rantlust

Posted by anupcs on August 01st 2008 in Computers, Government, USA
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This is not exactly new news but for the first time, the Department of Homeland Security is admitting that their border enforcement policies include confiscating electronic equipment such as laptops, cellphones, external hard disks, iPods, etc. This can be done without any reasonable cause of suspicion. According to The Washington Post:

The policies state that officers may “detain” laptops “for a reasonable period of time” to “review and analyze information.” This may take place “absent individualized suspicion.”

I first heard of this egregious policy a couple of months ago when computer security maven Bruce Schneier blogged about the ruling by a US court that border agents can do this with no restrictions. I have been traveling a lot internationally and often have my laptop (plus PDA, cellphone, flash drives, etc.) with me and so far the only untoward border incident has been me stupidly forgetting the laptop at the security conveyor belt at Washington, DC. (Luckily for me, it ended up in the TSA lost and found and I was able to have a friend pick it up and mail it to me.) But the odds of me being a victim of “profiling” are rather high and I am taking no chances in the future.

The obvious solution to avoid the scenario of not having your laptop for weeks (or in one case, months) is to not take one. Or for that matter, don’t take anything that you don’t want usurped at the border. Schneier has some other recommendations at his site.

Another option is to carry a content-free laptop with you. Recently, I purchased for my organization a laptop meant for just this purpose. The idea is to re-install the laptop with a new operating system (Opensolaris in our case) every time we cross the US border. We plan to do this both to and fro from our travels so that there is no trace left of our usage and more importantly no company confidential information. I also keep a cheap unlocked Motorola Razr phone for international roaming or local sim card use. And my ancient iPod still gets toted around. I don’t care if they usurp any of these from me. Though now I am seriously debating whether I should even carry my fancier dSLR abroad or just take my point and shoot.

If the goal of the terrorists was to make America more like some of the countries they come from, they have won the war already. I long for the day when we can transport ourselves by hologram.

You can read the full customs policy here.

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Posted by papi on March 17th 2008 in Computers, Science
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Welcome to the future!

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Posted by papi on June 29th 2007 in Computers, Rants, Technology
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Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let me begin by stating that I have never been one for operating system holy wars. I have no particular affection for Windows, Linux, Unix, or MacOS, nor do I bear any excessive rancor towards any of them. I’ve worked on and used a number of different flavors of Unix over the years, currently am working on an open source project that spans several Linux distributions, and have used Windows on my laptop for many years. I think that operating system is best which intrudes the least, both in terms of not using up resources on the machine, and in not requiring the user to endlessly tinker with it or to spend time figuring out how to get it to work. Of course, all operating systems fall short on one or other of these points, but occasionally one is spawned that’s such a colossal mistake, such a gigantic steaming pile of fecal matter, that one is forced to take one’s case to the only court of public opinion that matters, the blog. Which finally brings me to Windows Vista, and the reason for this post.

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