Chile Forum

I dedicate this thread for all to share their experiences and recent news on what is happening or can happen when entering the Fatherland these days.

Saw this article today on the searching and seizing of electronic devices —laptops, PDAs, MP3 players, cell phones, etc.— during CBP secondaries at airports:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 63_pf.html

A good resource for travelers is the FlyerTalk Travel Safety/Security forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=222
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Starting from around a year and a half ago, I now secure wipe sensitive files and caches off my laptop hard drive and clean up my cell phone before leaving for the USA. Other tools in my arsenal, PGP encrypted archives with their names modified.

-eeuunikkeiexpat

Any tips on avoiding inspection or seizure of less advanced possessions, EE.UU.? Almost always when leaving or entering the States (since September 11, 2001, claro), I've been subjected to being pulled out of the queue and my hand and checked baggage examined in intimate detail; I suspect that this may in part be to balance the numbers, as my appearance is about as far from that of the stereotypical bomber fanatic as one could get without eccentricity. And the sole loss I've experienced to date is of a tube of toothpaste (a few milliliters over the limit, though the tube was half empty), but I don't wish to lose anything.

What a pass we've come to!

RWS,

You are confusing TSA with CBP/ICE. Both are part of HSA but are different animals.

TSA - the goons with an ID, shoe, liquid and encased laptop fetish who harass you in your journey to get into the secure area of the airport. They are not law enforcement officers and do not have the powers of one but can call over real LEOs if needed.

CPB/ICE - the goons you see when you first enter the USA. They are real federal law enforcement officers that can make your life hell on the slightest suspicion.

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote:. . . You are confusing TSA with CBP/ICE. . . .

True; thanks for reminding me of the intricacies of the ever-widening web of "governance". I've been able to steer clear of CBP/ICE with simple means learned long ago in another context, gracias a Dios.

TSA does not have the right to inspect the contents of your electronic devices, your personal papers, your reading material, etc. They are only supposed to be looking for dangerous and prohibited items. If one crosses the line, politely escalate it to a supervisor, then their supervisor/manager maybe eventually including the airline GSC (Ground Security Coordinator; an airline employee, airline customer advocate who actually has the final say on wether or not you will be flying that day if you have done nothing legally wrong).

A good tip. In keeping with my general practice of "flying low" (appearing bland, average, and inoffensive when in situations observed by existing powers), I hope never to reach the point of needing to use it, though.

The FlyerTalk forum I mentioned is a good resource. Use the search feature to find out about what "SSSS" means on your boarding pass and what may be triggering it. Multiple Ss on your boarding pass indicate that you have been chosen for secondary TSA screening.

RWS wrote:I've been able to steer clear of CBP/ICE with simple means learned long ago in another context.

Any other "simple means" you would like to elaborate on?

The thing that is just the silliest part of those type of technology checks is do you really think anyone of those rent a cops are able to identify the difference between a laptop battery, hard drive, ram chip, and a bomb on an x-ray screen? Even if they opened a laptop up with a screw driver, I doubt anyone in the dam airport outside the IT department would be able to know the difference by just looking at the components.

I would likely have trouble identifying that there was anything really abnormal with a hard drive case if it was put back together correctly. A 2 second test by rent-a-cop serves no purpose but intimidating the general population and sucking political money in to one district or another. This is not about security.

I might sight now Dallas airport has about 100 million dollars more of security than entering the United States via LAX. There was nothing at LAX when I landed.

Again mixing up the sham security of TSA with the Customs and Border Protection thuggies.

Read the WashPost article above and other experiences as previous discussed on FlyerTalk. CBP has been making clone images of peoples HDs, booting up computers to view and do searches of the contents, going through messages and phone lists on cell phones, and even seizing them for closer examination of the data without ever returning them and all they need is whatever suspicion to get you to that secondary area for this to happen.

well, read the article. Just more political smoke and mirrors. Do you really think home land security has the computing capacity to properly data mind and anyalise thousands and thousands of disk images. If you gave me just one 100 GB or 200 GB drive to examine for "bad things", a fast check would take me all day. That would not be a detailed report, but just a fast scan to see what is obvious and not even just sort of hidden say by renaming a file as something common. Anything with even the weakest encryption could take weeks, if almost impossible to break. Even with just a few mb, an encrypted file takes a lot of horsepower to crack by brute force.

It is just technological / political BS show.

That said, as a rule I never fly in to the United States with used computer for one very good reason, I am typically there to buy a new computer anyway.

If it is important leave it online, which this article correctly points out makes all this doubly stupid. While in the States I regularly worked on my computers at home in Chile using SSH through an encrypted tunnel to connect to my home network, servers, and other things. I don't keep data on my notebook mostly for fear of having it stolen when traveling, and now fear of having it stolen by some knuckle head at TSA who likely has trouble turning his own home windows computer on. anyone with more than a basic user level of understanding of a computer could defeat or evade these "security" measures. So, what is the point other than intimidation?

That's the whole point. If you happen to rightly or wrongly get on some list (a good example is the TSA watch and no-fly lists), you, out of many thousands of travelers will be pulled outside by CBP (to correct you again of which fed agency we are talking about) upon every USA entry and receive this type of scrutiny.

TSA IS NOT CBP.

TSA IS DOG & PONY SECURITY SHOW, CBP/ICE with their databases to the other government agencies and law enforcement powers is serious stuff.

This is about being singled out with no real means of grievance. No where was it said that every person entering the US with an electronic device is pulled aside for secondary scrutiny.

Even if you where one of these bang on the gong flag waving right wing nut jobs, what they are doing is at best coruption and at worse outright treason as they are filling the US defense networks with gibberish. They are basically conducting a denial of service attack on computer systems that should have better and more productive things to do.

Here is the level political corruption that most third-world countries could only dream of obtaining some day:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=18764753

most of our defense budget is being pissed away on 30 year old technology for things we will never use in a war of any sort again.

I rest my case.

Anyone else want to share their experiences with CBP when reentering the USA?