12172003

I was flying back from Thailand through KLAX. On my customs card I put down some clothes, some small gifts, for food I had some chili/curry sauces and tea for a total of about $350. I get pulled off to the side. One customs agent asks if they can look at my laptop. I pull it out and he hits the power on button. I then type my password to log in. I then got busy with another agent who was searching my a 22" rollerboard and a 26" rollerboard plus my laptop bag. I looked up and the other agent had done a search on my harddrive for *.jpg and had them viewed as thumbnails. He was scrolling through the images. I had nothing to hide so I let him continue. After going through my bags just making sure my list of items was consistent with what I had down the agent let me pack up my stuff and also asking what I did for a living, etc. The other agent with my computer continued for another 5 minutes looking at the images at which point I think he got about half way through the images and gave me back my computer. I asked the 3 agents in total what had triggered the search so I can avoid it in the future. Their response was "What does Thailand have a lot of?" I replied, "Thai food, hagglers, heat, humidity, go go bars, beaches and more hagglers." They replied, "We're looking specifically for people carrying child porn." They were reasonably friendly and I was chatting to them about my (first time) experience there. They also said a lot of being picked is luck fo the draw but apparently they do catch a lot of people. Total time was about 25 minutes. No major harm as I had to wait for a connection.

I know they can search my bags, can they search my computer? They never explicitly asked if they can search my computer. I'm more afraid of them doing something to screw up my laptop.

One funny note is that they liked my luggage locks....zip ties. I said that I have never had TSA open a bag. They replied, "They don't carry knives so they get confused really easily....really easily." hehehe.

9Benua

It's pretty disturbing, don't you think? I've no tolerance for child porn but I hate a stranger looks at my personal photo just because I went to Thailand. I will feel very violated.

Loren Pechtel

They can search anything they want.

I don't think they should be taking 25 minutes on a random pick, though--that could mean a missed flight on a tight connection.

People aren't going to have just one kiddie porn pic, though--do the *.jpg search and then skip through it.

visaman

You should have said, "Looking for some good porno to jack to?"

otr271

And what if they found some of that?

SwissCircle

I think they need a warrant to do this.

slippahs

Not quite. Take a quick read:
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=2671

visaman

Well, obviously there wouldn't be any.

Taker Park

Twenty five minutes sounds a little excessive, but with everything that comes out of Thailand (not just child porn) I'm not surprised.

But I am surprised they told you they were looking for child porn.

LAX does find a lot of child porn. I know of at least three instances over the last year.

AArlington

Three instances over the past year with how many millions of travellers?

Taker Park

Good question. I don't have time to wade through LAWA's site to find the statistics on how many international travellers pass through LAX, but I did base the number found on how many were written about in the L.A. Times.

GoingAway

You gave them permission by logging on for them ... Not sure if you had refused, what would've happened.

I have more of an issue with multiple agents going through your stuff that you felt you couldn't watch them all. I've made TSA stop and wait on more than one occasion, when multiple people wanted to mess with my belongings.

entilzhaFT

So what do they do if they find porn? I mean, young children are obvious, but how do they tell 16 vs 18? Or what about good 'ol American products from there in greater LA?

12172003

Maybe it wasn't 25 minutes but I wouldn't be surprised it was 15-20 minutes but that included 5 minutes of re-packing delicate items plus i chatted with them for maybe 3 minutes. It still was quite some time.

The next time I am going to incest, woops I mean , incist upon only one agent so I can see what they are doing.

I also realize that by my typing in the password could imply permission to search. Next time I will be more proactive including *I* am the fingers on the keyboard rather than them typing away. I can only imagine if they accidently clicked on 'delete' rather than 'open' and I lost a critical file for work.

I'm sure these guys have seen a lot of funny pictures. In fact, they probably get the same chain mail from their friends as we all get.

Reminds me of a tiny program that made the screen go black, had some arabic written on it in red and a timer that would count down from 1 minute. At 0:00 it would flash as though something would happen. That would have gotten their attention. hehehe.

magiciansampras

What if you didn't know the password?