Recently an article from Scheiner on Security tweaked my interest, as it has many security professionals. I began to research the actual policy and am even more stunned than when I read scheiner’s initial article. It seems that anytime you come in to the country (See Ports of Entry:Here) you are subject to a having your laptop taken,disassembled,illegally accessed, and analyzed. It seems that if you display nervousness(pteromerhanophobia),are attending a defense conference(Defcon),or generally draw the ire of the secondary screening decision man, anything you own will and can be analyzed. The big issue that I have with this process is that it does not take into account the privacy of US citizens. A Border agent should not be able to say “What’s your password” or “Please Enter your Password”, it is almost like asking a person to allow you into is safety deposit box.You put information is a specific safety deposit box so that noone could get it, so why should you allow someone to take everything you have? It absolutely should not be done, what’s more, out of thousands of laptop searches and seizures- the worst punishment anyone recieved from the government provided documents has been a 10,000 dollar fine for copyright violations.
So how do US Customs agency protect their “Right” to search and seize laptops of incoming aliens and US citizens with the following statement
Wonderful. So if you are wearing a Shirt such as 
You will be “Randomly Searched”. You Should be fine if you wear this shirt however 
.
See the statement of the US Deputy Commisioner of Customs here
Edit:Upon further inspection it appears that border agents cannot open or read correspondence contained within letter class mail (See declared policy here). By encasing a laptop in a letter class, sealed, stamped envelope- border agents would not be able to open without a search warrant or your consent.Macbook Airs would be most effective. Anything with the laptop should be classified as correspondence, (I.E. Email,Chats,IM,Pictures,Shared Documents,Collaborative works, etc.)
Note:I have not tried this technique, I am Only observing written policies and court cases (See official policy here
I have traveled to USA approx twice a month for the past five or so years, and almost always worn the Codenomicon “Go Hack Yourself” T-shirt. I have long hair, casual clothes, and come from a country that some think is in the Eastern Europe (it is not). I often carry two or three laptops with me, accompanied with a handful of other weird gadgets. I often tell them I am attending an infosec conference, or that I am speaking at one.
Some Customs people have joked about, or maybe laughed a bit at the T-shirt. Sometimes they know enough of computer security that they have asked a bit what we do, but that is all. I have never been stopped, searched or questioned. My laptops have never been even looked at. I would be fine with it if they asked me to show the contents of my computers. But they haven’t.
Maybe they all know that we are the good guys? Or maybe all this is just based on some urban legend where some unlucky guy who really was randomly picked and just happened to wear a hacker shirt, or more probably who really did have a bad track record (or suspicious past-time leisures) which definitely would trigger a search. They probably do know if you have committed blackhat acts in the past, even if you were not arrested.
Laptops today can contain a lot of illegal stuff, including export controlled software, pirated software and media, illegally acquired data, and much much more that should be caught at border control.
Comment by Ari Takanen — August 12, 2008 @ 8:29 am