national security

 by Brendon J. Wilson

Uh Oh: TSA Can Search Laptops

A US Ninth Circuit court ruling this week has asserted that computers are like luggage and are therefore subject to searches at borders and airports. This is a scary revelation for anyone in the computer industry who is practically inseparable from their laptop.

Unlike luggage, a laptop is a vessel for storing sensitive corporate data, personal financial information, and in many cases, just about everything a person has ever done (I, for example, have email archives dating back to 1996).

This is yet another reason to start protecting your data using applications like PGP Whole Disk Encryption (for whom I used to work), or Open Source alternatives like TrueCrypt. However, given that a state court has already ruled that the TSA can’t force you to divulge your passphrase, I have to wonder how long it is before the TSA lobbies for a software equivalent to the ominous TSA travel locks?

in Opinion / Politics / Technology 11 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Dear Boston Police: Try “Google”

Not a month after the Aqua Teen Hunger Force incident in which Boston Police shut down the city to blow up a number of promotional blinking ads, it seems the Boston Police Bomb Squad is bucking for promotion again today. This time, they blew up a suspicious package in Boston’s financial district, that turned out to be a traffic counter placed there by the City’s own Transportation Department.

How is it that no one bothered to try to identify the device before blowing it up? I mean, I understand that faced with a possible bomb, caution is required. But couldn’t someone take a picture with a cameraphone and see if someone in the City could identify it beforehand? How about a Google search?

In fact, let me suggest a new protocol for first responders to deal with any unusual circumstance:

  1. Open a web browser
  2. Go to Google.com
  3. Type a description of the object in question
  4. Examine the results for a match.

It’s that easy. It even works for other circumstance when you don’t know what you’re looking at. Take the recent case of the immigrant who was denied entry until he removed a medical device from his posterior that the customs officials thought might be used to smuggle drugs. It’s called a “seton”, and despite the fact that the doctor at the airport had never heard of it, a Google search for “seton” and “anal” immediately returns a nice detailed result on the device and the medical reasons it is used.

Come on guys – it’s just not that hard.

in Opinion / Technology 0 comments