Subject: Senate Testimony on Border Laptop Searches
From: Peter Swire, Center for American Progress<[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: 7 Jul 2008 11:01:39 -0400

No, You Can't Search My Laptop
Peter Swire's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/laptop_testimony.html

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol now takes the position that it can seize and copy the contents of a laptop or other computing device for a traveler entering the United States, based simply on its authority to do traditional border searches. On Wednesday June 25, Peter Swire testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution critiquing this deeply flawed policy. 

The testimony examines eight precise analogies between failed encryption policy of the 1990s and laptop border searches. For each of the eight critiques, the testimony explains how the critique applied to encryption policy and how the same argument applies to today’s border searches:

-Traditional legal arguments apply badly to new facts about computing 
-Government forces disclosure of encryption keys 
-Severe violation of computer security best practices 
-U.S. policy creates bad precedents that totalitarian and other regimes will follow 
-Severe harm to personal privacy, free speech, and business secrets 
-Disadvantaging the U.S. economy 
-Political coalition of civil liberties groups and business 
-Technical futility of U.S. policy

Click here to read more and download the full testimony.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/laptop_testimony.html

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