The thing that really pissed me off is, I'm clean. They found nothing illegal, not even close. Yet I was still put into the computer system to make future returns a pain in the ass for me.

That means, I was guilty even after I proved to them (by them checking every ID I had) I was innocent. I am now going to be punished for all future entries into the country for FOLLOWING THE LAW and doing the right thing, not breaking it. What a joke.

I used to get "special" treatment like that all the time, Also the SSSS On my tickets - The "special" lines :(

That's good to know. Guess I'll just have to stay gone for two more years and knee deep in exotic pussy. Damn.

Hmmmm.... next time in maybe I should bring in a bunch of nasty bareback creampie gay content for them to look at.

that sucks... on trips to Thailand, Philippines, and Costa Rica on pure vacation, I was always pulled aside as a single male traveler. I came back into Houston once and the failed cop, aka customs officer, kept on rifling off questions. Why was I there, When, and he finally asked me why I travel solo. I asked him if he wanted to come next time and would his wife allow him? He got pissed and let me go. I walked 5 steps outta the area, called him an asshole, and promised never to cross back into the US via Houston.

Welcome back to the US. Your home of failed cops & rental cops.

Listen to Kevin Mitnik's episode of TWIT (tech podcast) on how he encrypts his stuff and it's amazing. Awesome 15-20 minutes of tech security talk for travelers.

DirtyWhiteBoy i always read your stories with huge interest.
i love them ;) waiting for a new one

got a link for that?

Get a NEXUS card. Then you can go through the machine.

Seriously, though, it doesn't matter what country you go to, the customs officer can screw with you if he's having a bad day. Except Canada. We don't give a shit here.

I was in Boston a few weeks ago. On my way there, the US customs asked me "Do you have relatives from Lebanon?" I said yep. He said, "Have a nice trip."

And I agree. Those angry black ladies at security can get on your nerves. One of my shoes always sets off the metal detector and they wave their wand and then assume it is from something in the shoe, so they tell me to keep walking. But one angry overweight black lady in Calgary made me take them off and x-ray them. And she waved the wand on my socked feet.

And in Denver, two teenage security officers started playing with my umbrella. But because it is automatic, when she opened it, she couldn't figure out how close it. So she told the guy to close it, and they started arguing with each other. You close it, no you close it, no you opened it, you close it.

In Egypt, they wanted to search us, and we said no. And then he had the nerve to ask for a tip.

If you had been in Mexico, they would have thrown you in jail. Pornography is illegal there, at least according to what I read recently.

But as you say, it was the U.S. What is frightening is that the U.S is actually allowed to randomly confiscate anyone's laptop without any reason for suspicion, and they can keep it for as long as they want. They can also copy all data off of that laptop and keep that information indefinately.

Basically, when you carry a laptop across the border, you are opening your life to the gov't as far as I can tell. When I cross the borders next month, I plan on crossing with a brand new laptop that has never seen porn and will only access things via ftp as I need them and then delete them again.

From my own experience, I've found most border people to be quite friendly. They tend to get treated very poorly as people in general don't like them, so if you are nice and chat, they sometimes relax and act quite nice to you. I've had a few that were a little uppity though.

Gotta love the LAX...

Jesus, i hope a customs agent never asks me that, i would be REALLY REALLY REALLYoffended! I would tell them my life story and they would be FORCED to subject themselves to listen to all of it because they ASKED FIRST.

This is what I would say:

"First of all, what is wrong with traveling solo? Why do people give me a hard time when I want to eat alone in a restaurant or go to the theater or movies alone? Why does it go against society norms to want to be alone. Why am I being punished for being alone? What is suspicious about a person traveling alone? Do you also think it's abnormal that I like to be alone and do everything alone? Is there a rule that says you have to do activities with other people?

I do not have many friends. My one friend that I do have cannot afford to travel, am I supposed to pay for their ticket? I do not have a significant other. I like to be alone. Why is that a crime?"

That's discrimination, thinking that way of someone because they are alone. I do everything alone! I cannot wait for someone to question me about why I am alone, I cannot wait to give it to me. I will torture then for 5 hours about my life and rant on and on because they started it first.

They want to see regularly updates of your content. So they put you on the list of interesting content people and can examine the updates every time you´ll step by.

Damn man that sounds awful, but hopefully you'll have a good Thanksgiving.

You are correct. I've NEVER had issues at any border other than in the USA. Usually it's smooth sailing. This is not the first time I've had issues with them, but this was the first time I had a ton of porn on me.

haha after 3 hours of questioning on how pretty pornstars really are, i'd be depressed too

He would have spent at least 30 days in jail in Mexico waiting on them to decide if it was worth holding him for.

Deleting shit wont help you:

"What's happening is that the Windows operating system's memory management leaves data all over the place in the normal course of operations. For example, you'll type a password into a program, and it gets stored in memory somewhere. Windows swaps the page out to disk, and it becomes the tail end of some file. It gets moved to some far out portion of your hard drive, and there it'll sit forever. Linux and Mac OS aren't any better in this regard. "

im flagged too..they know all about the pron

Yea, and in China I'd be in prison for 7 tears. Cuba 10 years. In Laos they could execute me. What's your point?

What is it with you Americans talking about how bad something could be in Mexico?

There are plenty of other countries out there that are a shit load worse than Mexico.

Cool. Lets meet up in the Flagged Lounge next time.

I think this is it....
http://twit.tv/163

i can't say anything about Canada or Thailand, but i swear something like that will not happen in any european country. have you ever been over here, Jim? if not - ask anyone from the US who travelled to Webmaster Access Amsterdam for example. And how they got treated at immigration. The ONLY thing (besides the usual things like drugs or weapons) that can happen is paying tax if you went shopping too much and "forgot" to declare it (or didn't throw away all bills). but besides "anything to declare?" you will not hear anything else than "welcome, sir" at any european border

a friend also always gets the "SSSS" on his tickets and I had the pleasure already too - entering the US today is like entering the former eastern Germany or Russia in the 1970ies

Listening to Kevin Mitnick talk about his experience at the border is really interesting. Scary stuff for those in this business... :2 cents:

Sorry to hear about your experience, DWB. I agree about the US Customs cops being the worst I've ever dealt with.

Hell, I've seen them tear apart a minivan with a family in it just because the driver (father) failed to tell them about the "Fruit" in his kid's snacks. They were in that waiting room for over an hour with screaming toddlers while they're van got searched. They finally got sent away with a warning to "declare all fruits or else". This was at the Peach Arch crossing into Washington state!

Lucky custom agents... damm...

Never a problem anywhere in Europe.

I'm not just picking on the USA here but it honestly is the most unfriendly country I have ever entered in my life. I feel like a criminal sometimes when I enter just based on how they treat me, a US passport holder.

If they want to hassle people they need to hassle NON Americans coming from countries that are anti-American or harbor terrorists. But that would be "racial profiling" and we can't have that. It's much easier to hassle their own.

you have no idea about computer security this is an easy problem to fix.

canadian customs agents are also a bunch of cock sucking asstards.

is it legal for them to go through your stuff (on harddrives or laptops) if you had it in in luggage as opposed to carry-on?

i think they can just do anything they want, which kind of sucks

i hear if they go through your car they literally tear it apart and when all is said and done even if they find nothing youre just left with a fucked up car

but i dont travel outside of canada, at least i havent yet and i never plan on going to the US

I haven't been to Europe in a long, long time, but come on- forty DVDs worth of porn content? Even the most liberal European customs agent would have to at least check it out to see if it was kiddie porn. That's exactly what they did to DWB here in American customs. Now their poor attitude and the part about red flagging him is another story, but of course those things are part of DWBs perception. Who knows if they actually did red flag him or just said that to scare him. It does stand to reason that part of a customs agent's job would be to screen against someone smuggling in thousands of child pornography images or videos, and a guy like DWB (or you or me for that matter) crossing international borders carrying that much porn is awfully suspicious. I think the customs agents did their job. As nerve wracking as it must have been for him, what should they have done, sent him on through with 40 DVDs worth of porn without at least making sure that he wasn't smuggling fresh c.p. material?

can they look at files in your laptop that invasion of privacy right?

I stood right there and watched them type a bunch of bull shit into the computer about me. I was trying to talk them out of it the entire time. They showed me what they were doing step by step and told me why they were doing it. The pricks.

I told them I understood WHY they had to look at my content, and I do, but 10 DVDs in with every model having an ID and release, they should have dropped it. I had box cover art on there, website PSDs, invoices from some pretty big and well known companies, you name it. They could clearly see right out of the gate that I was not bringing in CP. What they did was overboard along with some of their questions and comments WAY out of line.

It wasn't nerve wracking as I know my rights and knew that if they tried to seize legal content for no reason at all, they would have a serious law suit on their hands. It was just a pain in the ass and time consuming. I think I was more aggravated than anything because they clearly were overstepping their bounds. I can understand if I didn't have IDs of models or the models looked pre-teen, but nothing could be further from the truth. For starters, almost all of them had cocks. lol

That is fucking insane..
They can search laptops and hard drives as well even if they are in your luggage??

They were enjoy themselves at your expense. Power corrupts.

Furthermore, based on what you described in previous posts, they apparently lead very boring lives - viewing your content was likely most excitement they've had in ages.

As others have pointed out already, Customs in a matter of speaking is above the law when it comes to search and seizure.

Count your lucky stars that the situation wasn't even worse - there are numerous instances, in which computers, content, etc are seized by Customs and seemingly disappear into the abyss for months, years, or even forever.

Ron

can they search data inside your laptop?

Sounds like a pain in the arse

Yes ... plus they can go a step further and seize the laptop itself for an indeterminate amount of time.

Ron

Using Truecrypt hidden volumes might be a good idea (not for 40 DVDs of tranny content though), but as someone already said, if they find out it's just gonna make them hassle you even more.
A couple of interesting articles:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/15/1551246
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/09/1919214
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...uting.security

And I have developed the habit of using Eraser when I delete stuff. Don't want any sensitive info hanging around if I sell/giveaway one of my old hard drives: http://www.heidi.ie/node/6

enlighten me then

Read my post above for Eraser.