Should the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures apply when U.S. Customs agents seizing your laptop at the border to examine your data? Currently the Department of Homeland Security as well as the courts say that such searches are permissible even when then there are no grounds for suspicion against you. But many of my readers feel that it's not only an unreasonable practice but a dangerous invasion of privacy.
A Senate committee hearing this week looked into this issue that we've discussed before. U.S. Customs and Border Protection can and do seize computers and other electronic devices at the border, in some cases keeping them for weeks at a time even when there's no data contraband found. Unfortunately, the Senators received no meaningful answers to their questions about the extent of the program, what kind of things the CBP is looking for, and what it does with the data it obtains.
READ MORE
