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Ledger.com: "Can You Frisk a Hard Drive?"

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

The Ledger.com and NYT: Can You Frisk a Hard Drive? by David K. Shipler: The chosen few — 6.1 million of the 293 million who entered the United States in the year ending Sept. 30, 2010 — get a big letter written on their declaration forms: A for an agriculture check on foodstuffs, B for an immigration issue, and C for a luggage inspection. Into the computer the passport officers type the reasons for the selection, a heads-up to their colleagues in the back room, where more thorough databases are accessible. And there is where concerns have developed about invasions of privacy, for the most complete records on the travelers may be the ones they are carrying: their laptop computers full of professional and personal e-mail messages, photographs, diaries, legal documents, tax returns, browsing histories and other windows into their lives far beyond anything that could be, or would be, stuffed into a suitcase for a trip abroad...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on February 20, 2011 (boomark / email).