Gal is the Director of Interactive Development at G4TechTV, where (with the help of his team) he has been developing G4’s websites and online presence since before the TV channel ever launched. Iin addition, he and his team also work on in-house software development for G4TechTV. Gal is known on the G4 forums and chatroom as CySurflex.

Anyone who has ever traveled with a laptop and has hoped to use it in-flight will know what a hot commodity a power outlet in an airport is--especially when traveling internationally. While I’m in the terminal waiting for a flight, I will go to great lengths to make sure I use this "power-grid-connection time" to the fullest to charge my laptop’s batteries. I will go through discomforts that arguably outweigh the comfort afforded by having a fully charged laptop in the first place.

I’m currently sitting on the floor at an airport in Oregon, waiting for my connecting flight to Los Angeles. I could be sitting on a comfortable leather chair using my laptop, looking more like a respectable businessman and less like a bum. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right--I would probably look like a bum anyway. I’m certainly not dressed like a businessman--I’m wearing a G4-branded sweatshirt, which is definitely pretty far from what you’d call respectable business attire. But I digress--which I’ll be doing a lot of today. Coincidentally, the gate I’m waiting for is E3. I wonder where gate G4 takes you.

I’m sitting here on the floor so that I can charge my laptop while using it, instead of draining its battery. Conceptually the difference to me is like having a job and getting paid for it, versus having a job and also paying your employer for the privilege of having the job. Sort of. Well, really, if you think about it, it’s more about consumption (the juice in the battery) and less about production (like a job) so a better analogy would be going to a restaurant and having to exchange money for food (which we’ve all done), versus getting food AND money. So charging your battery in an airport while using the laptop is something a food critic may appreciate.

I’ve noticed that most US airports have power outlets in the passenger waiting areas--they actually had people like me in mind (well, maybe). In Germany, the only power outlets were the ones next to the ticket counters, since those computers and ticket printers need power. I resorted to wandering around the airport looking for an unmanned ticket counter, sitting on the floor next to it and plugging into its power source. Not only did I look like a bum, but I’m sure one or two people walking by who don’t know a power cable from an Ethernet cable from a shoelace just saw a guy "connecting his laptop to the ticket counter". Combine that with the countless images of high-tech thievery and espionage movies in said people’s minds, and now they’re seeing a bum who’s really a high-tech spy in disguise.

At this point you’d probably think that this is leading to what the title of this piece describes. However, thankfully, you’d be wrong. Those passing thoughts remained in those people’s minds, who went home to tell their spouses that they saw some high-tech espionage in action, and that they should watch the news for how the Frankfurt Airport was hacked.

The reason behind the title is completely different. I’m sitting here in Oregon, after going through a completely new experience in US Customs. I’ve gone through US Customs numerous times--too many to count, in fact. My luggage has been randomly searched countless times as well. Maybe it's not so random, and it might be due to my evil laugh and sneer when responding to questions like, "Has anyone given you anything to carry?" and "Has your luggage been under your care the entire time?" I’m only kidding, of course, and I do think the searches are (mostly) random.

I’ve also been asked to power up my laptop plenty of times. I have developed a theory that there is some secret deal between the airport security all over the world and a group of high-tech firms including Microsoft, Dell and Gateway. They’re conducting a survey to find out which operating system boots up the fastest, and how many people use the "Standby" feature versus the "Hibernate" feature. I still say they’re the same thing, by the way, even if they’re not really.

What I haven’t been asked to do, ever, was to type in my password to, as the Customs guy said. "…let me look around in there". Let me repeat this, in case you didn’t hear. (You may want to turn up your attention span’s volume here.) The guy from US Customs wanted me to log him in to my laptop so he could look around in it. I immediately did it, of course. It didn’t even occur to me not to--but I’m thinking I may have had the right to not do it. In which case I also may have had the right to an anal probe in their basement interrogation room, but who knows--it's so hard to tell what your rights are these days..

So I logged him in. I was more worried about how I said I didn’t have any food when I really had some German chocolates in my suitcase. I was getting my story ready in my mind about how chocolate is not really food--I really didn’t have anything to back that up with, but that’s all I had to go on at such short notice. Turns out they didn’t really care about the chocolate, which is surprising because the photograph on the package made it look extremely delish.

While I’m thinking about chocolate, the guy is poking around in my laptop. Mind you this is not the normal US Customs guy that manned that station, this is a separate, roaming, laptop searching guy (I think). Maybe he’s even a laptop/terrorist searching guy. If only the terrorists would mark their laptops with big red letters spelling out "TERRORIST INFO HERE", it would make everyone’s life so much easier. Either way, he knew enough about computers to look at my Temporary Internet Files. Now, for your standard Customs guy, such a line item on his resume would probably be enough to boost his career away from US Customs searches and into the career path of a Tech Support guy. So that’s why I assumed he’s not a standard Customs guy. You could probably put this to the test--ask any official-looking guy around the US Customs area if he knows where to look for Temporary Internet Files, or even if he knows what they are, and you’ll know of he’s of the standard type or not. But again, I digress.

Looking at the Temporary Internet Files shows him what websites I have been browsing. I quickly go over in my mind all the web sites I have visited since last clearing the cache. I clear the cache a lot, as I do web development, and as everyone knows, if you don’t clear the cache often, it takes ungodly amounts of time to clear it--so if you’re going to need to clear it sometimes, you’re better off doing it regularly. As far as incriminating web sites, the worst thing I can come up with is homestarrunner.com. I don’t think anyone has been detained in US Customs jail for that yet, but The Cheat can get pretty racy.

Among the webpage history, he notices my girlfriend's extensive job search as manifested through visits to legal websites. This includes visits to many law firm sites, and legal job search sites such as FindLawJob.com and Emplawyernet ( I’m not kidding, that’s the witty name they came up with. Hmmmph--lawyers.) He then surprises me even more by actually asking me about those sites. I now have to explain WHY I’m visiting so many legal websites. What possibly incriminating bad answer could he hope to hear? "I’m preparing for my legal representation when I’m held as a terrorist in Guantanamo Bay" ? I explained to him that my girlfriend is looking for a new job as an attorney, and that seemed to either satisfy him, or he got bored at looking at all those legal sites. Probably the former because latter is inconceivable.

Next he looks at the "My Pictures" folder, and comments on how it’s empty. Where do I start on this one? Ever since Microsoft introduced the whole "My Documents" concept I have had an extreme dislike of it. Maybe it is that I was already used to using c:\data\ for all my stuff on any computer I called my own. Or it may be because the default "My Documents" folder doesn’t start empty--it comes with some default crap. I have enough of my own crap that I don’t need multiple copies of some ill-conceived notion of "necessary" default crap, multiplied once per computer or OS installation that my c:\data\ directory has been through. Or maybe it's just that it's a bit easier to type "c:\data" then to type "c:\windows\profiles\users\gsteinitz\documents and settings\actual documents\documents documents\here they come\maybe theyre here\my documents\". So if you’re following my tangential point, I never use the "My Documents" folder. Or the "My Pictures" folder. Or the "My Music" folder. Or the "My Naked pictures of my ex-wife" folder. Or the "My Nuclear Bomb Plans" folder. My response to him was actually less tangential, and I just said "They’re all on my home desktop computer", half-expecting him to ask if he can come over for a cup of tea one day. (He didn’t.)

Now I’m trying to think of what could he possibly be looking for in the "My Pictures" folder. Would a terrorist place the digital photos of next-generation fighter planes he (or she, for the feminists among you) took with his (or her) embedded-in-the-eyeglasses-camera after breaking into a diplomat's home office? Probably not. A smart person would store stuff like that on a USB key, or in an encrypted zip file. Maybe on a separate partition. Maybe on a silicon chip embedded in his (or her) hip. Probably not in the "My Pictures" folder. No…Customs guy is probably just trying to have a little fun in his job and look at the possible pictures of me and my non-existent ex-wife on the beach in the Bermuda, or something. Well I showed him. No gratification for the non-standard Customs guy there!!

At this point he seemed to have exhausted all his laptop searching abilities, which is pretty sad. But suddenly, using his superior forensic computer skillz, he noticed the AVI file on my desktop: "Cameron Diaz - SM scandal.avi". He obviously clicks on that. Because that’s where any terrorist would keep the secret plans. At first I thought to warn him that he may be exposed to some early career Cameron Diaz boobage here, but then I thought, "Hey, he clicked on it. The title pretty much suggests what it is...so it's his problem". Let me pause at this point and just explain that I downloaded this video from Kazaa because my girlfriend heard about it and asked me to. No really. It’s just for her. I didn’t even want to, she practically had to force me. Well maybe it wasn’t that hard to force me. But really, I think Cameron is the least hot Angel, and I’d take Drew OR Lucy over her any day of the week.

The first scene in this video is Cameron trying to "perk up" her fempature with a cold air spray bottle. (Fempature… You know, female temperature. How you can tell if a female is cold.). The non-standard Customs guy just snickers and the standard Customs woman sort of turns red and mostly ignores it. I’m sure they see a lot of this and much worse if they look through people's laptops daily.

Seeing a naked Cameron Diaz really convinced him that I’m not a terrorist, and he turned to me for the final verification and asked me "so what else is on here? Any child porn or nuclear bomb plans?". I deny having either, and he’s convinced, so I am allowed to continue on to the terminal to sit on the floor like a bum as planned.

In my opinion, he did a really bad job of searching for stuff. Even if he doesn’t want to get too fancy and technical, he could at the very least looked at my document history, which for some reason I haven’t disabled yet on this laptop with TweakUI. He could have also done a full "local hard drives" search for certain file types he thinks would be more interesting, like .gif, .jpg, .doc, .pdf, .zip, etc. He also could have looked at the drives to see if I have any other partitions that Windows has mounted (I don’t). He could have gone into Word and looked at the recent documents. But he didn’t do any of that. So I’m no longer sure if he even qualifies for the job of non-standard Customs guy. If he really wanted to get fancy he could have booted up with a Partition Magic boot floppy or something to see if there are any other partitions, Windows or otherwise. Then he may have qualified for super-non-standard Customs guy.

All this begs the question, is this legal? I suppose the fact that I logged him in qualifies as giving him permission. But one would not deny access to one's laptop while going through US Customs, since one is already too worried about one's chocolates anyway. Since when do officials have the right or need to search your laptop just because it was on your person while going through US Customs? The answer is probably since 9/11, but it definitely is enlightening, and gives you something to think about. I’m not sure I like it, or that it’s actually productive. Next they’ll check the serial numbers on your installed software to make sure it’s legit, and look for any DMCA violations. Could I be detained in "US Customs Jail" for having installed a copy of DeCSS or maybe even for having a non-valid Windows XP Serial key?

I don't think US Customs should be searching the contents of my laptop. For many people, I would suppose, having your suitcase searched is just as invasive as having your laptop searched, but for me, having someone poking around my files is just one step too far. My c:\data\ folder is my own, and whatever is in there is private!