[7533] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: UK searching traveler's disk drives for pornography (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Honig)
Sat Jul 22 13:40:25 2000
Message-Id: <3.0.6.32.20000721205008.00856a60@pop.sprynet.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 20:50:08 -0700
To: Eugene Leitl <eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de>,
David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>
From: David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>
Cc: Jurgen Botz <jurgen@botz.org>, "P.J. Ponder" <ponder@freenet.tlh.fl.us>,
cryptography@c2.net, vcerf@mci.net
In-Reply-To: <14712.48465.12451.71116@lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
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At 02:14 PM 7/21/00 -0700, Eugene Leitl wrote:
>David Honig writes:
>
> > But could they do that to an American returning to America? Sure,
> > a brit returning to post-RIP britain is fresh meat. Or a furriner
> > coming to America (who isn't yet on US soil).
>
>The point is rather, can they legally demand the passphrase for my
>hard drive with a cryptographic file system?
I think its pretty clear they can, if you're not a citizen and not
yet on official US territory.
What about naked hard
>drives (I habitually lug computer hardware in disassembled state, when
>I change my country of residence) which are filled with random-looking
>bits? Hey, I could always claim I'm transporting a one-time pad ;)
Again, if they have the 'right' (as border agents) then the technical
difficulty translates into a battle of wills. A non-citizen would
lose. A citizen *might* have a case but might also spend a few
weeks in a Customs' hotel...
