If Your Hard Drive Could Testify ...

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 7, 2008

A couple of years ago, Michael T. Arnold landed at the Los Angeles International Airport after a 20-hour flight from the Philippines. He had his laptop with him, and a customs officer took a look at what was on his hard drive. Clicking on folders called “Kodak pictures” and “Kodak memories,” the officer found child pornography.

The search was not unusual: the government contends that it is perfectly free to inspect every laptop that enters the country, whether or not there is anything suspicious about the computer or its owner. Rummaging through a computer’s hard drive, the government says, is no different than looking through a suitcase.

One federal appeals court has agreed, and a second seems ready to follow suit.

There is one lonely voice on the other side. In 2006, Judge Dean D. Pregerson of Federal District Court in Los Angeles suppressed the evidence against Mr. Arnold.

“Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory,” Judge Pregerson wrote, in explaining why the government should not be allowed to inspect them without cause. “They are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound.”

Computer hard drives can include, Judge Pregerson continued, diaries, letters, medical information, financial records, trade secrets, attorney-client materials and — the clincher, of course — information about reporters’ “confidential sources and story leads.”

But Judge Pregerson’s decision seems to be headed for reversal. The three judges who heard the arguments in October in the appeal of his decision seemed persuaded that a computer is just a container and deserves no special protection from searches at the border. The same information in hard-copy form, their questions suggested, would doubtless be subject to search.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., took that position in a 2005 decision. It upheld the conviction of John W. Ickes Jr., who crossed the Canadian border with a computer containing child pornography. A customs agent’s suspicions were raised, the court’s decision said, “after discovering a video camera containing a tape of a tennis match which focused excessively on a young ball boy.”

It is true that the government should have great leeway in searching physical objects at the border. But the law requires a little more — a “reasonable suspicion” — when the search is especially invasive, as when the human body is involved.

Searching a computer, said Jennifer M. Chacón, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, “is fairly intrusive.” Like searches of the body, she said, such “an invasive search should require reasonable suspicion.”

An interesting supporting brief filed in the Arnold case by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said there have to be some limits on the government’s ability to acquire information.

“Under the government’s reasoning,” the brief said, “border authorities could systematically collect all of the information contained on every laptop computer, BlackBerry and other electronic device carried across our national borders by every traveler, American or foreign.” That is, the brief said, “simply electronic surveillance after the fact.”

The government went even further in the case of Sebastien Boucher, a Canadian who lives in New Hampshire. Mr. Boucher crossed the Canadian border by car about a year ago, and a customs agent noticed a laptop in the back seat.

Asked whether he had child pornography on his laptop, Mr. Boucher said he was not sure. He said he downloaded a lot of pornography but deleted child pornography when he found it.

Some of the files on Mr. Boucher’s computer were encrypted using a program called Pretty Good Privacy, and Mr. Boucher helped the agent look at them, apparently by entering an encryption code. The agent said he saw lots of revolting pornography involving children.

The government seized the laptop. But when it tried to open the encrypted files again, it could not. A grand jury instructed Mr. Boucher to provide the password.

But a federal magistrate judge quashed that subpoena in November, saying that requiring Mr. Boucher to provide it would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Last week, the government appealed.

The magistrate judge, Jerome J. Niedermeier of Federal District Court in Burlington, Vt., used an analogy from Supreme Court precedent. It is one thing to require a defendant to surrender a key to a safe and another to make him reveal its combination.

The government can make you provide samples of your blood, handwriting and the sound of your voice. It can make you put on a shirt or stand in a lineup. But it cannot make you testify about facts or beliefs that may incriminate you, Judge Niedermeier said.

“The core value of the Fifth Amendment is that you can’t be made to speak in ways that indicate your guilt,” Michael Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Miami, wrote about the Boucher case on his Discourse.net blog.

But Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at the George Washington University, said Judge Niedermeier had probably gotten it wrong. “In a normal case,” Professor Kerr said in an interview, “there would be a privilege.” But given what Mr. Boucher had already done at the border, he said, making him provide the password again would probably not violate the Fifth Amendment.

There are all sorts of lessons in these cases. One is that the border seems be a privacy-free zone. A second is that encryption programs work. A third is that you should keep your password to yourself. And the most important, as my wife keeps telling me, is that you should leave your laptop at home.

SWAT Goons Dispatched On Homeschoolers in Colorado

Truth News | January 8, 2008
Kurt Nimmo

In Garfield County, Colorado, not only will the state determine if you should take your child to a doctor after a mishap, but if you don't comply with their on-high directives, they will dispatch a SWAT team to ensure compliance.

According to Tom Shiflett, a Vietnam vet, his son was injured during horseplay, WorldNetDaily reports. Shiflett's son, John, "was grabbing the door handle of a car as his sister was starting to drive away slowly. He slipped, fell to the ground and hit his head�. There were no broken bones, no dilated eyes, or any other noticeable problems."

(Article Continues Below)

After a neighbor called an ambulance, paramedics "were allowed to see the boy, and found no significant impairment, but wanted to take him to the hospital for an evaluation anyway. Fearing the hospital's bills, the family refused to allow that."

    According to friends of the family, Tom Shiflett, who has 10 children including six still at home, and served with paramedics in Vietnam, was monitoring his son's condition himself.

    The paramedic and magistrate, however, ruled that that wasn't adequate, and dispatched the officers to take the boy, John, to a hospital, where a doctor evaluated him and released him immediately.

But this was not sufficient for the sheriff's office and social services. "Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team" were subsequently unleashed in response, "punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy� accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak."

It appears Shiflett and his family were made an example, as in part they "live by faith and homeschool," social behavior anathema to the NWO and its minions in Colorado government and so-called social services and various control commissariats, conversely known as child kidnapping services.

"While people can debate whether or not the father should have brought his son to the ER � it seems like this was not the kind of emergency that warrants this kind of outrageous conduct by government officials," a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association told WND.

During the SWAT raid for non-compliance, the "boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed� all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves."

Of course, caring for your own is unacceptable, same as it was in the Soviet Union. Mr. Shiflett and his family learned first-hand that all of us are serfs and when the state barks "jump," our only response should be "how high, sir?" Our children are property of the state and we will not be allowed to care for them � or for that matter, school them at home � and government intervention will be mandatory, otherwise SWAT goons will be dispatched to kick in the door and act like what they are, Gestapo goons revisited.

Last Updated: Thursday, 10 January 2008, 11:34 GMT

Deactivated gun ban 'by year end'


The 11-year-old was shot as he walked home from football practice

The home secretary has unveiled plans to ban deactivated guns this year, on a visit to the Liverpool suburb where schoolboy Rhys Jones was murdered.

Jacqui Smith said she wanted to protect the public and allow police to remove black-market firearms from the streets.

She is also expected to meet the parents of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, who was shot dead on 22 August while returning home from football practice.

Gangs and gun crime, both prevalent in the area, will be top of the agenda.

"We already have the tightest controls in Europe but there is more we can do "

- --Home Secretary Jacqui Smith


Who supplies the guns?

Ms Smith said: "I want to balance protecting the public with the rights of responsible collectors of deactivated firearms.

"I will shortly consult on a way forward to allow genuine curators to collect legitimate firearms while giving the police and other enforcement agencies the powers they need to get black-market firearms of our streets.

"Tackling gun crime is key to making people feel safer and more secure in their communities. We already have the tightest controls in Europe but there is more we can do to remove the threat of gun crime."

Widely available

Typically, a deactivated gun has its barrel sawn down the middle and a metal rod is then welded inside to make it incapable of discharging a bullet.

The breech block - which contains the mechanism to actually fire the bullet - is ground down so there is no firing pin.

And many replica guns can be easily converted to enable them to fire live ammunition.

"It is a big loophole in our firearms legislation "

- --Gill Marshall-Andrews, Gun Control Network

The proposal to make converted or deactivated guns illegal comes after a huge increase in the amount of model and pellet guns to have been converted to fire live ammunition.

The police have said there are an estimated 120,000 in circulation in the UK.

Government ministers look set to reclassify them as replica guns, which are already banned.

The move will affect weapons which were deactivated before 1995, when new standards made it harder to convert non-firing guns back into lethal weapons.

But police say many firearms currently being used in crime were deactivated before that time.

Collector implications

A Home Office spokesman said any new law brought in following the home secretary's announcement would relate "almost entirely" to pre-1995 guns.

Ms Smith also said she wanted to "balance protecting the public with the rights of responsible collectors of deactivated firearms".

Her visit to Liverpool comes as police raids saw 25 people arrested on suspicion of supplying Class A drugs in the Croxteth and Norris Green areas of the city.

The Home Office is also to consider the implications for museums with collections of antique weapons.

Gill Marshall-Andrews of the Gun Control Network said: "We are delighted, this has been on our agenda for a long time. It is a big loophole in our firearms legislation."

Rhys' parents, Stephen Jones, 44, and Melanie Jones, 41, are likely to hold a private meeting with the home secretary.

Rhys was shot in the neck and despite a number of arrests nobody has been charged with the schoolboy's murder.

His parents have repeatedly called for the gunman to hand himself in.