A more defensible position is that such actions are not searches but are in fact seizures without a lawful justification. This allows application of property rights (which the US vigorously supports) and the takings clause of the 5th amendment. Only contraband items are subject to arbitrary seizure and absent some lawful basis for judging one’s data to be contraband (ex: images of child exploitation) there is no justifiable legal rationale that I am aware of supporting such “takings” of behalf of the government.

All I can say is these people deserve to learn their lesson the hard way…so don’t expect me to feel sorry for these people if DHS searches their laptop.

I have the right to remain silent and anything I say may be used against me.

Just use truecrypt and don’t tell them the password.
Plead the 5th amendment if they ask, you are entitled to.

Now its, “Hey we’ve always had the right to search your lap top!” (Big difference between physically searching, and virtual searching)

Next is, “Hey! You’ve won a weekend stay at a hotel!… while we search through your house! After all, you DID just get back from that Mexico trip, better safe than sorry, TRUST US, its our job!! :)”

this question is totally irrelevant.

Too late – the train has left the station.

The Neo-cons want to be just like China.

Correction: “The Terrorists are winning–thanks to the Terrorists in the White House and Congress.”

How long before the DHS is planting “evidence” on the seized laptops before returning them?

Unfortunately, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” is quickly becoming just a nice quote from some dude from the past and not a reality anymore.

The Terrorists are winning – thanks to morons in the White House and Congress.

Q U E S T I O N:
Since when has “Papers please” been the standard operation of security in America?
Since when has the lack of warrants to search all travelers been the standard operation?
Then, are we all being presumed guilty and only allowed the freedom of travel when we have proven ourselves innocent of any potentiality to create havoc?

I say, prove I’m a terrorist, THEN you can search me.

THE FOURTH AMENDMENT IS ONLY DEAD WHEN IT IS NOT EXORCISED AND ENFORCED!

It is an individual inalienable Right we all possess. USE IT! ENFORCE IT! EXORCISE YOUR RIGHT… or face losing it.

.

Let’s assume that:

1) A terrorist is stupid enough to carry incriminating evidence across the border on his/her laptop.
2) Said terrorist doesn’t bother to encrypt the evidence in a hidden file.
3) Out of the millions of people who cross the border every day, this terrorist is one of the unlucky few who get “randomly” selected for secondary inspection.

The probability of this series of events happening is already infinitesimally small. My questions is: how would Border Security even spot the “evidence” among the gazillion files that populate the average laptop? Border security guys aren’t all NSA material and I doubt the terrorist would name the files containing the sinister plans something obvious. Sure, there are plenty of data mining methods (which probably wouldn’t work anyway), but I doubt the guy in the pic above is doing anything more than randomly clicking through vacation pictures.

no one could imagine a terrorist mailing a…… oh, yeah…ummm… as you were. :)

Peop;e traveling woth notebooks shoud simply mail them one month in advance to where they will be traveling that it may then simple be picked up after a stout background check and investigation of asid laptop owner.

Perhaps the wrist band that can electrocute you into psychosis can be placed on the laptop and its owner?

“So, now the culture of corruption Republicans, after blowing off a perfectly legal pre-FISA-warrant search of a foreign national’s personal effects while in FBI custody, are conducting warrantless searches of laptops at border crossings, but without that pesky FISA, probable cause or the Fourth Amendment getting in their way, which leads me to suspect that Ahern isn’t really stating what the warrantless border searches are really meant to find.”

Exactly! Well observed!

In August 2001, weeks before the 9/11 attacks, a guy named Moussaoui was arrested in the Midwest by FBI field agents after flight instructors at a Midwest flight school grew suspicious of Moussaoui because he only wanted to learn how to fly a 747, not learn how to take off or land one.

The FBI agents wanted to search all of Moussaoui’s personal effects, including his computer, so they put in an urgent request with Ashcroft’s FBI headquarters for a search warrant. The FBI field agents were repeatedly rebuffed in the following weeks, with these agents growing more and more desperate, until they settled on the plan of extraditing Moussaoui to England so his personal effects, including his computer, could be searched while going through customs (i.e. crossing the border). This custom’s check was to have happened on 9/11. Too late.

Under FISA, of course, the FBI field agents could have searched Moussaoui’s personal effects and then FBI headquarters (Ashcroft) could have gone to the FISA court within forty-eight hours afterward, explained the reason for their warrantless search and requested a retroactive search warrant. Maybe, just maybe, the 9/11 hijackings by a bunch of right-wing religious fundamentalist fanatics could have been averted or at least mitigated.

So, now the culture of corruption Republicans, after blowing off a perfectly legal pre-FISA-warrant search of a foreign national’s personal effects while in FBI custody, are conducting warrantless searches of laptops at border crossings, but without that pesky FISA, probable cause or the Fourth Amendment getting in their way, which leads me to suspect that Ahern isn’t really stating what the warrantless border searches are really meant to find.

Hey, your guess is as good as mine what this is, but we all know by now that BushCo and the right-wing religious fundamentalist Republicans have been using the 9/11 terrorist attacks to promote their own right-wing religious fundamentalist agenda, as they seek to “clean up” our democratic society just like the al Qaeda right-wing religious fundamentalists would love to “clean up” our democratic society as well as all “offensive” western democracies.

Haven’t you noticed, all right-wing religious fundamentalist types think the same, and seek to censor exactly the same things?