The Feds may not be allowed to search your computer at the border soon...
 

From another board:

NEW YORK ? The battle over laptop searches and seizures at U.S. border stations may have come to a head with the filing of a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit in a New York District Court on Wednesday, citing constitutional problems with the DHS? insistence that laptops and personal digital assistants are no different than briefcases and suitcases and therefore may be searched at will. The ACLU seeks an accounting of all documents taken from digital equipment by Customs and Border Protection agents, a waiver of fees associated with copying the documents and compensation for the ACLU?s court costs and attorney fees.

?The ACLU believes that suspicionless searches of laptops violate the First and Fourth Amendments,? the lawsuit states.

ACLU Sues Feds Over Laptop Searches

:thumbsup

(I love how people like to bitch about the ACLU ... but they are there to help each and every one of us on many issues)

I wont even take a laptop across the border because of this shit, and I have nothing to hide. Its just bullshit going thru the inconvenience of a search because some border agent has small man syndrome and wants to go thru your computer.

Good news for Osama.

wtf are they looking for anyway? Physical stuff like bombs.. or data?

They should have never been able to search your computer. It was only a couple of decades ago that the Supreme Court took away a huge chunk of our freedoms by allowing cops to search people's personal belongings and began allowing piss testing for drugs. I can still remember being pulled over in 1983 with my first wife and handing her my little bag of pot to put in her purse.

It was unconstitutional to search a womans purse. Or for that matter to search your car. But before that decade was over the Gestapo...er, I mean the cops had full power to yank your ass out of your car and tear it to pieces searching it AND dump your wifes' purse on the ground and go through all of her personal belongings.

All part of the War On Our Own Citizens (aka, the war on drugs)

Now they have a war on terrorism as their latest excuse to take away our freedoms and put their nose where it doesn't belong. I hope the courts start reading the fucking constitution and quit trying to re-write it to make us all slaves to the govt. They are supposed to work for us, and not be playing an endless game of "gotcha".

terrorist plans, child porn, blah blah blah

They look for anything to incriminate you with. Child porn, financial documents where you may be hiding assets, links to any terrorist organization, whatever they want to look at so they can charge you with something.

In those cases, I can't see how that can be "no different than briefcases and suitcases". No one with really bad intentions needs to carry data cross borders, when internet exists.
There most be another reason. Something less obvious and something physical.

Been there, had my shit searched, got a t-shirt. It was a royal pain in the ass.