, 2008-03-20
Recently, I was going through an airport with my shoes, coat, jacket, and belt off as well as with my carry-on bag, briefcase, and laptop all separated for easy inspection. I was heading through security at the Washington D.C., Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, or "National" as we locals call it. As I passed through the new magnetometer which gently puffed air all over my body -- which to me seems to be a cross between a glaucoma test and Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes -- a TSA employee absent-mindedly asked if he could "inspect" my laptop computer. While the inspection was cursory, the situation immediately gave me pause: What was in my laptop anyway?
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Disposable laptop that accesses a remote file system over the internet once you have crossed using a primary key and a duress key. The latter would enable the user to disable his primary key and reset it if he suspected it was compromised when his drive was imaged at the border crossing.
US customs are widely regarded as ridiculous, but imagine being required to explain the contents of your laptop at Saudi, Turkish, Singaporean or any central american border.
Oh, and to all those Wired magazine writers who prophesized in the 90's that digital technology and the Internet would usher in a new era of individual rights free from governmental oppression and interferance, governments are using the internet to spy like never before and we are generating that much more information for them to use against us. Thanks for nothing.
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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/469/35001#35001