Snooping comes home
I see many things happening that make me think that common use of encryption may soon be a reality. One trend that I've been following closely is the government's ever-increasing willingness to electronically snoop at border crossings.
The NY Times has an article today that ties together several cases involving searches of the contents of hard drives at border crossings. US Customs now feels that a digital search is the same as luggage search and therefore they are entitled. In one particularly interesting case, a gentleman who used PGP, shared his password with them on request, giving them the ability to see that he had some child pornography on his hard drive. He was arrested. The password that he gave them no longer worked and this time when he was asked to unlock the files, he refused. The issue of whether he can be legally compelled to do so is working its way through the court system now.
Depending on how the courts rule, it would seem that routinely encrypting personal data would be a smart move for travelers, even for people not hiding things. After all, even if you trust the US government not to copy or otherwise misuse your information, presumably other governments will soon enact a similar policy and start looking at American travelers' computers.
Posted on January 07, 2008
