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Do you yield up (do you have to?) the password to your laptop?

Reverberations continue from the story, revealed on Mondoweiss the other day, of Israeli airport authorities not only deporting 2 American visitors at Tel Aviv airport, but that the officials insisted on having the right to comprehensively interrogate the young women and also go through their emails on their laptops.

"News that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) searches the email accounts of those who travel to Israel (first reported on by Mondoweiss) is quite disturbing. According to the report, several activists who crossed the border in to Israel were requested to open up their computers, connect to the internet and log in to their electronic mail account (stored on remote servers), type their passwords and let a security official perform some searches in their account."


The above, an introduction to a piece "Is Israel’s search through visitors’ email accounts legal?" on +972 by an Israeli cyberlaw attorney, goes on to discuss the issue the extent to which a security authority at an airport can compel someone to facilitate access to a laptop.

"The experienced passenger travels when his computer and cellphone are wiped clean. In such case, nothing is stored, and therefore even if his computer is searched, it is clean, and there is no invasion of his privacy. 

The other case, which is the problematic case occurring here, is an active search. In this case, when crossing the border, the state requests not to search his property or body, but to see what is stored far away, in the cloud and outside his control. A person’s email account, which is not stored on his computer, does not exist in his computer and does not pass the border with him. Here, more than anything, the traveler has a reasonable expectation for privacy; in the same way he had when he left other possessions at home.

The question of authority arises. While the authority to inspect a person’s property is understandable, this case is more like the state approaching a person travelling to Israel and requesting his consent to go to his house and open up his safe."

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"Meaning, the Shin Bet’s search of passenger computers is problematic regarding the essence of the search itself, as it does not warrant a search of a person’s entire property, whether material or virtual. When a policeman stops a person in the street, he cannot force him to go to an ATM and ask for his PIN number to see his recent activities. In the same manner, this search seems to be lacking authority."




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