Fergie's Tech Blog

Warrentless Border Laptop Searches Upheld by U.S Court

Note: While I support locking up child porn offenders, it certainly rubs me the wrong way that "... American citizens effectively enjoy no right to privacy when stopped at the border..." by Homeland Security.

While I may think that this decision is rife with potential for abuse (in my opinion), I encourage you to read this article (and the court's decision) and decide for yourself.

Declan McCullagh writes on C|Net News:

In January 2004, Stuart Romm traveled to Las Vegas to attend a training seminar for his new employer. Then, on Feb. 1, Romm continued the business trip by boarding a flight to Kelowna, British Columbia.

Romm was denied entry by the Canadian authorities because of his criminal history. When he returned to the Seattle-Tacoma airport, he was interviewed by two agents of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.

They asked to search his laptop, and Romm agreed. Agent Camille Sugrue would later testify that she used the "EnCase" software to do a forensic analysis of Romm's hard drive.

That analysis and a subsequent one found some 42 child pornography images, which had been present in the cache used by Romm's Web browser and then deleted. But because in most operating systems, only the directory entry is removed when a file is "deleted," the forensic analysis was able to recover the actual files.

During the trial, Romm's attorney asked that the evidence from the border search be suppressed. The trial judge disagreed. Romm was eventually sentenced to two concurrent terms of 10 and 15 years for knowingly receiving and knowingly possessing child pornography.

The 9th Circuit refused to overturn his conviction, ruling that American citizens effectively enjoy no right to privacy when stopped at the border.

posted by Fergie @ 7/26/2006 06:49:00 PM