A Farewell to LOS(Land of Spinners) Part 2

A few thoughts about the flight. JAL had the best set up I had ever seen on this plane. A 747-400. Even the coach seats had their own entertainment system. It had a fast array of options, from the location map (Navigation) to movies, to games. It even had channels with forward or downward looking camera’s piped in. It was really impressive. These pics are not great as there was poor light and a lot of bouncing around, but it will give you an idea!

The menu’s were detailed. Category, channel and then a listing of the songs played on the channel.





Video games were cool, although most of the instructions were available only in Japanese.




The Downlooking camera was the first I had ever seen on a commercial aircraft.



We arrived at Narita at 6:05 a.m. I needed to transfer over to terminal 2 for my connecting flight. This is also where the Red Carpet Club is, and I wanted to get a quick shower, a snack and check my e-mail.

Problem 1. The first shuttle available does not come to Terminal 1 until 8 a.m. So we all sat there for 2 hours waiting. No food , beverage or entertainment. There were about 50 of us waiting in this small transfer area, and none of us were very happy. This is apparently the routine every morning. You would think that the normally efficient Japanese would have fixed this problem, but apparently not.

Problem 2. When I finally arrived at Terminal 2, the Red Carpet Club was not yet open. Every other RCC I have been to (about 25 of them) was open no later than 6 a.m. and those in Major international hubs are 24 hours. This was really annoying. So 4 or 5 of us sat outside waiting as there was no food or beverage services open on the concourse either.

Once opened, I got the shower, coffee, and internet services I needed, and hit the concourse to pick up a few things before boarding the flight to Dallas. Here were my final acquisitions.





For those who have never seen it, here are Yen notes:



Having a business class seat of this leg of the flight was a godsend. I don’t know how I would have made it in coach. I can handle 8, 9 or even 10 hours perhaps in coach, but a trip that is in total 23 hours is just way too much for this old back of mine.

Arrived in Dallas. Sure enough, when they saw I had been to Thailand, they sent me off to have my bags examined. This is where my preparation paid off. I had taken my diving regulator, dive log book and 2/3 mill wetsuit with me. This took up a little space, but not much. While in BKK, I downloaded and printed off some 4X6 pics of Diving excursions off the internet. Before I left, I soaked all my gear and put it in a sealed water tight bag, and in Pattaya I had paid a local 500 baht to create 16 correct entries into my log book. I had also, left all my extra condoms and the Pocket Rocket with Bahtman. So when they started the third degree, my story was that I was on a dive trip. They looked at my dive gear, my souvenirs, and I showed them my log book, listing a variety of dive locations. It turned out that one of the Customs guys was a diver, and so I was able to answer all his questions with the right answers, and lamented greatly all the reef damage I had witnessed in Phuket and Pee Pee. I was a terrible loss, I wailed. All that beautiful Fan Coral, and those poor plume Anemones, all gone, boo hoo.

I also lamented my poor laptop gone poof, and the loss of all my Dive Pictures (yeh right), telling this guy how sad I was that I could not share them. I assured him that had he been able to see what was on the laptop, he would have been truly amazed….this part of course is true. He would have been amazed and then probably arrested me as there were about 50 nude/sex pics and videos from Brazil on there along side a dozen or so from Thailand.

He was sympathetic, and sent me on my way!


I had made it! I was home.

Instead of the whole dive trip dodge, did you consider encrypting the photos and videos on your laptop before you returned to the US? Or do you see some problem with that approach?

The only problem I see with that is that a cursory analysis would show that the encrypted file is a photo or at least is a 6 meg file, and the fact that it was encrypted would probably draw a great deal of attention.

Someone else posted a copy of a profile from the customs or immigration dept recently. Encrypting large files (especially photos) from a known tourist sex destination would guarantee such a profile would be created and and a closer eyed kept on us.

Better to put forth a little effort to seem completely innocuous than risk that IMHO.

Val

I agree...completely innocuous unless they examine your laptop. In which case they might just see the videos/photos you didn't want them to see and now also have strong reason to believe you've lied to them as well about the purpose of your trip.

I don't know all that much about encryption. Would a cursory analysis show the file that was encrypted is a photo? Perhaps some experts on the board know?

Why go to all that hoo-hah about the dive trip. Is an asian vacation now cause for suspicion of illegal activity when you reenter the US?

I think even an encrypted file will show as a jpeg or whatever, but if not, how many multi megabyte non photo files does one have on their computer?

In the future, I will transfer all my pics to the 1 gig portable drives that are about the size of a pack of stick gum, and hide those in my socks or something. If they find them, then I know they were looking hard enough to have already found it anyway.

Most people here probably do not need to go to these lengths and frankly may not even care, but some of us are in sensitive professions and it is worth going to greater lengths to avoid a profile that could be troublesome.

Create multiple user logins to Windows on your laptop. Call one of them "Admin", but DO NOT give that user Administrative rights. Encrypt and zip your image files and store them under your normal user name. Restrict access to those folders by the user Admin. Also name the zipped up files with something that sounds harmless.

If asked to demo your laptop, login as Admin. They will ASSUME that is an administravie account. Let them look. They won't even see your files.

BTW, be SURE to use a password on both your normal and the Admin account.

Val, great report and enjoyed reading it.

About Customs and pics. I usually email the pics to this site using an FTP program while I'm traveling or email them to myself (obviously nothing illegal, just pics of gals). The Customs guys try to trick you into admitting something, when they see your camera or laptop, they point to a computer which supposedly reads all sorts of storage devices, then they look at you and ask "do you have anything on these cameras or laptops you want to tell me about before I scan these laptops or disks?" I usually have tourist pics, so I tell them, "no, go right ahead". Once you call their bluff, they pass you through without scanning.

This happened twice, they never actually check your disks or laptop. I'm no criminal law specialist, but my thinking is that if you admit to something, this may be admissible evidence, if they search you without probable cause, then this evidence can be excluded later if you have a good criminal defense attorney.




(Message edited by merlin on May 20, 2005)

Just curious what you guys think is illegal about having even nude pictures of adult women? I don't think it is "per se" illegal to have them. Action pictures MAY be, but not just nude photos. As long as the women aren't minors, there shouldn't be anything illegal about it. Uncomfortable to explain, yes. Illegal, I don't think so.

Merlin, also not sure, but I think if you give them permission to examine somthing, anything they find is admissible.

Segue99, about the consent to a search, even if you "consent", you could always argue that the consent was under duress or you weren't read your rights, etc. I can easily see how some guys would be intimidated into "consenting" to a search of their computers based on some of the trickery I've seen.

As for the computer, I hope some of the crim law attorneys on this site will weigh in, but my thinking is that although a person impliedly consents to a reasonable search of their bags when you travel (reasonable expectation), the traveler does not necessarily expect the contents of a laptop or other device to be search unless the gov't has probable cause to do so. I recall the huge controversy surrounding the FBI's inability to search the alleged 20th 911 highjacker's laptop [Mousseaui (sp?)] because some gov't attorney vetoed a proper search warrant. They even had this guy in custody and couldn’t inspect his laptop, but this happened before 9-11.

Also, concerning nude pics. The problem always arises because many government people and opponents of our hobby always and unfairly lump this hobby with child exploitation or other deviant behaviors. Given this nasty tendency to assume such by the government about us and our hobby, and notwithstanding the fact that none of us here engage in such deviance stuff, imagine the difficulty of refuting a charge of illicit activity if the gov’t suddenly decides that some of the nude girls pics (especially some of the Asian gals that look young to begin with) are deemed “illicit”. Short of meticulously obtaining written consent forms from the gals and copies of gal's ID w/DOB, this would be nightmare to disprove . This is especially troublesome in light of the fact that the PROTECT Act of 2003 was signed, where the Feds can now fine and/or imprison a U.S. citizen who engage in illicit sexual conduct abroad WITHOUT the need to prove prior intent to engage in sex with a minor.

All in all, better to avoid the situation altogether by not possessiong any nude pics, especially when you travel.

I'd even wonder about emailing pix out of a country like Thailand, worrying that the service provider might cross-reference or somehow provide my address (and contents) to Big Brother. Crossing nudies on digital cameras or laptops across international borders is a tricky issue and scares the shit out of me. It's like every question you ask about what's kosher or not leads to another question, then another question etc...

If you don't want to have any questionable photos on your camera or laptop you could always download them onto a disk, and then send it back via UPS, DHL, or FedEx.

You just put "documents" on the customs form when you send it out.

Also make sure that you scribble something in the signiture release box on the shipping papers, that way you don't even have to sign for it. The shipping company will just drop it at your door.

RG.