“I was sitting on the deck overlooking the Red Sea. Israeli security officers (most who looked around 18 years old) had completed around two hours of questioning and searching me. They had pressed every sock and scarf with a security device, ripped open soap and had me strip extra layers. They asked me tons of questions–where are you going? Who do you know? Do you have a boyfriend? Is he Arab, Egyptian, Palestinian? Why do you live in Egypt? Why not Israel? What do you know about the ‘conflict’ here? What do you think? They quized me on Judaism, which I know nothing about,” Lily Sussman reports via her blog.
“Then they asked me to wait. Since they had asked for friends and families phone numbers I assumed they might be calling to verify my answers to questions or confirm I really had extended family in Tel Aviv. An announcement played over the sound system, interrupting my break in the sunshine. First in Hebrew, then Arabic, then in English. It was something along the lines of, ‘do not to be alarmed by gunshots because the Israeli security needs to blow up suspicious passanger luggage,'” Sussman reports.
“I went inside to check on my bag. I had left it unattended, where they instructed. It was still there so I went back outside,” Sussman reports. “Moments later a man came outside and introduced himself as the manager on duty. And then, ‘I’m sorry but we had to blow up your laptop.'”
Sussman reports, “What….all my client case notes and testimony, writing, pictures, music and applications. Years of work. NO!!!! What?? Are you insane?? What were you thinking? THAT’S ALL MY WORK!?”
“After much yelling, crying and frantic phone dialing (don’t be alarmed if I called you repeatedly this morning), he took me outside to see the wreckage,” Sussman reports. “It turned out it hadn’t been quite blown up, but rather shot through with three bullets. We were able to extract the hard drive, seemingly unscaved. Thank goodness…”
Read more in the full article, along with more and larger images, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let this serve as a lesson: You never know what’s going to happen, so remember to regularly back up your data and store it in a safe place!
[Attribution: Gizmodo. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill in Sarasota” for the heads up.]
That’s just pathetic poor MacBook 🙁
I had a similar experience with internet dating.
Reports like this aren’t going to encourage tourism in Israel.
I vote we contract with Israeli Security for all law enforcement activities in the US.
It was probably that sticker of Carmen SanDiego on the macBook that drew the suspicion.
Did those bullets go through? It doesn’t look like they passed through the keyboard. I wish there was an image showing the rear.
But if it didn’t go through, that’s one tough, well constructed MacBook. I wonder which would be cheaper… a bullet proof vest or a couple of MacBooks (one for the front and one for the back)?
How exactly does shooting the baggage defuse whatever is inside?
sounds like useless grandstanding by the police.
It won’t be long before this kind of thing spreads to the US. Remember the White House tattle-tail list? It’s coming!
Israeli security hates glossy screens too!
Hey, Roy… Every politician has an “enemies” list. They won’t always call it that of course, but it is part of the tools of their trade.
And people feel Obama or Bush2 are friggin crazy! This is daily life in Israel, Particularly if you are not a JEWISH Israeli. I’m all for “security”, but sanity must rule. And responsibility. Not like anyone offered to replace her computer for her.
TomL……. ‘Reports like this aren’t going to encourage tourism in Israel’………
Why would you want to go on holiday to disputed country run by a govt who have now respect for human civilian lives, and who currently stand accused of potential war crimes !!!!!!!!
pathetic israelis! Stupid at best!
Well, there goes Apple’s aura of bullet-proof reliability.
It’s only news because it’s a Mac. Windows users do this to their own machines all the time.
She was probably playing Britney Spears on itunes without using her headphones.
She’s lucky they just shot the computer.
nice grouping
Israel sounds like a very nice country never to visit.
Some of you guys dont know anything about what your talking about. You live in America where “everything” is so nice and peaceful. Over in Israel, people want to kill the Jews and bomb them all the time. How many of you have been to Israel??? Ummmmmm unless your kept in the dark about news, people hate Israel. Duh their security has to be rough because of all the suicidal bombings that happen all the time. Last time I was there, a hotel was bombed just a few miles from where I was. Israel has to check any and all things suspicious. If you had people trying to kill you, would you just walk around and act oblivious to all perceived threats??? I dont think so. Again, I dont think what the security guards did was nice or proper but if they felt there were certain files on there that would do any harm to Israel, they are trained to operate.
If the hard drive survived, the what was the purpose of this exercise? Man, now I know never to visit Israel. Not that I had the desire before reading this. It’s pathetic how Muslims, Jews and Christians all believe in the same god. Yet, they have been killing each other disregarding the mandate of their professed god. All for what??
Israel is completely batshit insane and essentially a criminal state, but unfortunately it’s associated itself so closely with Judaism that leveling any criticism at it gets you labeled an anti-semite. On the flipside, alot of people opposing Isreal are anti-semites because they don’t understand that Israel and Judaism are seperate entities, that its simply a tyrannical regime hiding behing the star of David as a shield just as many tyrants throughout history have hidden behind the Holy Cross or the Koran.
What a mess.
Huh? The topic? Oh yeah…
The bar has been raised. Dell, HP, Acer, I demand you start stresstessting your laptops with a handgun. And Apple should come out with a new ad; “To show you how well a Macbook protects your data, we took one to an NRA shooting range …”
@ Israel Has Enemies–
Okay, I’ll humor you.
Let’s say there are dangerous files on the computer–Wouldn’t it make more sense to destroy the data, rather than the computer? Even crazy Israelis know that.
So let’s take that further and suggest that it was the computer itself that was the threat–Do you carefully disassemble it and diffuse it, or do you shoot it three times at close range?
This was nothing more than power-tripping idiots flexing their muscles in a police state with zero accountability.
If this is how they do security, it’s no wonder they’re so fucked up over there.
@Israel Has Enemies
Sure, when you displace and dispossess people from there ancestral land through illegal settlements you can expect to make some enemies on the way.
Ummm, not the way I would expect to cool my laptop. Nope.
So Time Machine can’t handle this?