Police would only say that "digital images" were allegedly found in the
possession of Za Uk Ling, who was arriving from Malaysia. The Ottawa High Tech
Crime Unit is now involved in the investigation.
More people are being charged at the airport than ever before, according to
Chris Keeley from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
That's because the Ontario Provincial Police have been training CBSA officers
in how to use their special powers of search and seizure to find porn on
traveller's laptops and other media. In contrast to the police, the CBSA does
not require judicial oversight in the form of search warrants in order to
conduct searches.
"Since then, we have absolutely identified more of it, more often," says
Keeley.
CBSA officers do more thorough searches ¡X of laptops, cell phones, portable
hard drives and digital cameras ¡X than they used to, according to Martin
Dompierre a forensic examiner with the High Tech Crimes Unit of Ottawa Police
Services.
"The only thing that has changed is that officers feel more confident in doing
laptop searches," says Dompierre.
"We will do a search of the laptop," says Keeley. "And when we find an image we
feel meets the requirements of the definition of child pornography, we stop
searching. Then they [the local police or OPP] tend to be the ones who do the
full forensic investigation."
If a CBSA officer finds a stash of porn on a laptop, they may quickly survey
the material: looking at between one and a dozen images. Or they could look at
every graphic image looking for one with a participant that is arguably under
the age of 18.
The degree of scrutiny a passenger gets depends on a number of factors:
physical appearance, "how they present themselves," their travel itinerary and
their baggage status, Keeley says.
If you're coming back from a country known for having fewer sex laws, that also
puts you under the microscope, says Dompierre.
Or if you're a gay man, adds Jim Deva.
Deva is the owner of Little Sister's bookstore in Vancouver. His store has
waged a twenty year battle against the CBSA and its predecessor, Canada
Customs, to fight their systematic harassment of imported material bound for
gay and lesbian bookstores in Canada.
Deva points out that most people ¡X especially gay men ¡X have some explicit
images on their laptops.
"And as soon as they see sexually explicit material on your computer, you are
considered by them to be a pervert," he says.
The result: by carrying porn over the border you risk having your laptop seized
for a month. Or worse, since the combination of gay explicit material and an
innocuous photo of your niece or nephew stored in a completely different folder
could land you in the middle of a criminal investigation, says Deva.
The CBSA targeted gays, the Supreme Court Of Canada ruled in 2000, in its
treatment of Little Sister's and other gay bookstores. Since then, things
haven't improved, says Deva. He flatly denies that the CBSA is competent to
handle gay men's laptops impartially.
And even if you're diligent, if you identify as gay, you could end up caught in
the system, he warns.
"You may think that an image that your friend sent you that you delete
immediately isn't on your computer any more, but it is," warns Deva.
That's because when you delete a file from your computer, you're usually only
deleting the digital equivalent of the library catalogue card, not the book
itself.
There is software widely available to remove traces of deleted files. Some are
marketed directly at porn users, some at people or companies with specific
security concerns. Most tech-savvy gay men will at least encrypt their porn
with a program like TrueCrypt, which is open source freeware.
Robin Sharpe, whose trail would become one of Canada's most important freedom
of expression cases, was sparked by a charge laid at the Canada-US border.
Sharpe went all the way to the Supreme Court to test Kim Campbell's slapdash
1993 porn law which forbade the possession fictional accounts and drawings
depicting sex with someone under the age of 18.
"It's an extremely dangerous thing to have happen. People really need to debate
whether they need to take their personal laptops with them when they're
travelling," says Deva.
