TSA improvement: I’ll take what I can get
There is a slight improvement to TSA’s search and seizure of electronic devices:
“The US Government has updated its policy on the search and seizure of laptops at border crossing. ‘The long-criticized practice of searching travelers’ electronic devices will continue, but a supervisor now would need to approve holding a device for more than five days. Any copies of information taken from travelers’ machines would be destroyed within days if there were no legal reason to hold the information.’”
If I take this at the face value (so many things promised by this administration didn’t come to be, so I don’t know if I can), then it means if they search and seize my laptop (after finding the encrypted data, if they do), they will have to return the laptop to me in less than one week. I don’t really care if they destroy their copy of my encrypted data (because, barring breakthroughs in attacks against encryption algorithms in use today, they won’t be able to do anything with it; and it’s at least 5 years or so that I can sleep soundly).
This is a small “improvement”, if that at all, but I will take what I can get. Ideally, I want TSA and its … ineffectual, draconian security theater gone, but some among us do like the pretension of security better than actual security, which I don’t think the government (or maybe even private enterprises) can achieve at all.