Thanks to two other MemeStreams users I learned that the new Obama flavor DHS laptop search policies are out and that the ACLU is suing DHS for more specific information.

I read through all of this stuff.

The most important take away is that Obama is continuing the civil liberties excesses of the Bush years. That impression is no longer theoretical. This isn't some lawsuit that they were already up to their ears in when he took office. This is administration policy that was radically expanded during the Bush years which Obama's team took the time to review, reconsider, and rewrite. This is Obama on civil liberties. Its not pretty.

While I'm glad that DHS took the step of publishing this information it will not resolve the substantive policy debate in any way.

Janet Napolitano seems to disagree:

“The new directives announced today strike the balance between respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders.”

In fact, with one minor exception that I'll discuss, there is no "civil liberty" acknowledged here, so this policy cannot be said to strike any sort of balance.

These documents explain that DHS randomly seizes laptops, cellphones, and cameras and "detains" them for indepth forensic analysis in search of evidence of any crime. They will usually keep these items for less than 5 days but they can keep them for extended periods of time. By randomly I mean without any suspicion at all. They literally pick you out of the line at random.

We're told that DHS will store the electronics in a secure location and destroy any copies when they are done with them, but anything else would be totally irresponsible. The mere fact that they aren't leaving your laptop in an insecure location doesn't balance your civil liberties interests!

The privacy impact study does take the time in its introduction to acknowledge that "the... central privacy concern is the sheer volume and range of types of information available on electronic devices as opposed to a more traditional briefcase or backpack." It almost sounds like they are off to a good start, but the document never directly addresses the privacy implications of having Customs officers forensically examine that information, which includes detailed records of personal correspondence, work product, web surfing history, photographs and music collections, etc. That is the central concern here and the document steps around it with a creepy degree of bureaucratic blindness:

CBP and ICE have identified six privacy risks associated with the examination, detention, retention, and/or seizure of a traveler’s electronic device or information during a border search: (1) t... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

DHS Secretary Napolitano Announces New Directives on Border Searches of Electronic Media

Jeffrey Rosen:

The question of free speech online isn’t just about what a company like Google lets us read or see; it’s also about what it does with what we write, search and view.

Google’s claim on our trust is a fragile thing. After all, it’s hard to be a company whose mission is to give people all the information they want and to insist at the same time on deciding what information they get.

“We’re at the dawn of a new technology. And when people try to come up with the best metaphors to describe it, all the metaphors run out. We’ve built this spaceship, but we really don’t know where it will take us.”

This a long article that touches on a number of things including Joe Lieberman's request that YouTube remove jihadist videos even if they were protected by U.S. law as well as the Global Network Initiative about which I need to do more reading.

Google’s Gatekeepers

This article details one particularly instructive case from the Vietnam era.

The Man in the Snow White Cell

The strength of a nation is not characterized by what it holds dear in times of peace, but what it holds dear in times of war. Unfortunately, this administration has been all too willing to bend the rules and reinterpret the law.

Wrongly Held: It Can Happen Here

Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer in Oregon, was held for two weeks, even though the only other connections between him and terrorism were things like the fact, as the FBI pointed out, that his law firm advertised in a "Muslim yellow page directory" whose publisher had once had a business relationship with Osama bin Laden's former personal secretary.

So is this what you call a Non-Obvious Relationship?

This nation was organized under a rule of law, not a dictatorship of the virtuous. The founding fathers wrote the Bill of Rights specifically because they did not believe that honorable men always do the right thing.

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