Constitutional Law

Border Searches of Electronic Devices

Americans traveling internationally have been subject to electronic searches that have resulted in the government's seizure and copying of information from their laptops, cell phones, and BlackBerrys without any suspicion of a crime having been committed, the Washington Post reported. Two San Francisco-based civil liberties groups are filing suit against the government to force it to disclose its policy on border searches, including the "boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment."

The Association of Corporate Travel Executives filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year in order to get information from the government regarding what happens to data the government has collected. Susan Gurley, executive director of ACTE, asked, “Is it destroyed right then and there if the person is in fact just a regular business traveler?”

Several corporations are changing their policies to make sure that those traveling do not do so with confidential information on the lap top or even so far as to only travel with “blank laptops” where the hard drive is empty. 

Full post as published by ACS Blog on February 07, 2008 (boomark / email).