JM sez, "Death Cab for Cutie Guitarist Chris Walla had a hard drive containing his next album confiscated at the US-Canada border for no apparent reason by the Department of Homeland Security.
Wow, for some reason that doesn't make me feel like my homeland is secure – when art is blindly confiscated by authority figures."
"It's a true story. Barsuk [Records, which is putting out the record] had hired a courier – who does international stuff all the time and who they had used before – to bring [the album] back from Canada, where I was working on it. And he got to the border and he had all his paperwork and it was all cool, only they turned him away, and they confiscated the drive and gave it to the computer-forensics division of our Homeland Security-type people," sighed Walla, who has produced nearly all Death Cab's output, as well as records by the Decemberists, Hot Hot Heat, Nada Surf, Tegan and Sara and others. "And now I couldn't even venture a guess as to where it is, or what it's doing there. I mean, I can't just call their customer-service center and ask about my drive. There's nothing I can do. I don't know if we can hire an attorney … is there a black-hole attorney? You can't take a black hole to court."
(Thanks, JM!)
Update: Looks like the DHS has been trying to return the confiscated hard drive but can't reach the courier service.
