EFForums Video - US Customs Searches at Borders

As some of you may know, I’ve done some stuff with the EFForums track at Dragon*con over the past few years. I’ve given talks there on ISP’s and 3-strikes (2010) and Bittorrent (Happy 10^th Birthday Bittorrent, 2011) and last year I presided over sound engineering and recording.

To give a bit more scope to the sort of thing that we at the EFForums track do, and ‘spread the word’ a bit, the thought arose to take the audio we had, and photos taken during the panels, and combine them to form a video. 

There’s a very good reason for this. Streaming video is actually easier to share and view, than streaming audio. It sounds odd, but sites like youtube have made video an easier format than an MP3 to have hosted and played.

So here’s the first one I’ve done, as a sample. It’s the 2008 panel on Exceptions to the 4^th Amendment at the border, and is in one large video. The final one will be posted shortly, in 5 parts on its own account. Enjoy.

**DISCLAIMER** The audio and visuals were recorded Sunday August 31 2008 - some of the facts and laws may have changed since then. This should not be considered legal advice.

US Customs Searches at Borders

What privacy rights do you have when you cross the border, especially with a computer that may have a hard drive loaded with your personal, private information? Must you give up your privacy rights to travel abroad?

Tom Cross
Video is released under a CC-BY-NC-SA license