Taosman
Your Cousin In New Mexxico
(SanantonioBuck is in Big Trouble!):tongue2: (They are copying harddrives, too!)
Seizing Laptops and Cameras Without Cause
A controversial customs practice creates a legal backlash
By Alex Kingsbury
Posted June 24, 2008
Updated June 27, 2008
Returning from a vacation to Germany in February, freelance journalist Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. Agents searched his luggage, he said, "then they told me that they were impounding my laptop."
Bill Hogan, who had his laptop seized at an airport, waits for a Senate subcommittee hearing.
Shaken by the encounter, Hogan examined his bags and found the agents had also inspected the memory card from his camera. "It was fortunate that I didn't use [the laptop] for work," he said, "or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information." When customs offered to return the computer nearly two weeks later, Hogan had it shipped to his lawyer.
How common Hogan's experience is remains unclear. But an April ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection, does have full authority to search any electronic devices without suspicion in the same way that it can inspect briefcases.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news...eizing-laptops-and-cameras-without-cause.html
Seizing Laptops and Cameras Without Cause
A controversial customs practice creates a legal backlash
By Alex Kingsbury
Posted June 24, 2008
Updated June 27, 2008
Returning from a vacation to Germany in February, freelance journalist Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. Agents searched his luggage, he said, "then they told me that they were impounding my laptop."
Bill Hogan, who had his laptop seized at an airport, waits for a Senate subcommittee hearing.
Shaken by the encounter, Hogan examined his bags and found the agents had also inspected the memory card from his camera. "It was fortunate that I didn't use [the laptop] for work," he said, "or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information." When customs offered to return the computer nearly two weeks later, Hogan had it shipped to his lawyer.
How common Hogan's experience is remains unclear. But an April ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection, does have full authority to search any electronic devices without suspicion in the same way that it can inspect briefcases.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news...eizing-laptops-and-cameras-without-cause.html
