You might want to rethink that plan if that laptop contains your latest review, or perhaps email correspondence with certain sexy ladies who are unpersuaded by your charm alone (which pretty much sums it up for me).

       Okay, I knew there was a border search exception to the Fourth Amendment that allowed suspicionless searches of my person and my suitcase, but I didn’t think they could actually make me turn on my laptop and search my harddrive.

       But yes they can, thanks in the first instance to President Bush who said this would “make us safer” bc laptop searches might yield info on terrorists, and President Obama, who criticized Mr. Bush’s treatment of the Constitution as an annoyance, but then continued the same policy as president.

      They don’t need a warrant; they don’t need probable cause; they don’t even need reasonable suspicion. If you are flying international it’s just - “hey you with the laptop –come here.”

      So what’s been happening? Well, the policy hasn’t yielded many terrorists but it has caught of number of travelers who have violated the Mann Act (you know that one), the Travel Act (you don’t know that one, but interstate travel to facilitate state law prostitution is a federal crime, dude, punishable by 5 years in prison) , and child pornography laws (okay that part is good).


    Whether they can actually make you access the internet and then can review your site history on your browser – and your posts on TER (gulp) – is unclear to me.

        Thankfully, the ACLU has said “enough” and has challenged this over-reaching practice in a lawsuit. But the existing laws clearly say they can do it. So, if flying international, make sure there is nothing on your laptop that you don’t want to share with the customs agent at the airport.


-- Modified on 9/7/2010 5:01:02 PM

for three hours while they searched his computer. And he was innocent.

     The guy in the 9th circuit case was arrested and convicted of sex crimes based on what they found on his computer.

        The search would be by US agents and yes they do forward it to DOJ who will then decide whether to use that info to get a search warrant to search your house and other computers to find evidence of a crime; or if you have child porno on your computer, or your latest TER review which mentions the "envelope" and then describes sex, they can arrest you right there.

      If Canadian customs perform the search and finds incriminating stuff, I have no idea whether there is some kind of sharing arrangement for sex stuff but surely there would be for terrorist stuff.

     As for the link, there is one attached.

would say - "your flight leaves in an hour. Hope you can remember it in time to make your flight."

"Your reviews should be as honest and objective as possible since a TER staff member will verify them."

I always chuckle when someone mentions that disclaimer.

      You may as well say "I was just paying for her time." They only need probable cause to arrest, and the review gives them that if it is found on your laptop with the elements of the crime.
(that is a good reason never to mention money in your review).


You can tell them it's just fantasy; you can tell then you loaned your laptop to Beefeater - none of that really matters if they want to arrest you bc they now have probable cause.

     The reality is only a very small number of laptops are going to be randomly searched, and there is little federal enthusiasm for pursing sex crimes as long she was over 18. But for those TER members for whom even an arrest would be disasterous, I thought I would bring this to the Board's attention.

Why would I have anything close to incriminating on my laptop?

And do you think a warrant should be required (and therefore the threshold required for the warrant would need to be surpassed) in order to perform this kind of search on someone that fails an audio interview or visual inspection (which of course they could claim for anyone)?

Good advice though for people to not keep things on their person that they don’t want a border guard inspecting.

I would point out that things are even more perilous when entering Australia. Have no porn on your computer, except maybe a copy of “MILFS WITH JUGS”. Their restrictions include anything that simply appears close to young and (most interesting) anyone with A-cups.

committed a crime before they can search the words and pictures on your laptop.

    The x ray machine has removed any chance of a bomb being in there, so all the government is doing is fishing for a crime that has nothing to do with your boarding that airplane. That is not reasonable.

     Good point about Australia and in fact it underscores that you really need to know the search policy of all countries you will enter or better yet just make sure your laptop is clean.

to worry about. Is it no different than taking the necessary precautions before going through security, i.e. liquids, small scissors, nail clippers, etc.

First, this should not be an issue if you are carrying a company issued laptop. If you have porn, or been accessing TER, there is a good chance your company's IT security dept has tracked your activity and you are probably an ex-employee.

Second, if you are carrying a personal laptop, your first precaution is to ensure certain data is removed and secured on an external drive left at home. Why chance it? I'm having a hard time understanding the implication of TER. Your reviews are stored on an TER external servers. I assume you have cleaned your history before departing. The only way they could see any information is to take your laptop to an off site in order to do a detail scan of your internal drive. At the border or airport, there is no visible evidence they can point to that tells them you have been surfing the TER site.

Now saying that, yeah it would be a big time inconvenience if my laptop was confiscated for an extended period of time.

I'm no expert on probable cause. I'm assuming if you look Middle Eastern that is probable cause. Hell, the Europeans have been pulling this shit for over 20 years.

I'm not as worried about the plane's safety (nowadays) as I am about the person entering the country.

If a person even seems suspicious, I don't mind a very low threshold to take the opportunity of completely checking him out during this last chance. After he enters the country it becomes much harder to discover reality (or even keep track of him).

Better to keep the mesh on the net smaller at the border than to reduce it everywhere I live.

I agree why would you have TER info on your lap top    And if you used crap cleaner after surfing no big deal .

So there would be no need to connect you to TER as the review would effectively be a confession of a crime on your laptop -probably too vague to convict to convict but enough to establish probable cause for a search warrant if not an arrest warrant.

     But if you delete the review after writing and submitting it, you would not have this problem. The question remains whether they could compel you to connect to the internet as part of the search.
They might at least ask you to do so and get access to your history that way.

      Note that they asked the guy to turn his computer on, snooped in a picture file, found pictures of 2 nude women and decided to keep searching till they found child porno.


UNITED STATES v. ARNOLD, 533 F.3d 1003 (9th Cir. 2008)


On July 17, 2005, forty-three-year-old Michael Arnold arrived at Los Angeles International Airport ("LAX") after a nearly twenty-hour flight from the Philippines. After retrieving his luggage from the baggage claim, Arnold proceeded to customs. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol ("CBP") Officer Laura Peng first saw Arnold while he was in line waiting to go through the checkpoint and selected him for secondary questioning.
She asked Arnold where he had traveled, the purpose of his travel, and the length of his trip. Arnold stated that he had been on vacation for three weeks visiting friends in the Philippines.

 Peng then inspected Arnold's luggage, which contained his laptop computer, a separate hard drive, a computer memory stick (also called a flash drive or USB drive), and six compact discs. Peng instructed Arnold to turn on the computer so she could see if it was functioning. While the
computer was booting up, Peng turned it over to her colleague, CBP Officer John Roberts, and continued to inspect Arnold's luggage.

 When the computer had booted up, its desktop displayed numerous icons and folders. Two folders were entitled "Kodak Pictures" and one was entitled "Kodak Memories." Peng and Roberts clicked on the Kodak folders, opened the files, and viewed the photos on Arnold's computer including one that depicted two nude women. Roberts called in supervisors, who in turn called in special agents with the United States Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
("ICE"). The ICE agents questioned Arnold about the contents of his computer and detained him for several hours. They examined the computer equipment and found numerous images depicting what they believed to be child pornography. The officers seized the computer and storage devices
but re-leased Arnold. Two weeks later, federal agents obtained a warrant.

 A grand jury charged Arnold with: (1) "knowingly transporting] child
pornography, as defined in[18 U.S.C. § 2256(8)(A)], in interstate and
foreign commerce, by any means, including by computer, knowing that the
images were child pornography"; (2) "knowingly possess[ing] a computer
hard drive and compact discs which both contained more than one image of
child pornography, as defined in [18 U.S.C. § 2256(8)(A)], that had been
shipped and transported in interstate and foreign commerce by any means,
including by computer, knowing that the images were child pornography";
and (3) "knowingly and intentionally travel[ing] in foreign commerce
Page 1006
and attempt[ing] to engage in illicit sexual conduct, as defined in [
18 U.S.C. § 2423(f)], in a foreign place, namely, the Philippines, with
a person under 18 years of age, in violation of [18 U.S.C. § 2423(c)]."

that allows someone to gain access to one's internet history because they are connected to the internet that would not otherwise be available (it's normally stored locally).

Thanks and I looked it up more and it said   Arnold committed suicide two days after being informed of the Supreme Court's refusal to hear his appeal.
Not a good idea to have child porn on a computer anywhere.

assuming that all your nefarious TER-related and hobby-related activities were perpetrated within the friendly confines of the USA, does Canada have any jurisdiction over  your hobbying romps in venice beach, Las Vegas and other points south of the 49th parrellel?

What are they going to do?  Confiscate your laptop andforward to  the appropriate US Attorney's office?

Seems more embarrassing and inconvenient than anything else - as you present it. Link please?

and never had a problem. I don't keep data on it anyway. If someone wants to read my ter posts they can have at it. I have to admit that I routinely ignore laws that pertain to consensual sexual activities between adults though.

don't mention "envelopes" or make any reference to $ in your wonderful reviews

eschew the under-18 fare, now matter how irresistable

oh, and don't forget that wonderful boilerplate in the TER user agreement - how everything here is considered fiction.  Write a few half-assed paragraphs, pretend it's the outline of a novel or a short story, and that everything incriminating is just "research.'

Ans void Canada if at all possible.


-- Modified on 9/7/2010 9:04:52 PM

the History button and I am not connected to the Internet, no history is displayed.

So I thought history was stored on the server and not my PC. Is there some other way to access history without a connection?

Without being on the Internet, click on Search Program Files. Assuming you have Windows 7, you access by clicking on the MS logo lower left hand side of your screen. Type in Temporary Files and see what pops up. You should get a couple of prompts like Delete Cookies, Delete History, etc. If you click on one of those, it takes you to Internet Properties. So my concern is that they would be able to access w/out connection to the Internet. History, Temp Files, Cookies are stored on your laptop unless you delete.

Just set your History and stuff to delete when you exit and that should ease your mind. If you do that, TER is not an issue as your reviews and stuff are stored on TER's servers. I seriously doubt they would even know to ask about TER, let alone force you to access the site.

-- Modified on 9/8/2010 7:49:15 AM

They will waterboard you until you fork over the password.

Use Crap Cleaner to delete surfing then no trace

http://download.cnet.com/ccleaner/

-- Modified on 9/8/2010 1:15:11 PM

How would they know which reviewer you were? How would they know the porn on it was yours?  What if it wasn't your computer?

They would waterboard you till you confessed to whatever crime that they said that you committed.