John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

DHS: Terrorism? We Thought You Said "War on Tourism"

Overseas travel to the United States has plummeted in the past five years, and it may well plummet further thanks to The Department of Homeland Security’s recently revealed border policy on laptops, iPods and other electronics carried into the country by travelers. The policy (PDF) is five pages long, but essentially boils down to this: DHS agents can routinely seize travelers’ electronic gear and keep it for as long as they see fit. And they can search its contents and copy and share them with other agencies. And they can do this “absent individualized suspicion.”

The policy–which covers “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form” as well as “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter'”–applies to anyone entering this country, including U.S. citizens.

Anyone who wants to, that is.

If only we could keep our right to privacy safely up in “the cloud: along with our data …

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik