(from the daily news digest e-mail I get from the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of liberalism) Washington Post, 8/1/2008: Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Officials may also share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, which were issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"They're saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler's laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies "don't establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched."
I may need to increase my contributions to the ACLU.
