DHS Allowed To Take Laptops Indefinitely

[Andrew Green]

Well, this whole thing is just absolutely pointless IMO. It seems to go against unreasonable search and seizure laws. And lets be honest, if I wanted to smuggle data into a country I would not have it in a folder on my desktop labeled "Terrorist material". The border security guys would likely not be able to find it, even if I hid it on the laptop. Of course I would just send it across the internet and bypass all of that anyways, or if that wasn't a option micro SD chips are dirt cheap and so tiny I could probably get across the border without it being detected, even if they did a pretty thorough search.

So call me paranoid and say I've watched too much X-Files, but this doesn't seem to have anything to do with catching people that are trying to smuggle information in or out of the country, leaving me wondering what the real purpose of it is.

 

[mrhnau]

This reminds me of some of the stories my wife told me about communism. The only rich people were the politicians and border patrol. The BP would pretty much take what they want. They often had to have "gifts" on top of their "normal" luggage, just to make sure it got through. You were lucky if they stopped with those "gifts".... grrr...

 

[CanuckMA]

Well, this whole thing is just absolutely pointless IMO. It seems to go against unreasonable search and seizure laws. And lets be honest, if I wanted to smuggle data into a country I would not have it in a folder on my desktop labeled "Terrorist material". The border security guys would likely not be able to find it, even if I hid it on the laptop. Of course I would just send it across the internet and bypass all of that anyways, or if that wasn't a option micro SD chips are dirt cheap and so tiny I could probably get across the border without it being detected, even if they did a pretty thorough search.

So call me paranoid and say I've watched too much X-Files, but this doesn't seem to have anything to do with catching people that are trying to smuggle information in or out of the country, leaving me wondering what the real purpose of it is.

But that's the whole point of this discussion. The TSA guys don't have to be able to find it. They can just take the laptop for as long as they want and have somebody else look at it for as long as it takes.


For the record, all this discussion about violation of the 4th amendment is moot. Border officers have always been granted greater S&S powers than regular LEOs.

But this does go way above.