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Date: 1998-08-12

UK/Zoll: Pornosuche & Idiotie


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Wie es einem Journalisten am britischen Zoll erging, der mit
einem Laptop in England einreisen wollte, ist ein zum Weinen
schönes Abbild behördlicher Idiotie. Gesucht wurde nämlich
nach "Internet Porn", dessen Einfuhr auf Festplatten im uk
behördlich verboten ist...

from
Kenneth Neil Cukier, via dave farber's ip list & Declan
McCullagh <declan@well.com>

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Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 14:18:12 -0400 From: "K. N. Cukier"
<100736.3602@compuserve.com> Subject: Searched at UK Border
for Net Porn Sender: "K. N. Cukier"
<100736.3602@compuserve.com>
...

Here's what happened to me last Friday when I arrived in
London from Paris on the channel tunnel train:

As I walked through UK immigration, two guys pulled me
aside, flashed badges, and said: "UK Customs. Come with us."
They walked me behind a wall where they handed me off to one
of a fleet of waiting agents.

A customs officer told me to lay my computer bag on the
table, and inspected my ticket and passport. After learning
I was a reporter, she demanded to see my press card (issued
by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and asked about
where I was going in London, why, and for how long.

"Do you know there are things that are illegal to bring into
the UK?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah.... There are *many* things that are illegal to
bring across borders -- do you have in mind any thing in
particular?," I said.

"Illegal drugs, fire arms, bomb making materials, lewd and
obscene pornographic material...."

I felt a rush of relief. I was late and now was assured I
could get on with my journey. "I am carrying none of that,"
I replied, staring directly at her, with a tone of earnest
seriousness.

"Is that a computer in your bag?"

"Yes."

"Does it have Internet on in?"

Here, I confess, I really didn't know how to answer. What
does one say to a question like that?? I was struck dumb. "I
use the computer to access the Internet, yes," I said,
rather proud of myself for my accuracy.

"Is there any pornography on it?" she said, stoically.

Here, I figured out what's going on. But I'm mentally
paralyzed from all the synapses sparkling all at once in my
head: Does she not understand that Internet content is
distributed around the world? That I'm just dialing a local
number, be it in France or the UK, and that whether I cross
a border is moot to what I'm able to access?

"There is no pornography stored on the hard drive," I
stated.

"Do you mind if I check." she says rather than asks, and
begins to take the computer out of the bag. "I'm just going
to hook it up over there and scan the hard drive..." she
continues.

And then her face turns dour. "Oh! It's an Apple," she says,
dejectedly. "Our scanner doesn't work on Apples."

At this point, it's all a little bit too much, too fast, for
me to handle. >From seeing my personal privacy ripped out
from under me with a computer-enema to an immediate
about-face and witnessing my oppressors flounder in the pap
of their own incompetence was just too much to bear.

Then, of course, I sort of relished the irony of it all. I
swung into naive-mode:

"Oh. Oh well," I said and began packing up. "Why not?"

"I dunno -- it just doesn't," she said.

"Is this a common thing that you do? Scan PCs?"

"It happens quite often," she said. (Note: I wrote this
entire dialogue immediately after the incident, but that
particular quote I wrote the moment we parted, to have it
exactly right.)

"Do you catch a lot?"

"Sometimes," she says, cautiously.

What's the fine? The penalty?" I asked.

She started to become uncomfortable and tried to move me
along. "It depends. Every case is different. It depends what
they have."

"What about if I had encryption -- do you check for that
too?" I said, disdaining the risk that she might want to
check the computer "by hand" since I'd mentioned the dreaded
C-word....

"Huh?! I don't know about that...."

"You don't know what cryptography is?" I asked.

"No. Thank you, you can go now," she said.

And thus ended my experience with inspector "K. PARE_,"
whose name tag was partially torn at the final one or two
letters of her last name.


Of course I was burning up. Lots of thoughts raced through
me.

For example, would I have really let her inspect my hard
drive, even knowing I was "innocent." That, of course, was
entirely irrelevant to me -- it's about a principle. I
thought of my editor -- or ex-editor -- if I didn't make the
day-long meeting. And I immediately thought of John Gilmore,
and how much I respected him when he refused to board a
flight a few years ago when the airline demanded he present
a form of identification. Had I acquiesced to their mental
thuggery?

As soon as I realized I was "safe" from being scanned, I was
tempted to pull out my notepad, go into reporter-mode, and
make a small scene getting names and superiors and formal
writs of whatever.... but suspected it would only get me
locked in a room for a full day.

Then I thought of how, despite in their kafakain zeal to
abuse my privacy, they couldn't even get that right. Not
only did they not have a clue what the Internet is, they
confirmed their ignorance by not even being able to
digitally pat me down. Insult to injury! It brought back
something John Perry Barlow once told me about why he
doesn't fear US intelligence agencies. "I've seen them from
the inside," he said (as I recall), "they will suffer under
the weight of their own ineptitude."

What's at the heart of this is "thought crime"; and scanning
one's computer is paramount to search and seizure of one's
intellectual activity. What if they found subversive
literature about the proper role of government authority in
civil society? Would that have gotten me busted? And do they
store what they scan? Are business executives with marketing
plans willing to have their data inspected under the
umbrella of public safety from porn?

Just the night before I read in the memoirs of William
Shirer, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,
about how he was blacklisted for a decade after his name was
cited in Red Currents, a magazine that destroyed hundreds of
careers during the McCarthy era. He was powerless to defend
himself.

I see parallels: We are approaching the point were we are
incapable of reasonable discourse on Internet content.
Refuse to boot up for inspection means you've got something
to hide. Defend civil liberties of the accused means you
condone guilty acts. Question the nature of the censorious
policies in the first place means you are filthy, and as
unhealthy as the wily-eyed porn devourer.... State the
obvious: That a large part of the drive for Net content
regulation is driven by hucksters seeking recognition, and
that it is taken to idiotic extremes by a mass movement of
simpletons ignorant of the history of hysteria in the US,
and, well, you're just a typical lawless cyberlibertian.

Finally, it dawned in me. This wasn't an aberration at all,
but part of a much deeper trend. It's a British thing,
really.

"As might be supposed I have not had the time, not may I add
the inclination to read through this book," wrote Sir
Archibald Bodkin, the director of public prosecutions, on 29
December 1922. "I have, however, read pages 690 to 732 ...
written as they are, as it composed by a more or less
illiterate vulgar woman ... there is a great deal of
unmitigated filth and obscenity."

And so James Joyce's Ulysses was banned in Britain for 15
years.

Interesting, that. The policy was made by a chap who didn't
actually read the work he felt justified to prohibit others
from reading. Wonder if the fellows who implemented
Britain's scan-for-skin policy actually use the Net
themselves...?


Kenneth Neil Cukier <100736.3602@compuserve.com> Singapore,
11 August 1998

(No, I was not stopped by customs officials here. But this
e-mail was sent out via government-mandated proxy servers)


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edited by
published on: 1998-08-12
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