LAX, laptops and cd's

[BillWilson 10]

Gents

This is not an alarmest shit stirring post

Just what i have personally seen at customs in LAX ( Los Angeles California Intl airport)

 

Last trip:

I saw a guy that looked a bit like a monger, in the secondary inspection

They had all his gear spread out

They picked thru and took all his CD/DVD's

When i left, the agent was talking to a supervisor, apparently looking for a place to check them

Maybe they did, i do not know

This is just an fyi

 

My last 21 trips thru LAX from LOS:

I personnally have not had laptop, camera, memory cards/sticks, cd/dvd's check or confisicated

 

HOWEVER

i just read a thread here that laptops are being confisacted by us customs

the poster did not say where

 

and i have read here that SFO ( san fransicso ) looks thru your gear

 

Comments with first hand experiance ( not heresay bs ):

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[MM 6,562]

SFO Customs last year gave me a full electronic media check...cell phone, PDA, camera, computer. When they turned on my computer and asked for my password, I told them that was a private password. The inspector said that's fine, we'll just send your computer to the lab and search it. I gave them my password.

[BillWilson 10]

SFO Customs last year gave me a full electronic media check...cell phone, PDA, camera, computer. When they turned on my computer and asked for my password, I told them that was a private password. The inspector said that's fine, we'll just send your computer to the lab and search it. I gave them my password.

 

My question is if they find nudes, what will or did they do?

 

any one know?

 

i have brought back a few XXX dvd's, i wonder if they would be contriband??

[zaphodbeeblebrox 0]

I returned through LAX in May and customs impounded my laptop. I guess I looked like a sex tourist as there was nothing on the laptop to make them suspicious.

 

I got a call about 1 week later that the laptop was ready to be picked up. Other than a few sightseeing photos from Thailand and a few XXX movie clips downloaded in the US, there was absolutely nothing of concern on the laptop. I didn't notice any damage or any changes upon receiving my laptop back. A full trip report will be forthcoming.

[whitney 10]

I have found LAX to be hit or miss as far as getting through customs and them checking all of my luggage thoroughly. Whenever I bring CDs or movies back, I make sure to remove any labels and make everything look like I brought it from home.

[Braveheart 0]

SFO Customs last year gave me a full electronic media check...cell phone, PDA, camera, computer. When they turned on my computer and asked for my password, I told them that was a private password. The inspector said that's fine, we'll just send your computer to the lab and search it. I gave them my password.

Same same me when I came through SFO in June. As an extra special kick in the nuts they did the same to me in Vancouver a few hours later.

[exwannabe 1]

About 12 trips BKK->LAX/SFO the last 3 years, just one casual search.

 

Sitting in the SFO EVA lounge right now on the way back to LOS, customs is the last thing on my mind.

 

What does a monger look like?

[Braveheart 0]

About 12 trips BKK->LAX/SFO the last 3 years, just one casual search.

 

Sitting in the SFO EVA lounge right now on the way back to LOS, customs is the last thing on my mind.

 

What does a monger look like?

Have a look in the mirror. On the way home that ear to ear grin your wearing now will become a frown. That's how a monger looks coming and going from SFO.

[redwood13 56]

This customs job requires extra fortitude

 

Agents fighting a cyber war on internationally trafficked child porn must wade through the images in building cases against makers or users.

 

By H.G. Reza - Times Staff Writer

 

November 7, 2006

 

Jorge Guzman looked at the photograph of the Asian girl with concern and revulsion. The child looked about 8 years old. Her arms were tied together, and so were her legs, and a man was having sex with her.

 

"There are some things in this world that are not meant to be seen," Guzman said. "This was one of them."

 

Guzman makes his living looking at photographs like this, trolling the gutter of child pornography in cyberspace. He heads a computer forensics team of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, based in downtown Long Beach, who track creators and consumers of child pornography trafficked internationally on the Internet.

 

Working in a cramped lab with sophisticated electronic equipment and computers seized from suspected pedophiles, agents look for evidence by dissecting a computer's hard drive like a medical examiner performing an autopsy.

 

Guzman has seen hundreds of images of children used by adults for sexual gratification, but this one stunned him like no other. Seeing a prepubescent girl having sex with a grown man was bothersome enough. It was the smile on her face that haunted him.

 

There was no way she could have been enjoying the degradation, he said. Did she realize she was being used to satisfy someone's sick fantasy? Was she told to smile? Was it a nervous smile?

 

He will never know.

 

Since launching Operation Predator in July 2003, which established Guzman's team and about two dozen others across the country, ICE agents have arrested more than 9,000 people suspected of accessing child porn, including 2,000 in California.

 

Guzman's team has played a role in hundreds of cases nationwide, and dozens more are under investigation. The team also assists local law enforcement.

 

Assistant U.S. Atty. Anne Gannon in Santa Ana said evidence gathered by the forensics team was so damning that few cases went to trial. Every one of the 20 child exploitation cases she has prosecuted has resulted in guilty pleas, she said.

 

"Their use of technology and cooperation with local law enforcement agencies has been hugely successful in identifying and jailing persons who are the greatest threat of exploiting children," Gannon said.

 

Before computers and the Internet, most child pornography was collected from photos and magazines smuggled into the country. Customs agents worked at the major postal distribution stations screening suspicious mail from countries known to produce kiddie porn.

 

Today, computers make child pornography available on demand, mostly from distributors in Eastern Europe and Asia, Guzman said.

 

Although computers make it easier for pedophiles to satisfy their sexual fantasies, they also make it easier for investigators to identify and prosecute them.

 

"If you think you're not going to be discovered, you're wrong," Guzman said. "The minute you make a couple of keystrokes, you have an Internet address, and you've left a trail for us to follow."

 

ICE agents have also begun collecting evidence from cellphones and iPods, Guzman said.

 

Jennifer Corbet, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said forensics investigators help establish suspects' intent, making it impossible for them to claim they accidentally accessed a child porn site.

 

"They can show it was the suspect who typed in 'child porn' [to a search engine] or downloaded pictures to a file labeled 'Young Boys,' " Corbet said.

 

ICE investigations are not limited to cases in the U.S., Guzman said. ICE has agents in 46 U.S. attaché offices abroad working with law enforcement in those countries to identify child pornographers, he said.

 

Americans who create child pornography in foreign countries are also violating U.S. laws. Recent changes in child protection laws also allow the prosecution in U.S. courts of Americans who leave the country to have sex with children.

 

Almost all of the predators targeted by ICE are men, but investigators are seeing more images of women molesting children, agents said.

 

ICE Agent David A. Melvin has been tracking creators and consumers of child pornography through the hard drives from their computers since the inception of the team. In 2005 he performed 195 forensics examinations, some involving multiple hard drives from a single computer.

 

The job can be gut-wrenching, he said, especially when looking at the faces of nameless victims, some of them babies, whose photographs are powerful evidence against an accused maker or consumer of the porn. Few victims are ever identified.

 

"I've been physically ill," Melvin said. "You come upon certain images that are so disgusting and upsetting you have to walk away to compose yourself."

 

Melvin's job is to prove that a suspect has downloaded the illegal files to his computer.

 

He begins an examination by taking out a hard drive and screening its contents for evidence.

 

Taking care not to damage or contaminate the hard drive, Melvin uses forensic software to make a duplicate of the hard drive's contents, from which the evidence is extracted.

 

Melvin says looking at child porn is "a sick fantasy" pursued by people who know it is wrong but cannot make themselves stop.

 

His job is to stop them. "Every child out there deserves the love and protection that my children have at home. That's why I do this."

 

Still, it is impossible to become immunized to the debasing images of children that an investigator like him sees on an almost daily basis.

 

"You have to have a valve. You've got to be able to talk about it in order to deal with it," Melvin said. "Sometimes I go home and tell my wife I saw the worst thing I ever saw."

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ic...1,4388577.story

 

 

-redwood

[exwannabe 1]

Have a look in the mirror. That's how a monger looks coming and going from SFO.

 

You got me there.

 

Me right now in transit the lounge in Tapei.

 

On arivial in SFO in a few weeks

 

I hope the custums boys arn't sharp enough to use before and after pictures.

[jtiger 9]

I've made 8 trips to Thailand in the last 3 years, returning through SFO each time. The first were made with a group of guys and the rest were solo. The inspections I faced at customs got progressively more intrusive and reached a peak at the 5th trip when my laptop was inspected and all pictures reviewed and the whole video tape I shot was watched by customs. There was nothing even close to X-rated in anything I had but the search without probable cause was real eye opener (sometimes we take our rights (outside customs) for granted).

 

Since then the searches have become less intrusive. The agent just look at a few minutes of video or just asked me "do you have any pornography with you?". On my last trip I was told to bypass the station where they search your stuff and I asked incredulously "aren't you going to search me?" and the customs guy said "If you want to" and started to reach for his pen to mark my customs declaration. I said, "No, that's ok" and I got out of there quickly.

 

So I think that customs does learn about the frequent travelers and it's learned that it's a waste of time to search my stuff. At least I hope so.

[Braveheart 0]

...So I think that customs does learn about the frequent travelers and it's learned that it's a waste of time to search my stuff. At least I hope so.

More than likely they will let you through a couple or a few times and then they will hit you with an intensive search.

[Big Pete 0]

I came through SFO in Sept. and was waved through customs. The guy at immigration actually welcomed me back and told me he was jealous