Electronics search/seizure at airports

OK, that’s frightening.

Bunch of pencil necked bureaucrats. I saw this in the “alert” section earlier in the day.

I find that very troubling. It’s over the top and beyond any reasonable search. I guess they feel that the pen is mightier than the sword.

More reason to back up to several places when abroad.

I fear how I’d react if my equipment was seized.

My equipment was seized last year flying out of a certain notoriously airport security conscious Middle Eastern nation.

They took my laptop, my cameras, lenses, external drives, mobile phone, batteries, chargers, flashgun, flash cards, everything…

That was after a two hour interrogation and a proper strip search by some uniformed and rubber gloved security goons.

Took almost three weeks and the help of the Britsh Embassy and a few people on LS to get my stuff back. And even then they sent it all to the wrong airport.

Miraculously, nothing was damaged, even though it was all stuffed randomly into a couple of flimsy cardboard boxes held together with tape.

Still fuming about it now.

Was there any thing missing in terms of data?

No. Nothing was missing, and as far as I could tell nothing was tampered with either.

It was all utterly illegal of course, and there wasn’t much I could do.

Couldn’t even make a phone call to my embassy because, as they told me at the time, they had my phone.

At least they let me keep my passport and it did, in a way, solve my excess baggage problem…

this is all insane. I’ve just traveled from oslo via heathrow and kuala lumpur to sydney. heading towards wellington on sunday. I think my backpack was scanned and hand searched some 6-7 times during this trip. at least they didn’t seize it. I was quite nervous some times as the guards seemed a little unsure what I actually had there (lots of photogear, cables and the usual gadgetries), anyway, they let me through after some discussion about the stuff. the one single thing that made the guard smile was actually my psp (coloured bright pink,the rest of the stuff was black)

as for the excess baggage problem john, I think my carryon baggage actually is heavier than my checked now. glad they didn’t put the carryon at the scale at check in.

I wonder what reason the guards actually have for seizing laptops and stuff like that. it’s just scary the way things are going now.
I think I would go mental if they took my gear.

should we all travel on boats instead maybe? or ship our gear with dhl upfront and just enter the border with cash in the pocket and passport in hand….

another idea that came to mind, what about flying in to mexico or canada, and travel by land in to the us, if the usa is the most strict? are they as strict at border those border crossings?