[3411] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Fwd: US Secret Service checking laptops at airports
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rodney Thayer)
Mon Oct 5 11:07:54 1998
Date: Sun, 04 Oct 1998 21:48:58 -0400
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: Rodney Thayer <rodney@tillerman.nu>
In some areas of the Tampa Airport they use one of those explosives
detectors (looks like a screen wipe, they wipe the PC and your case,
stick the wipe in a machine which presumably checks for explosives,
drugs, democrats, the usual things.
My point is that not all places ask for the machine to be booted.
>From: "Sidney Markowitz" <sidney@communities.com>
>To: <cryptography@c2.net>
>Subject: US Secret Service checking laptops at airports
>Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1998 18:26:52 -0700
>X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3155.0
>Sender: owner-cryptography@c2.net
>
>A friend of mine recently traveled from one of the Washington DC area
>airports to Ireland and reports that US Secret Service agents checked her
>laptop for the domestic 128-bit crypto versions of Netscape Navigator and
>Microsoft Internet Explorer at the metal detector station. She said she saw
>about six other people who were checked as she was going through. As is now
>common, anyone carrying a laptop computer was asked to boot it up,
>presumably to demonstrate that if the case hid a bomb at least it was
>programmable with a reasonable looking user interface. But in her instance,
>people who identified themselves as Secret Service agents had her start up
>her web browser so they could check the encryption level, and made her
>uninstall her 128-bit Navigator.
>
>It didn't seem to matter to them that there are exemptions for devices that
>are for personal use as long as they are kept with the person while out of
>the country, or that she is an international banker who was going to conduct
>business with an overseas office. They didn't bother to determine whether
>she had a copy of the Navigator install file in a backup directory and could
>simply reinstall on the airplane. And of course it made no difference that
>she was going to Ireland where she picked up a locally produced 128-bit
>crypto plugin for Navigator that she says works just as well if not better
>than the version from Netscape. (I don't know if her "plugin" is simply one
>of the scripts that enable the Netscape strong crypto in the export
>version.)
>
> -- Sidney Markowitz <sidney@communities.com>
>
