Thread: Homeland Security can now search your laptop computer:

http://www.counterthink.org/019790.html
Counterthink.org printable article
Originally published July 27 2006
Homeland Security can now search your laptop computer: Man gets 25 years for deleted image files
(NewsTarget) Three judges have ruled that border police can seize laptops and run forensic tests without warrants or probable cause.
Due to his criminal background, Stuart Romm was denied access by Canadian authorities into British Columbia. When he returned to the Seattle-Tacoma airport, he allowed Homeland Security to search his laptop using forensic software. The tests revealed deleted files of child pornography left on the laptop's cache.

The judge in Romm's case refused his attorney's request to withhold the images from the trial. Romm was convicted of receiving and possessing child pornography knowingly and will serve a total of 25 years. The court declined to overturn Romm's conviction, stating that Americans lose privacy rights if stopped at a border.

The judges cited a 1985 case in which a woman was detained at the border because police believed she had balloons of cocaine on her body, and was forced to submit to examination even though the police had no probable cause. The judge referred to this case in allowing Romm's deleted laptop images. However, the dissenting justices in the 1985 case considered the decision to be "the hallmark of a police state."

Critics of the decision say the laws should be re-examined if authorities are going to conduct border searches without warrants or probable causes. But law enforcement authorities say the national crisis caused by smuggling of illicit narcotics cancels out any rights to privacy.

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Critics of the decision say the laws should be re-examined if authorities are going to conduct border searches without warrants or probable causes. But law enforcement authorities say the national crisis caused by smuggling of illicit narcotics cancels out any rights to privacy.

I'll agree w/ the law enforcement authorities on this one. We are currently at war on drugs (at least that's the rumor anyway).

(at least that's the rumor anyway).

Just like the war on terror. Go for everything and everyone BUT the problem.

I don't know if this is a rumor or not, but I have heard that the government has agreements with software manufacturers (Microsoft, Dell, etc.) that includes a code in their software to collect information about users through the Internet. I know that when you install new software you have to activate the software by giving all of your personal information. I always assumed that this activation was to keep track of legal software. Has anyone else heard anything about this?

I know that when you install new software you have to activate the software by giving all of your personal information. I always assumed that this activation was to keep track of legal software. Has anyone else heard anything about this?

I'm so new to this stuff I felt like Einstein when I graduated from solitare.

It just bothers me that they can track you. My computer is registered to me. Once I got online of course my husband had to go see what he could see.......all the things you shouldn't go to. Now to think that it's possible for me to get in trouble for someone elses stuff bothers me. So after reading about people getting in trouble when they took their computers in for repairs........his mits are forever off my computer.

Skippy's

I don't know if this is a rumor or not, but I have heard that the government has agreements with software manufacturers (Microsoft, Dell, etc.) that includes a code in their software to collect information about users through the Internet.

Hmmm. It could make a person like me who posted a picture of GWB being Hilter nervous !!
Keep me posted. I've been considering deleting it anyway. I just don't want to give in, ya know ?!!

I don't want to be like a senator who caves in to pressure.