SillyDog701

[Antony]

In this Reuters report, U.S. federal agents have been given new powers to seize travellers' laptops and any electronic devices at border and hold them indefinitely without any suspicion of wrongdoing.

Official reason (or excuse): to prevent terrorism.

Please note that such polices have long been in place but only recently disclosed in July thanks to the pressure from civil liberties and business travel groups acting on reports that increasing numbers of international travelers had had their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices removed and examined.

Full article:
U.S. agents can seize travelers' laptops: report (Reuters, 1 Aug 2008)

Unethical power I'd call it.

Any comments?

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[Don_HH2K]

I for one was once searched at an airport. To the best of my knowledge, there was no suspicion of wrongdoing on my part. The only thing I did wrong according to them was that I brought too many batteries with me, which was fully legal under TSA's regulations as long as I didn't violate their lithium weight regulations (which I didn't). So I had to take out the two cameras I had packed, which they also took issue with due to their age, and show them that every single battery worked as expected.

Unfortunately, warrantless searching is only the tip of the iceberg. We now also have warrantless wiretapping of phones as of recently, and the government is supposedly also trying to get VoIP providers like Skype to install backdoors so that the government can monitor those calls.

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