Nomads at last | Economist.com

Wireless communication is changing the way people work, live, love and relate to places—and each other, says Andreas Kluth.

Illustration by Bell Mellor

AT THE Nomad Café in Oakland, California, Tia Katrina Canlas, a law student at the nearby university in Berkeley, places her double Americano next to her mobile phone and iPod, opens her MacBook laptop computer and logs on to the café’s wireless internet connection to study for her class on the legal treatment of sexual orientation. She is a regular here but doesn’t usually bring cash, so her credit-card statement reads “Nomad, Nomad, Nomad, Nomad”. That says it all, she thinks. Permanently connected, she communicates by text, photo, video or voice throughout the day with her friends and family, and does her “work stuff” at the same time. She roams around town, but often alights at oases that cater to nomads.

Christopher Waters, the owner, opened the Nomad Café in 2003, just as Wi-Fi “hotspots” were mushrooming all around town. His idea was to provide a watering-hole for “techno-Bedouins” such as himself, he says. Since Bedouins, whether in Arabian deserts or American suburbs, are inherently tribal and social creatures, he understood from the outset that a good oasis has to do more than provide Wi-Fi; it must also become a new—or very old—kind of gathering place. He thought of calling his café the “Gypsy Spirit Mission”, which also captures the theme of mobility, but settled for the simpler Nomad.

It’s probably not a great secret that I consider myself to be something of a reluctant nomad. I think a huge part of that stems from how much I moved while I was growing up. Until I started university, I never went to a school for more than 2 years; and generally when I moved, it was mid-year.

So like many people in the generation that succeeded my own, I don’t have a deep-seated sense of place. Depending on my mood, when someone asks me where I’m from, I answer Tennessee, Northern California (Santa Cruz/San Francisco), and increasingly Utah.

Like Ms. Canlas, I seem to be connected constantly throughout the day via email, text, this blog, and now Twitter and Facebook.

Kim (my ex) considers the constant connectivity to be a bad thing … she steadfastly refuses to sign up for any social networks; but I tend to feel like so many of my connections are so tenuous that I need to maintain them in any way I possibly can. I find I’m reconnecting with people from my past though these social networks, and am redeveloping some friendships that I’ve let slip through my fingers in the past.

I’m also trying to disconnect from the Interwebs enough to connect with real live people in face-to-face social situations; I seldom refuse an invitation anymore, whereas, in the past I used to come up with any excuse I could come up with not to go out because I was letting my anxiety control me, rather than controlling my anxiety. When I do find myself in the company of other people, I’m working on being as warm and welcoming as I can be … to listen, to engage, and to forge lasting friendships with people; something which has always been a weak point of mine in the past. It’s still a struggle at times, but it gets easier.

And right now, that’s all I can ask for.

Laptops fair game for airport customs searches

Customs agents at U.S. airports don’t need any evidence of wrongdoing to search the contents of passengers’ laptop computers, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

Reinstating child pornography evidence against a passenger at Los Angeles International Airport, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a computer is no different from a suitcase, a car or any other piece of property subject to search at an international border.

Although police need probable cause - specific evidence of criminal activity - to search someone on the street, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that no such evidence is necessary for a border search. Courts have also ruled that an international airport is the equivalent of a border.

Border agents would need grounds for suspicion before conducting a body search, but a “piece of property simply does not implicate the same dignity and privacy concerns as highly intrusive searches of the person,” the court said. Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote the 3-0 decision.

Hopefully, when this makes it to the Supreme Court (and I’m sure it ultimately will), they’ll make the right decisions with regards to privacy.

It’s reasonable to ask someone to turn on their laptop to ensure that it’s not a bomb, but what reason could someone possibly have for looking at files stored on the computer without some sort of probable cause?

To me, despite the Ninth Circuit’s decision (which is surprising, since the Ninth Circuit is usually one of the more “liberal” Courts of Appeal), this smacks of a direct violation of a person’s Fourth Amendment rights.

For those that aren’t familiar, the Fourth Amendment states:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In today’s age of electronics, I’d call a person’s laptop to effectively be “papers, and effects” … even if the defendant in this case is a pervert carrying child porn, the Customs officials should have never looked at the the files on the laptop without probable cause.

And nowhere, in any of the articles that I’ve found thus far, has there been any indication that this was the case. Instead, they’re claiming that “hey, we can open your luggage to make sure you’re not carrying drugs, so that means we can search all of your business and/or personal documents on your laptop at will as well.”

Talk about a slippery slope … once again I think that Blackstone’s Formulation should rule the day. As a reminder, Blackstone’s Formulation states, “it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”

Ever feel like you should post something to your blog, but you have nothing to say? Seriously … anything would be better than what I got right now.

But no; here I sit, laptop in … well … my lap. Feet stretched out on the couch, bad sitcoms on the tube … make that really, really, really, really, REALLY bad sitcoms.

At least I get to see a commercial starring a cow with wings.