also, one thing leads to the other. folks who have pirated softwares in their machines should watch out coz they are running the risk of getting caught.
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New York
Is a laptop searchable in the same way as a piece of luggage? The Department of Homeland Security believes it is.
For the past 18 months, immigration officials at border entries have
been searching and seizing some citizens’ laptops, cellphones, and
BlackBerry devices when they return from international trips.
In some cases, the officers go through the files while the traveler
is standing there. In others, they take the device for several hours
and download the hard drive’s content. After that, it’s unclear what
happens to the data.
The Department of Homeland Security contends these searches and
seizures of electronic files are vital to detecting terrorists and
child pornographers. It also says it has the constitutional authority
to do them without a warrant or probable cause.
But many people in the business community disagree, saying DHS is
overstepping the Fourth Amendment bounds of permissible routine
searches. Some are fighting for Congress to put limits on what can be
searched and seized and what happens to the information that’s taken.
The civil rights community says the laptop seizures are simply
unconstitutional. They want DHS to stop the practice unless there’s at
least reasonable suspicion.
Legal scholars say the issue raises the compelling and sometimes
clashing interests of privacy rights and the need to protect the US
from terrorists and child pornographers. The courts have long held that
routine searches at the border are permissible, simply because they
take place at the border. Opponents of the current policy say a laptop
search is far from “routine.”
“A laptop can hold [the equivalent of] a major university’s library:
It can contain your full life,” says Peter Swire, a professor of law at
Ohio State University in Columbus. “The government’s never gotten to
search your entire life, so this is unprecedented in scale what the
government can get.”
In recent court challenges, lower courts have ruled that laptop
searches at the border are reasonable, just like searches of a person’s
baggage or other physical property. But the courts have drawn the line
at personal, invasive searches, ruling that things like “strip
searches, body-cavity searches, and involuntary X-ray searches” are
nonroutine, according to Nathan Sales, a professor of law at George
Mason University in Arlington, Va., who recently testified before
Congress.
Thus, they require reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or a warrant.
Advocates of the current practice say that the contents of a laptop
are like the contents of a suitcase, and as such, customs officials
have every right to go through them. They also argue that requiring
probable cause for laptop searches would create huge delays at the
border and give criminals and terrorists an easy way to bring dangerous
things into the country.
“The idea that we would create some kind of sanctuary for criminals
and terrorists to carry things across the border to me is absolutely
ludicrous,” says James Jay Carafano, a senior research fellow at the
Heritage Foundation in Washington. “It’s also unrealistic to require
probable cause when you think about the millions of people a day who
come in and go out of the country.”
People who’ve had their laptops and other electronic devices
searched and seized believe that it’s reasonable and constitutional to
expect a higher level of suspicion before customs officials take their
laptop.
Amir Khan, an information technology consultant from the San
Francisco area, has had his laptop searched twice on returning to the
US from business abroad. Once, a customs official took it away for more
than two hours.
“I don’t know what he did with it. He could have planted malicious
software or copied files,” Mr. Khan says. “It was very intrusive and I
think unreasonable. The Fourth Amendment makes it clear you can’t just
stop anybody in the street and start searching them and their things.”
Many people, particularly in the business community, also say that a
laptop is more like a virtual office than a piece of baggage. In
addition, they believe the government should be required to tell people
what it does with the information it copies.
“Right now, [DHS] seems to believe that it can hold anything it
wants from your laptop, BlackBerry, or cellphone indefinitely,” says
Susan Gurley, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel
Executives in Alexandria, Va. “There are no limits on what they can do
with it or whether they can share it with any third party.”
Ms. Gurley and others in the business community would like DHS to be
required to come up with a set of rules that determine what can be done
with the information and how long it can be held. Civil rights
advocates would like to see Congress go even further and determine that
a search of an electronic device is invasive and requires probable
cause.
“We treat our laptops, BlackBerrys, and cellphones as an extension
of our brains. They can contain our most intimate thoughts,” says Tim
Sparapani, senior legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties
Union.
As for creating a “sanctuary” for terrorists to bring in lethal
plans, Mr. Sparapani counters: “Any terrorist worth his or her salt
would send that stuff in an encrypted file from a remote location to a
remote server somewhere in the United States.”
In an e-mail, DHS says its officers “have the responsibility to
check items such as laptops and other personal electronic devices to
ensure that any item brought into the country complies with applicable
law and is not a threat to the American public.”
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