Another Reason to Back Up Your Laptop

Or perhaps, as I mentioned in a recent article, don’t have anything important on it when crossing borders. And take only an old laptop that you can afford to lose.

laptop

This incident has been mentioned in a few places. To paraphrase from a Wired post:

US citizen Lily Sussman took a vacation in Israel.

After pulling her aside for questioning, she was left alone. An announcement was made that Israeli security needed to blow up suspicious passenger luggage. They then put three bullets through her computer.

Comments

  1. For obvious reasons, the Israelis are somewhat paranoid about packages that are left unattended in public spaces like airports(even if it iss their own action of pulling you aside for questioning that made you leave your bag – or computer – unattended).

    Many years ago on one of my trips to Israel, I was standing in line waiting to go through security when the unobtrusive man behind me suddenly pulled out a gun and started shouting into his earpiece in Hebrew. The airport evacuated in seconds. Within mere minutes, we were all returned to our various lines only to learn that the young girl in front of me had left her box of chocolates unattended. It had been blown up by security.

    Chocolate is a lot easier to replace than your laptop and data. Lesson learned.