News

Traveling with diving and underwater photography or video equipment comes with its hassle. Of course we accept all of the challenges with open arms tolerance, knowing that these hassles are part of the cost of enjoying our passion, hobby, or profession. However, in order to prevent unnecessary hassle, we must keep our ear to the ground regarding changes in government or airline policies that might affect us, such as the recent DOT lithium battery policy, and United's announcement this week about a reduction in baggage allowances.

The Washington Post ran a disturbing piece the other day about personal data devices and airport security. Did you know that TSA and airport security around the world have the right to search the contents of your laptop, including your files, emails, browser history and any other data contained on it?

In reality the Washington Post story focuses  on a story about profiling gone wrong, but for those of us traveling with laptops, like underwater photographers, it teaches us a valuable lesson about our privacy and the rights we thought we had regarding our personal data. The president set here is very troubling. Essentially our laptops and the data contained on our hard drives are looked at no differently than a suitcase and the contents inside. So it's good to know that apparently data is not protected and can be searched accordingly, and even confiscated. Many companies have already implemented international travel policies that include the use of travel laptops, which contain no data to ensure that the whereabouts of sensitive information is always controled.

Another Reason To Backup In The Field 

For businesses, the thought of data ending up in the wrong hands is very troubling. But for underwater photographers, the thought of losing the images on our laptops can be far more frightening. I'm so paranoid of losing images that even my backup system has a backup system. While traveling I implement a travel-sized backup system, which consists of a pair of compact IOMEGA 120GB external drives, which I use redundantly. Of course, new drives are constantly hitting the market, and they're only getting smaller in size and larger in capacity. 120GB's today can fit in a shirt pocket (albeit probably not a recommended place to carry a drive). On flights, one drive gets packed in checked baggage with my gear and one comes on board with me. Even in hotel rooms, I'll keep the drives separated, often keeping one with me in my backpack. I'd have to be having a really, really bad day to lose my images, and at that point I'd be worrying about a lot more than just my images.