at

It rarely gets to the Supreme Court in that case. Okay, So I'm let's say I'm traveling internationally and I'm not up to something, but I have something that I might want to keep private, like I don't know, like a patent that I'm I'm considering applying for a secret invention that i've you know, hope they'll make me millions of dollars or is just not gonna work. I'm telling you, dude, it's gonna be fine. Or maybe it's a screenplay or a book that you know, or love letters or anything,

or love letters to your freezer. Ay, sure you know that I just would rather not everybody have a chance to look at But you know that's not anything bad or or that I'm really worried that we'll get me convicted of some kind of crime. What would I do? All right, Well, there are a few things you can do now we had health stuff works. Of course, don't condone any criminal activity. This is really just talking about a concern for privacy. But at home kids, right, let's

let's leave it to the professionals. Something like that. Okay, Well, there are a few things you can do, okay, such as Oh, the easy one would be, I don't know, leave it at home. Yeah, leaving it at home would be a good choice. Um, leaving it at home if you if you if you absolutely don't need it, uh, and you don't you know, if you're worried about losing it, then I guess you can leave it at home. Now. Granted, that's a bad choice for anyone who's traveling for business

or really does need their equipment. There are other choices. One of them is to partition your hard drive UM and put in a dual level of encryption. This is essentially hiding information on your computer. The first level of encryption is meant to allow someone the opportunity to say, hey, there's some stuff on this computer, and then they can you know, you can give them the log in or password or make them figure it out if you are

really mean. But once they get into that level, they look around see that there's nothing really bad there, and then they don't even see the partitioned second encrypted level. That's where you keep all your secret stuff, so false bottom in your hard drive, right, you know, and and you know, I know this sounds really sneaky. Um, but one of the points a lot of the critics of this policy make is that the bad guys are already doing this stuff. This is really hitting the people who

just don't know how this works. So, I mean, it's kind of a tricky situation. But there are other things you can do. You could you could wipe your computer absolutely clean. You could save everything to the cloud. Uh we've talked about cloud computing several times in this podcast. But save it to the cloud, wipe your computer clean. You go through the border, and when you get to where you're going, you can go reconnect to the cloud

and get your information again, and same thing. When you're coming back, you'd have to wipe it, you know, save it to the cloud, wipe your computer again, and travel. It's sort of like the digital equivalent of an offshore account where you store all your you know, see create

funds or whatever. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, And I mean it's it's it's tough to say that you have to go through these sort of precautions, but if if it's a real concern of yours, if you're worried about losing your electronic devices for an indeterminate length of time, it might be worth pursuing. Yeah, and uh, you know something else to think about too. Not only would we not recommend that you try it, but if you think about it, if you try something like that, especially if you're not

guilty of something, it's gonna make you look guilty. Yeah, that's true. Um So, yeah, you have to balance out that that privacy versus the risk of bringing more suspicion on yourself. And that's a tough situation. So if you want to read more about this subject, check out our article Can the Government take my laptop away? At how stuff Works dot com and we'll talk to you soon. Give me that. Okay. For more on this and thousands of other topics, how stuff works dot com Let us

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