A Vancouver recording studio has become involved in an international incident involving a member of Death Cab for Cutie and the United States Department of Homeland Security. Death Cab guitarist Chris Walla had been working on a solo album at Hippowest Studios (formerly Mushroom). After Walla returned home to Seattle, Hippowest sent assistant engineer Brandon Brown to cross the line with the computer hard drive containing the files, along with tapes of the songs and letters from studio owner Rob Darch and Barsuk Records cofounder Josh Rosenfeld explaining the contents of the drive. Those letters were not enough, apparently, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a bureau that operates under the Department of Homeland Security, confiscated the drive (but not the tapes) at the Peace Arch border crossing.

The drive's seizure happened on September 19, but the story didn't break until Walla told MTV News about it on October 16. In an interview with James Montgomery, the musician and producer said, "Luckily, the tapes are Plan B, so while I'm bummed about the whole thing, it could be a whole lot worse. I still get to play music. I mean, I'm not at Guantánamo or anything like that. I mean, my drive might be. They could be water-boarding my drive for all I know."

Walla's joke–and the story's quick spread through the rock 'n' roll blogosphere–didn't sit well with U.S. Customs rep Mike Milne, who told MTV News in a follow-up interview on October 18: "I want to point out very emphatically that the U.S. government, this administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and specifically [USCBP] does not censor musical content coming into the United States. Period. That's not the reason this hard drive was kept. We followed standard operating procedure...and when you start talking about...Guantánamo Bay, you get my ire up. I go on Google News, and I see 125 different news stories out there with the headline 'Homeland Security Seizes Musician's Music,' and it strikes me as unfair."

Milne put the kibosh on the notion that politics played a role in the seizure, stating that it was a case of commercial merchandise being brought across the border at an incorrect point and without the necessary paperwork.

According to Hippowest's Darch, Walla's hard drive remains at the border, where U.S. Customs has announced that it is available for pickup. Darch also noted that, everything else aside, the public interest in this incident has boosted the studio's profile. "We were lucky that way. We've had more hits on our Web site than any other time," he told the Straight . "I was trying to tell the guy from MTV why Chris had chosen Mushroom. I think that's something in Vancouver we should all be stoked about. It's a really good piece of Canadian history. Chris chose Mushroom because he wanted to do an audio-purist-type recording, using all great old analogue gear, and kind of go for a cool, old sound."