US Gov can search your hard drive for no reason.

It always baffles me when people are so quick to defend these kinds of intrusions.

Reminds me of how many people were just as quick to defend a government's intrusion on someone's child-bearing.
 
That's actually a really poor analogy.
 
If people support this, I'm sure they won't mind being stopped at random in the street for full body cavity searches. I mean, if they're not hiding anything, what's the problem? :crazyeye:
well doing so at random in the street would be something wholly different from doing it upon entering the country, no?

I'm usually really quick to defend my right to privacy, but I really can't see the big deal here. They can search your bags too, so why not what's in those bags?

If the randomly searched my HD in the streets or at my home this would be a different story altogether.
 
I disagree with your 'no reason' assessment. Customs tends not to go into detail unless they feel you're concealing something.

I've never had customs open my bags. I've never given them reason too.
 
US Gov can search your hard drive for no reason.
*encrypts*
Not any more. :p

I'll have to consider how comparable this is to customs being allowed to search your luggage.
 
*encrypts*
Not any more. :p

I'll have to consider how comparable this is to customs being allowed to search your luggage.

Customs can break locks to get into your luggage.

If they run across files they cannot access, they're going to ask you to make them accessible.

hmmm, what then? If you said no, would they have any legal standing to seize your laptop and have it sent somewhere?
 
This is just a waiver, same as what you see on medicines:

"May cause drowsiness, headaches, vomiting, or anal leakage."

It just means it happened to 1 measily person and they needed to officially state this for the right to do so. Of course it also means some will abuse their authority and do it because they can, especially if you're being a jerk (see local police).
 
Customs can break locks to get into your luggage.

If they run across files they cannot access, they're going to ask you to make them accessible.
Who said they'd run across the files? :D There's the option of using TrueCrypt or the like, which not only encrypts files, but which can also hide them so that the area where they're written appears to be empty space. The only way to access them is by using TrueCrypt again aimed at that area with the right password. Otherwise, all the computer sees is the equivalent of deleted space from the trashcan, and it'll even get written over if the rest of the free space on the partition gets filled and you try to save more data.

hmmm, what then? If you said no, would they have any legal standing to seize your laptop and have it sent somewhere?
Maybe. I don't really care - if there's something I want to keep so secret that I encrypt it and refuse to reveal the key, I'm bloody well not going to use a key that the people at "somewhere" (be it the NSA or whoever) can break.
Wall Of Text on calculational power coming up...
Spoiler :
Imagine that I use "VaNq2101JneJnfOrtvaavatJungUnccraFbzrobqlFrgHcHfGurObzoJrTrgFvtanyZnvaFperraGheaBa" as the key. (The phrase is ROT-13 of InAd2101WarWasBeginningWhatHappenSomebodySetUpUsTheBombWeGetSignalMainScreenTurnOn, so it's easy to check for typos before converting and entering it, and I don't have to remember a crazy string.)
Since each character can be an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, or a numeral, and the string is 82 chars long, there are (26+26+10)^82, or about 946 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 possible strings to try in the worst case.
Even if there are enough security holes, algorithm weaknesses, known characters, and general attack angles for the NSA to cut down this number by a factor of a googol (and now I'm being generous), they still have to make 10^46 attempts. Let's see... assuming that they have a million of the latest IBM supercomputers running at petaflop speeds, they'll still need an amount of time larger by orders of magnitude than the age of the universe to crack the rest by brute force.


IN SUMMARY:
Devoted encryption is only beatable by rubber-hose cryptanalysis.
 
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