The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) has warned, during a conference in Barcelona this week, that the visitors to the United States risk having their laptops seized and searched on arrival and departure. The law applies equally to US and non-US passport holders, and following an appeal judgment in a San Francisco court earlier in the year the seizure can be done entirely randomly.
Not so bad, you may think, after all we have learned to expect some disruption to our travel routine in the cause of tighter security since 9/11. But the trouble is, under US law, Customs Agents and Border Patrol officers have the right not only to examine and download the contents of travelers’ laptops (a process which might take hours, days or even weeks) but also to confiscate them. All this without the need to produce a warrant, or even give any probable cause. Just purely, totally, at random.