On February 15, NPR's Morning Edition reported that two civil liberties groups—the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus—are suing the Department of Homeland Security to force it to disclose its policy for searching US citizens and their electronic devices when re-entering the United States.
The NPR piece, “Suit Accuses Homeland Security of Illegal Searches” opens with the story of a naturalized US citizen who recently returned from a three-week trip to Jordan. According to the piece, customs agents demanded to know the names of everyone the woman met in Jordan and the addresses of all the places she visited. They confiscated her cell phone, and when it was returned, her record of recent calls had been erased.
Many anthropologists may not be aware of the rights of the government to copy all documents, including electronic documents, carried across the borders. As scholars and professionals who frequently conduct research outside the US, anthropologists may be placed in a difficult and potentially unethical position if required to reveal confidential information about their informants to US customs officials.
Share your thoughts. Have you ever been subject to search and seizure policies at US Customs? In light of Homeland Security policies, what precautions should anthropologists take to protect those whom they study? What actions, if any, should the AAA take to uphold its Code of Ethics?
Related Links
CNet News article
Boing Boing article - includes a pdf copy of the EFF complaint
AAA Code of Ethics
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Department of Homeland Security Search and Seizure Policy--A Threat to Anthropologists?
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8 comments:
Perhaps - if you are taking good care of information gathered from people you care about - information should be properly secured from any prying eyes.
It's not the fault of 'customs officials' that you feel you are 'placed' in a 'difficult and potentially unethical position' - you've allowed yourself to be placed in a position which you feel uncomfortable about.
Presumably, other than the irritation caused to your publication plans, were you to accidentally lose your field notes (with, perhaps, information identifying your informants) you wouldn't be quite so concerned.
I'm not going to prescribe just how you'd protect information from real / perceived misuse - but there are technological and very mundane approaches that would work.
I do kind of think, too, that there is a large degree of paranoia and consipracy-thinking here where all customs officials are part of some massive and co-ordinated intelligence-gathering activity ...
Mils.
There are many reasons that your data should not be stored locally, even when you are not crossing national borders: security, privacy, IRB type prescriptions, possible hardware failure, etc.
This story suggests a further reason that we should all be very conscientious about remote back up of our documents and data.
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