Welcome back to the United States. Now let's see what's on your laptop

[n2doc]

Authorities need a search warrant to get at a computer in your home, and reasonable suspicion that you're up to no good to search your laptop in other places (like if you're surfing bomb-making sites while using WiFi at a coffee shop).

But the rules change when you're crossing the border back into the United States. And that has raised concerns from business travelers, privacy advocates and some lawmakers about the vulnerability of the huge amounts of information people carry on their laptops and other digital devices.

The legality of the practice hinges around whether searching a laptop is the equivalent of looking in your luggage, or more like a strip search.

U.S. Courts have ruled, as recently as this spring in a case stemming from a search at LAX, that there's no need for warrants or suspicions when a person is seeking to enter the country because any "routine search" is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. In effect, it's like luggage: anything and everything in your laptop, cellphone, BlackBerry or digital camera can be examined and copied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

So far, the agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has been vague about when and why it conducts those digital searches, how long it keeps the information and what is done with it. Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, wants to change that. At a congressional hearing he chaired on the issue today, he said:

"I guarantee you this: Neither the drafters of the Fourth Amendment, nor the Supreme Court when it crafted the 'border search exception,' ever dreamed that tens of thousands of Americans would cross the border every day, carrying with them the equivalent of a full library of their most personal information.... Customs agents must have the ability to conduct even highly intrusive searches when there is reason to suspect criminal or terrorist activity, but suspicion-less searches of Americans' laptops and similar devices go too far. Congress should not allow this gross violation of privacy."

Two leading privacy advocates at the hearing -- Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Peter Swire of the Center for American Progress -- agreed with Feingold that the searching of laptops and other devices violates people's privacy. The EFF also has filed suit to get more information about the program.

More:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/06/senator-raises.html

[rpannier]

1. It'll all be cleared up by a DUH-bya signing statement or one of our insipid legislators will draft

a bill giving them that authority and they'll get the support of the Vichy-Dems to enact it.