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US Airports searching inside laptops?

If you’re traveling to the United States and happen to bring your laptop, iPod or other electronic gadgets with you, airport or border authorities can actually search for data in them.

The Guardian UK has the story:

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you’re entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.

But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography.

Various reasons may prompt this thorough security check — unlicensed softwares, pirated music, porn videos, terrorist plans? Who knows what else they could be on the look-out.

laptop-airport

My previous visits to other countries haven’t gone this far. At the Changi Airport terminal, they’d ask passengers to take out their laptops from their bags and separately run them thru the scanners. Worst experience I had was at the Karachi Airport in Pakistan where airport police turned my luggage inside-out, leaving my clothes and laundry on the floor.

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

9 Responses

  1. Avatar for paul paul says:

    yah right ang dami ng napupurwisyo

  2. Avatar for ceasar ceasar says:

    paano pag hark disk dami ko pa naman music, and installers..

  3. Avatar for dimaks dimaks says:

    kawawa naman yung may maraming na download sa p2p lol

  4. Avatar for animomedia.com animomedia.com says:

    this is too much already

  5. Avatar for Kevin Kevin says:

    I’ve never had anyone ask to search through the actual content/files of my computer. I think the only way they would do this is if they found something else incriminating. Searching computer files would be incredibly time consuming.

  6. Avatar for Val Val says:

    Kapag USB Flash Disk ba electronic device din yun? Hahaha kasi basing from the examples, yung mga devices lang that can power itself up ang sinisearch. J/K

    Anyways, I think this is way too much privacy intrusion.

  7. Avatar for Azrael Azrael says:

    so best way is that…
    bring a laptop that has no data in it…

  8. Avatar for jhay jhay says:

    I guess this is their equivalent to the “great firewall” of China eh?

    An actual firewall that does not filter incoming traffic, it filters incoming computers! lol

  9. Avatar for Jeffrey Jeffrey says:

    Middle eastern Asian police has the tendency to look down on Asians, but put up a good face on caucasians.

    Similar to ABS-CBN crew in Kuwaiti border during the Iraq invasion. Their car was searched like they were looking for Saddam.

    The white media people always got had the best treatment, but they were the ones who literally stole Saddam’s treasures.

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