I flew into SFO (San Francisco) from Asia in May 2006.
I went straight to the customs agent as I had no luggage.
The agent asked to go through my only bag.
I gave him my bag.
The agent took out my laptop and turned it on.
He then asked for my password
He said that he wanted to verify that I had no illegal content on my hard drive...
While operating my laptop he said that we was tasked with preventing illegal pornographic material from entering the United States
Travis Kalanick
Red Swoosh, Inc.
Founder, CEO
These things usually make me angry. This just makes me sad. The difference is that I don't think there is anything that can be done to stop this. I think this means we've already lost. I beleive that the fact that these searches occur at an international border does not make them per say reasonable. The world is much smaller then it used to be. These searches have nothing to do with protecting national security. They are a dragnet setup in a Constitutional loophole that millions pass through every day. Furthermore, the contents of one's laptop are the closest physical thing to the contents of one's head. And the police are rifling through them at random. And there isn't a damn thing that can be done about it. We learned these lessons of history the hard way, and now we've forgotten and we're going to learn them the hard way again, and there is no stopping it. Communism may have lost, but Authoritarianism has won.
